Loomings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                      "Grand Contested Election
              for the Presidency of the United States."

                  "Whaling voyage by one Ishmael."

                  "Bloody battle in Affghanistan."

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

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

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




The Carpet-Bag


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Spouter-Inn


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"With what?" shouted I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Counterpane


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Breakfast


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Street


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Chapel


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

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

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

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

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

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.




The Pulpit


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Sermon


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

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

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

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

                 The ribs and terrors in the whale,
                   Arched over me a dismal gloom,
                                  
              While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
                 And lift me deepening down to doom.
                                  
                   I saw the opening maw of hell,
                With endless pains and sorrows there;
                                  
               Which none but they that feel can tell-
                   Oh, I was plunging to despair.
                                  
                 In black distress, I called my God,
                When I could scarce believe him mine,
                                  
                 He bowed his ear to my complaints-
                  No more the whale did me confine.
                                  
                  With speed he flew to my relief,
                   As on a radiant dolphin borne;
                                  
                Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
                    The face of my Deliverer God.
                                  
                    My song for ever shall record
                  That terrible, that joyful hour;
                                  
                     I give the glory to my God,
                    His all the mercy and the pow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




A Bosom Friend


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Nightgown


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

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

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

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




Biographical


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Wheelbarrow


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Nantucket


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

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

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

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

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




Chowder


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Clam or Cod?" she repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Ship


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I was thinking of shipping."

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

"No, Sir, I never have."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, bring him along then."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Ramadan


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




His Mark


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken
part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the
offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact
counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm;
so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his
appellative, it stood something like this:-
Quohog.
his X mark. Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly
eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge
pockets of his broadskirted drab coat took out a bundle of tracts,
and selecting one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to
Lose," placed it in Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the
book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of
darkness, I must do my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship,
and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still
clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee,
remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the
hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say;
oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!"

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

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

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

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

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




The Prophet


"Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"

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

"Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.

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

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

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

"Anything down there about your souls?"

"About what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Captain Ahab."

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

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

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

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

"What do you know about him?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Pretty sure."

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

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

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

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

"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."

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

"Elijah."

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

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




All Astir


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Going Aboard


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

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

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

"Going aboard?"

"Hands off, will you," said I.

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

"Aint going aboard, then?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Find who?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's that for, Queequeg?"

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

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

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

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

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

"What Captain?- Ahab?"

"Who but him indeed?"

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

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

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




Merry Christmas


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Lee Shore


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

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

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

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




The Advocate


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

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

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

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

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

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

But this is not the half; look again.

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

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

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

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

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

The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who
wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job? And who
composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a
prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down
the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And
who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund
Burke!

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

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

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

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

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

The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the
mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the
world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the
Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed
procession.

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

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

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



Postscript


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

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

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

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




Knights and Squires


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

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

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

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

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

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




Knights and Squires


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

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

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

The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's
Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious
concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great
Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and
therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them
whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of
reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic
ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible
danger encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous
whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat,
requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of
time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant,
unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the
matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a
three years' voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted
that length of time. As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought
nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little
Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last
long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in
form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by
that name in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating
side timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the
icy concussions of those battering seas.

Now these three mates- Starbuck, Stubb and Flask, were momentous
men. They was who by universal prescription commanded three of the
Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which
Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the
whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being
armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio
of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.

And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a
Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or
harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh
lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the
assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a
close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in
this place we set down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what
headsman each of them belonged.

First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had
selected for his squire.  But Queequeg is already known.

Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly
promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last
remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the
neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring
harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of
Gay-Headers.  Tashtego's long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek
bones, and black rounding eyes- for an Indian, Oriental in their
largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression- all this
sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of
those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England
moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the
main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the
woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the
sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible
arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky
limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of
the earlier Puritans and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son
of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second
mate's squire.

Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
negro-savage, with a lion-like tread- an Ahasuerus to
behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that
the sailors called them ringbolts, and would talk of securing the
top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily
shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native
coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa,
Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by the whalemen; and
having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the
ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they
shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a
giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in
his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a
white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce
of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus
Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man
beside him.  As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said,
that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men
before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans
born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the
same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and
military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in
the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I
say, because in all these cases the native American literally
provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying
the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the
Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to
augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In
like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put
in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their
crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. How it
is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best
whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes
too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but
each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now,
federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An
Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all
the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the
world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them
ever come back. Black Little Pip- he never did- oh, no! he went
before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall
ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal
time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid
strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a
coward here, hailed a hero there!




Ahab


For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was
seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the
watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they
seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes
issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that
after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yet, their
supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any
eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the
cabin.

Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly
gazed aft to mark if any strange face was visible; for my first vague
disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the
sea became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at
times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly
recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before
conceived of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other
moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of
that outlandish prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of
apprehensiveness or uneasiness- to call it so- which I felt, yet
whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all
warranty to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with
the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and
motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my
previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed
this- and rightly ascribed it- to the fierce uniqueness of the very
nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so
abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three
chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly
calculated to allay these colorless misgivings, and induce confidence
and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three better,
more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way,
could not readily be found, and they were every one of them
Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man.  Now, it being
Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had
biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the
southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we
sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its
intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but
still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a
fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive
sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the
deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my
glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality
outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.

There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the
recovery from any.  He looked like a man cut away from the stake,
when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without
consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged
robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze,
and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast
Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and
continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck,
till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark,
lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made
in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper
lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single
twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running
off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but
branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the
scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By
some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was
made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego's senior, an
old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not
till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded,
and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in
an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially
negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man,
who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this
laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the
immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with
preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor
seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab
should be tranquilly laid out- which might hardly come to pass, so he
muttered- then, whoever should do that last office for the dead,
would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the
livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I
hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing
to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had
previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned
from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. "Aye, he was
dismasted off Japan," said the old Gay-Head Indian once; "but like
his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for
it. He has a quiver of 'em."

I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side
of the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds,
there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the
plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and
holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out
beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of
firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the
fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance.  Not a word he
spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their
minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if
not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And
not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a
crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing
dignity of some mighty woe.

Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his
cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew;
either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he
had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy;
indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less
a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the
dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And,
by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the
air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at
last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But
the Pequod was only making a passage now; not regularly cruising;
nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were
fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of
himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that
one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his
brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves
upon.

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him
from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and
May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest,
ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some
few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab
did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that
girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a
look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a
smile.




Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb


Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now
went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which at sea, almost
perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the
Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing,
redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped
up- flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights
seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely
pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden
helmeted suns! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such
winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that
unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the
outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the
still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as
the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle
agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the
less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among
sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths
to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now,
of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly
speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to
the planks. "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"- he would
mutter to himself- "for an old captain like me to be descending this
narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."

So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night
were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band
below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the
sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some
cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their
slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin
to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the
cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the
iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of
humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained
from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates,
seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have
been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their
dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once,
the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with
heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to
mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a
certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain
Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but
there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something
indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion
into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.

"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me
that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly
grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the
filling one at last.- Down, dog, and kennel!"

Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly,
"I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half
like it, sir."

"Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving
away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.

"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be
called a dog, sir."

"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and
begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"

As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors
in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.

"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,"
muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the
cabin-scuttle. "It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't
well know whether to go back and strike him, or- what's that?- down
here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming
up in me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It's queer;
very queer; and he's queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's
about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with.  How he flashed at
me!- his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad! Anyway there's something's
on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it
cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of
the twenty-four; and he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the
steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's
hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the
foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort
of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old
man! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's
a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say- worse nor a toothache. Well, well;
I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He's
full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every
night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's that for, I should
like to know? Who's made appointments with him in the hold? Ain't
that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game- Here goes
for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into
the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it,
that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer,
too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But
that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment;
and sleep when you can, is my twelfth- So here goes again. But how's
that? didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a
donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as well
have kicked me, and done with me. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't
observe it, I was so taken aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed
like a bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't
stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of
turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming,
though- How? how? how?- but the only way's to stash it; so here goes
to hammock again; and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey
juggling thinks over by daylight."




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.




Queen Mab


Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

"Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man's
ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to
kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off!
And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I like a blazing fool,
kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask- you know
how curious all dreams are- through all this rage that I was in, I
somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not
much of an insult, that kick from Ahab.  'Why,' thinks I, 'what's the
row? It's not a real leg, only a false one.' And there's a mighty
difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes
a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a
blow from a cane. The living member- that makes the living insult, my
little man. And thinks I to myself all the while, mind, while I was
stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid- so confoundedly
contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to
myself, 'what's his leg now, but a cane-. a whale-bone cane. Yes,'
thinks I, 'it was only a playful cudgelling- in fact, only a
whaleboning that he gave me- not a base kick. Besides,' thinks I,
'look at it once; why, the end of it- the foot part- what a small
sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked me,
there's a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to
a point only.' But now comes the greatest joke of the dream,
Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of
badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the
shoulders, and slews me round. 'What are you 'bout?' says he.  Slid!
man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I
was over the fright. 'What am I about?' says I at last. 'And what
business is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do
you want a kick?' By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than
he turned round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of
seaweed he had for a clout- what do you think, I saw?- why thunder
alive, man, his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points
out. Says I on second thought, 'I guess I won't kick you, old
fellow.' 'Wise Stubb,' said he, 'wise Stubb;' and kept muttering it
all the time, a sort of eating of his gums like a chimney hag. Seeing
he wasn't going to stop saying over his 'wise Stubb, wise Stubb,' I
thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had
only just lifted my foot for it, when he roared out, 'Stop that
kicking!'  'Halloa,' says I, 'what's the matter now, old fellow?'
'Look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked
ye, didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says I- 'right here it was.' 'Very
good,' says he- 'he used his ivory leg, didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,'
says I.  'Well then,' says he, 'wise Stubb, what have you to complain
of? Didn't he kick with right good will? it wasn't a common pitch
pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were kicked by a great man,
and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It's an honor; I consider it
an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest lords think
it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-knights of;
but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made
a wise man of. Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account his
kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you can't help
yourself, wise Stubb.  Don't you see that pyramid?' With that, he all
of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into
the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my hammock!  Now,
what do you think of that dream, Flask?"

"I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'"

"May be; may be. But it's made a wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see Ahab
standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing
you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him,
whatever he says. Halloa! What's that he shouts?  Hark!"

"Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales
hereabouts!

If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!

"What do you think of that now, Flask? ain't there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh? A white whale- did ye mark that, man?
Look ye- there's something special in the wind. Stand by for it,
Flask. Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes
this way."




Cetology


Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be
lost in its unshored harborless immensities. Ere that come to pass;
ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled
hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a
matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding
of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all
sorts which are to follow.

It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid
down.

"No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.

"It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the
inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and
families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this
animal" (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.

"Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters."
"Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea." "A field
strewn with thorns." "All these incomplete indications but serve to
torture us naturalists."

Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and
Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of
real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and
so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales.
Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen,
who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a
few:- The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir
Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green;
Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest;
Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale;
Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and
the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all
these have written, the above cited extracts will show.

Of the names in this list of whale authors only those following Owen
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing
authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great
sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost
unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is
an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means
the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his
claims, and the profound ignorance which till some seventy years
back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and
which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few
scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every
way complete. Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in
the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland
whale, without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. But
the time has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing
Cross; hear ye! good people all,- the Greenland whale is deposed,-
the great sperm whale now reigneth!

There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the
living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's;
both in their time surgeons to the English South-Sea whale-ships, and
both exact and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm
whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far
as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to
scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific
or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other
hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.

Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the
present, hereafter to be filled in all-outward its departments by
subsequent laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in
hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing
complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete must for
that very reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a
minute anatomical description of the various species, or- in this
space at least- to much of any description. My object here is simply
to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the
architect, not the builder.

But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the
Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea
after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations,
ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am
I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful
tauntings in Job might well appal me. "Will he (the leviathan) make a
covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have swam
through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with
whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will
try. There are some preliminaries to settle.

First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters
it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his
System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate
the whales from the fish." But of my own knowledge, I know that down
to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against
Linnaeus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of
the same seas with the Leviathan.

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

Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back
me. This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what
internal respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above,
Linnaeus has given you those items. But in brief they are these:
lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold
blooded.

Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
conspicuously to label him for all time to come. To be short, then, a
whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have
him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded
meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not
a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition
is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must
have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat,
but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the
tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a
horizontal position.

By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude
from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other
hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as
alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting and horizontal tailed fish
must be included in this ground-plan of cetology. Now, then, come the
grand divisions of the entire whale host.

First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them
all, both small and large.

I.  THE FOLIO WHALE; II.  the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.

As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale; of the OCTAVO,
the Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.

FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:

I.  The Sperm Whale; II.  the Right Whale; III. the Fin Back Whale;
IV.  the Humpbacked Whale; V.  the Razor Back Whale; VI.  the Sulphur
Bottom Whale

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale).
This whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa
whale and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the
present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and
the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the
largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to
encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most
valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that
valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities
will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his
name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is
absurd. Some centuries ago, when the sperm whale was almost wholly
unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only
accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days
spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from
a creature identical with the one then known in England as the
Greenland or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same
spermaceti was that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the
first syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times, also,
spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only
as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the
druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine,
in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known,
its original name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to
enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its
scarcity. And so the appellation must at last have come to be
bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti was really
derived.

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale).
In one respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being
the one first regularly hunted by man. It yields the article commonly
known as whalebone or baleen; and the oil specially known as "whale
oil," an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is
indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale;
the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True
Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the
Identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is
the whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios? It is
the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale
of the English whaleman; the Baliene Ordinaire of the French
whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which
for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and
English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American
fishermen have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks,
on the Nor' West Coast, and various other parts of the world,
designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.

Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the
English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely
agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a
single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical
distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most
inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history
become so repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere
treated of at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm
whale.

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back).
Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of
Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every
sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried
by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York
packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the
Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth,
and a lighter color, approaching to olive. His great lips present a
cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of
large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which
he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some
three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of
the back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed
end. Even if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible,
this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the
surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with
spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts
shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the
watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its
style and wavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow
often goes back. The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a
whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very shy; always going
solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most
sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall
misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous
power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from
man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his
race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the
baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the
right whale, among a theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales,
that is, whales with baleen. Of these so-called Whalebone whales,
there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are
little known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed
whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are
the fisherman's names for a few sorts.

In connexion with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of
great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it
is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan,
founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth;
notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously
seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of
Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the
whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin,
and teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately
dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any record to what may
be the nature of their structure in other and more essential
particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each has
a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then this same humpbacked
whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there
again the similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other
parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such
irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached,
such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general
methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the
whale-naturalists has split.

But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the
whale, in his anatomy- there, at least, we shall be able to hit the
right classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the
Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have
seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the
Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various
leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part
as available to the systematizer as those external ones already
enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales
bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that
way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is
the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is
practicable. To proceed.

BOOK I. (Folio) CHAPTER IV. (Hump Back).
This whale is often seen on the northern American coast. He has been
frequently captured there, and towed into harbor. He has a great pack
on him like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle
whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently
distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump though a
smaller one.  His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the
most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay
foam and white water generally than any other of them.

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. (Razar Back).
Of this whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a
distance off Cape Horn.  Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters
and philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part
of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I
know little more of him, nor does anybody else.

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI. (Sulphur Bottom).
 Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by
scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder
divings. He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen him except in
the remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a distance to
study his countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with
rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom!
I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest
Nantucketer.

Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II. (Octavo).

OCTAVOES. These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which
present may be numbered:

I.   the Grampus;
II.  the Black Fish;
III. the Narwhale;
IV.  the Thrasher;
V.   the Killer.

BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus).
Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing,
has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of
the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But
possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most
naturalists have recognised him for one. He is of moderate octave
size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of
corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds; he is
never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity,
and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded
as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.

BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER II. (Black Fish).
I give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for
generally they are the best.  Where any name happens to be vague or
inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now
touching the Black Fish, so called because blackness is the rule
among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you
please. His voracity is well known and from the circumstance that the
inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he carries an
everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averages
some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all
latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in
swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more
profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the
Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic
employment- as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company,
and quite alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of
odorous wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales
will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.

BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER III. (Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale.
Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from
his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The
creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five
feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen
feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing
out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the
horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an
ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a
clumsy left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance
answers, it would be hard to say. It does not seem to be used like
the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell
me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom
of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an
ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar
Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so
breaks through. But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be
correct. My own opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may
really be used by the Narwhale- however that may be- it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading
pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the
Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious
example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of
animated nature. From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered
that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the
great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it
brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for
fainting ladies the same way that the horns of the male deer are
manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an
object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin
Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did
gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich
Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; "when Sir Martin
returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter, "on bended knees he
presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale,
which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor." An
Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did
likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land
beast of the unicorn nature.

The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
milk-white ground color, dotted with round and oblong spots of
black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little
of it, and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar
seas.

BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER IV. (Killer).
Of this whale little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and
nothing at all to the professed naturalists. From what I have seen of
him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a
grampus. He is very savage- a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes
the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till
the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I
never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the
name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its
indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea;
Bonapartes and Sharks included.

BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER V. (Thrasher).
This gentleman is famous for his tail which he uses for a ferule in
thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he
swims, he works his passage by flogging him; as some schoolmasters
get along in the world by a similar process. Still less is known of
the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the
lawless seas.

Thus ends BOOK II. (Octavo), and begins BOOK III, (Duodecimo.)

DUODECIMOES.- These include the smaller whales.

I.   The Huzza Porpoise.
II.  The Algerine Porpoise.
III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.

To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or
five feet should be marshalled among WHALES- a word, which, in the
popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures
set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of
my definition of what a whale is- i.e. a spouting fish, with a
horizontal tail.

BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER 1. (Huzza Porpoise).
This is the common porpoise found all over the globe. The name is of
my own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and
something must be done to distinguish them.  I call him thus, because
he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep
tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July
crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the
mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy
billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the
wind.  They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand
three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye;
the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye.  A well-fed, plump
Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the
fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly
valuable. It is in request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors
put in on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may
never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout
is so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next
time you have a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great
Sperm whale himself in miniature.

BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. (Algerine Porpoise).
A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He
is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same
general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have
lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured.

BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. (Mealy-mouthed Porpoise).
The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far
as it is known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been
designated, is that of the fisher- Right-Whale Porpoise, from the
circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that
Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise,
being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat
and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his back (most other
porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of
a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils him. Though his entire back
down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line,
distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called the "bright waist,"
that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colors,
black above and white below. The white comprises part of his head,
and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just
escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and mealy
aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.

Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the
Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the
Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by
reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their
fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If
any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked,
then he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to
his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:- The Bottle-Nose Whale;
the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading
Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the
Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale;
&amp;c. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there
might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all
manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and
can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of
Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.

Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be
here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have
kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the
cranes still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For
small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me
from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught- nay,
but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins
and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are
included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish
are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of
rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout,
I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with
their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.

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




The Specksynder


Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a
place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board,
arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a
class unknown of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.

The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is evinced
by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale-ship was not wholly lodged in
the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an
officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter;
usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In
those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation
and general management of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting
department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer
reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the
corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still
retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he
ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the
captain's more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good
conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely
depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an
important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night
watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also
his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he
should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in
some way distinguished as their professional superior; though always,
by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.

Now, the grand distinction between officer and man at sea, is this-
the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain;
and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are
lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their
meals in the captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly
communicating with it.

Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the
longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils
of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all
of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages,
but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance,
intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases
tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen
generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family
these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for
all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck
are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed,
many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper
parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in
any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if
he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.

And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only
homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though
he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping
upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to
peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be
detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of
condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was
by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind
those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;
incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than
they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism
of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained
unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.  For be a man's
intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the
practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of
some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves,
more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God's
true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the
highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous
more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful
of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over
the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small
things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some
royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted
potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed
crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the
plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous
centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict
mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever
forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now
alluded to.

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand
in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in
the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!




The Cabin-Table


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

When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck,
the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then
Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the
planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some
touch of pleasantness, "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the
scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then
slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right
with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and
with a rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows after his predecessors.

But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,
seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all
sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off
his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe
right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight,
pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down
rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,
reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with
music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses,
ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little
Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or
the Slave.

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

Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned
sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his war-like but
still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited
to be served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in
Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With
one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as
he carved the chief dish before him.  I do not suppose that for the
world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest
observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And
when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef
was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the
mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly;
and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the
plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without
circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where
the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven imperial electors,
so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful
silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he
himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat
made a sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was
the youngest son, and little boy of this weary family party. His were
the shin-bones of the saline beef; his would have been the
drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this must
have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had he
helped himself at the table, doubtless, never more would he have been
able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless, strange
to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the
chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did
Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the
owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his
clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a
voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and
therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas!
was a butterless man!

Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and
Flask is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was
badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start
of him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the
rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to
have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his
repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than
three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to
precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted
in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an
officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be
otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much
relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and
satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my
stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of
old-fashioned beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when I was before
the mast. There's the fruit of promotion now; there's the vanity of
glory: there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any
mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's
official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain
ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinnertime, and get a peep at Flask
through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before
awful Ahab.

Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first
table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in
inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or
rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And
then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its
residuary legatees.  They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of
the high and mighty cabin.

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire
care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those
inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates,
seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the
harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a
report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like
Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites
had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the
previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a
great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And
if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble
hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And
once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory
by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty
wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the
circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous,
shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the
progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse.  And what with the
standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical
tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life
was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers
furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape from their
clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at
them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.

It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing
his filed teeth to the Indian's; crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on
the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to
the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the
low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes
passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was
wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible
that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the
vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a
person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep
of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils
snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread,
are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric
smack of the lip in eating- an ugly sound enough- so much so, that
the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of
teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego
singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be
picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery
hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor
did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for
their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner,
they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound
did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he
forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly
have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretion. Alas!
Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not
a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time,
though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise
and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial
bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in
scabbards.

But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were
scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before
sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar
quarters.

In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights
the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone
that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real
truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be
said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did
enter it, it was something as a streetdoor enters a house; turning
inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a
permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much
hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was
inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom,
he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of
the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and
Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in
the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own
paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in
the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its
gloom!




The Mast-Head


It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with
the other seamen my first mast-head came round.

In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost
simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though she
may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her
proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years'
voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her- say, an
empty vial even- then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last!
and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port,
does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a
very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate
here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the
old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to
them. For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must
doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest
mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was
put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have
gone by the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore, we
cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And
that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an
assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that
the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory
singularly supported by the peculiar stairlike formation of all four
sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of
their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and
sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing
out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint Stylites,
the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone
pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life
on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in
him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless
stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by
fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything
out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern
standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron,
and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale,
are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon
discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top
of the column of Vendome stands with arms folded, some one hundred
and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below,
whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil.  Great
Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in
Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his column marks that
point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral
Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in
Trafalgar Square; and even when most obscured by that London smoke,
token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is
smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor
Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked
to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they
gaze; however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate
through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what
rocks must be shunned.

It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head
standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is
not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole
historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us,
that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were
regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island
erected lofty spars along the seacoast, to which the look-outs
ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in
a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay
whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to
the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become
obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a
whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise
to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm),
and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of
the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head: nay, to a
dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred
feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts
were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it
were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed
between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes.  There you
stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled
but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade
winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part,
in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you;
you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of
commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear
of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are
never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner-
for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in
casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at
the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much
to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a
portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly
destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or
adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains
to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or
any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men
temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch is the
head of the t' gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel
sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant
crosstrees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about
as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure, in cold
weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a
watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more
of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of
its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even
move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an
ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat
is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional
skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your
body, and no more can you make a convenience closet of your
watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of
a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents
or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the look-outs of a
Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the
frozen seas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A
Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and
incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of
Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads
are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then
recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of
Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in
honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and
free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call
our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original
inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after
ourselves any other apparatus we may beret. In shape, the Sleet's
crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open
above, however, where it is furnished with a movable sidescreen to
keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the
summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in
the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is
a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas,
comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep
your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in
this crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with
him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot,
for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea
unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at
them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot
down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor
of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little
detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges
upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific
account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass
he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting
from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets;
an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the
ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having
been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that
though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all
his learned "binnacle deviations," "azimuth compass observations,"
and "approximate errors," he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he
was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as
to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished
little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's
nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I
greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned
Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly
ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter
it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was
studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within three
or four perches of the pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is
greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those
seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I
used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to
have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find
there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg
over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery
pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept
but sorry guard.  With the problem of the universe revolving in me,
how could I- being left completely to myself at such a
thought-engendering altitude- how could I but lightly hold my
obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders, "Keep your
weather eye open, and sing out every time."

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad
with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness;
and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his
head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before
they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you
ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the
richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the
whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and
absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth,
and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not
unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless
disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:-

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

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded
young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling
sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so
hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret
souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in
vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is
imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the
visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

"Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've
been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a
whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up
here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of
them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like
listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded
youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he
loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the
visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind
and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing
that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some
undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive
thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through
it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came;
becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled
Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round
globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a
gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from
the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on
ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your
identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you
hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one
half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the
summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!




The Quarter-Deck


(Enter Ahab: Then, all)

It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one
morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the
cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at
that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few
turns in the garden.

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his
old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all
over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his
walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow;
there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints- the foot-prints
of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his
thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the
main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought
turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely
possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of
every outer movement.

"D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's in him
pecks the shell. 'Twill soon be out."

The hours wore on;- Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing
the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.

It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the
bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and
with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send
everybody aft.

"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
ship-board except in some extraordinary case.

"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mast-heads, there! come down!"

When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and
not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not
unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after
rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among
the crew, started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were
nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and
half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering
whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask,
that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing
a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he
cried:-

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of
clubbed voices.

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

"And what do ye next, men?"

"Lower away, and after him!"

"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"

"A dead whale or a stove boat!"

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began
to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that
they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless
questions.

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in
his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly,
almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:-

"All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a
white whale.  Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?"- holding
up a broad bright coin to the sun- "it is a sixteen dollar piece,
men. D'ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul."

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was
slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if
to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile
lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and
inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of
his vitality in him.

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the
main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold
with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever
of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a
crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with
three holes punctured in his starboard fluke- look ye, whosoever of
ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my
boys!"

"Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they
hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.

"It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw down the
topmaul: "a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out."

All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even
more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
separately touched by some specific recollection.

"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same
that some call Moby Dick."

"Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab. "Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?"

"Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?" said
the Gay-Header deliberately.

"And has he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for
a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?"

"And he have one, two, three- oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like
him- him-" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and
round as though uncorking a bottle- "like him- him-"

"Corkscrew!" cried Ahab, "aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted
and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a
whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after
the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like
a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye
have seen- Moby Dick- Moby Dick!"

"Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus
far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last
seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the
wonder. "Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick- but it was not Moby
Dick that took off thy leg?"

"Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye,
my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick
that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he
shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a
heart-stricken moose; "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale
that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!"
Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out:
"Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn,
and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I
give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that
white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till
he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye
splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave."

"Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for
Moby Dick!"

"God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout. "God bless ye,
men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what's this long
face about, Mr.  Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale! art
not game for Moby Dick?"

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

"Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a
little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then,
let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!"

"He smites his chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it
rings most vast, but hollow."

"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee
from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing,
Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

"Hark ye yet again- the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,
are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act,
the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing
puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning
mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the
prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me,
the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think
there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I
see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing
it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white
whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate
upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it
insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other;
since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding
over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair
play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more
intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou
reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look
ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There
are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to
incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted
tawn- living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan
leopards- the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and
seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew,
man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of
the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to
think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost
sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help
strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From
this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely
he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a
whetstone. Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts
thee! Speak, but speak!- Aye, aye! thy silence, then, that voices
thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled
it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without
rebellion."

"God keep me!- keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.

But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab
did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from
the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the
cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as
for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes
lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died
away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and
rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings!  why stay ye not
when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye
shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications
of the fore-going things within.  For with little external to
constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still
drive us on.

"The measure! the measure!" cried Ahab.

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

"Drink and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman. "The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round!
Short draughts- long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so;
it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went,
this way it comes. Hand it me- here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the
years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!

"Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan;
and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand
there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may
in some sort revive a noble custom of my fishermen fathers before
me. O men, you will yet see that- Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies
come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming
again, wert not thou St. Vitus' imp- away, thou ague!

"Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let
me touch the axis." So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the
three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so
doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile glancing
intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as
though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have
shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the
Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before
his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked
sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.

"In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but
once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, that
had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have
dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye
mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen
there- yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant
harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the
feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer?  Oh, my sweet cardinals!
your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye;
ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"

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

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

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




Sunset


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

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

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

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

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




Dusk


By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

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

[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]

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




First Night Watch


(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)

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

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

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




Midnight, Forecastle


(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.-

ST NANTUCKET SAILOR

Oh, boys, don't be sentimental. it's bad for the digestion! Take a
tonic, follow me!

(Sings, and all follow)

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

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK

Eight bells there, forward!

2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR

Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy? Strike the
bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. I've
the sort of mouth for that- the hogshead mouth. So, so, (thrusts his
head down the scuttle,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!  Eight bells
there below! Tumble up!

DUTCH SAILOR

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

FRENCH SAILOR

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

PIP (Sulky and sleepy)

Don't know where it is.

FRENCH SAILOR

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

ICELAND SAILOR

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

MALTESE SAILOR

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

SICILIAN SAILOR

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

LONG-ISLAND SAILOR

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

AZORE SAILOR (Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle.)

Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bits; up you mount! Now,
boys!

(The half of them dance to the tambourine; some go below; some sleep
or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)

AZORE SAILOR (Dancing)

Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it,
bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!

PIP

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

CHINA SAILOR

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

FRENCH SAILOR

Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it! Split jibs!
tear yourself!

TASHTEGO (Quietly smoking)

That's a white man; he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat.

OLD MANX SAILOR

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

3D NANTUCKET SAILOR

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

(They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky
darkens- the wind rises.)

LASCAR SAILOR

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

MALTESE SAILOR (Reclining and shaking his cap)

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

SICILIAN SAILOR (Reclining)

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

TAHITAN SAILOR (Reclining on a mat)

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

PORTUGUESE SAILOR

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

DANISH SAILOR

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

4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR

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

ENGLISH SAILOR

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

ALL

Aye! aye!

OLD MANX SAILOR

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

DAGGOO

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

SPANISH SAILOR (Aside.) 

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

DAGGOO (Grimly)

None.

ST. JAGO'S SAILOR

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

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR

What's that I saw- lightning? Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR

No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

DAGGOO (Springing)

Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!

SPANISH SAILOR (Meeting him)

Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!

ALL

A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (With a whiff)

A row a'low, and a row aloft- Gods and men- both brawlers! Humph!

BELFAST SAILOR

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

ENGLISH SAILOR

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

OLD MANX SAILOR

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

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK

Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef
topsails!

ALL

The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (They scatter.) 

PIP (Shrinking under the windlass)

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




Moby Dick


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

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

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

Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the
more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not
only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all
surprising terrible events,- as the smitten tree gives birth to its
fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma,
wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them
to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the
whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the
wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate
there. For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that
ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all
sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact
with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face
they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle
to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a
thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to
any chiselled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of
the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a
calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending
to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth. No wonder, then,
that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the wildest
watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did in the end
incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and
half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which
eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from
anything that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did
he finally strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard
of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter
the perils of his jaw.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Whiteness of The Whale


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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!"




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

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

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

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

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




The Affidavit


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In another place- p.45,- he speaks of "the mysterious and mortal
attack of the animal."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."




Surmises


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

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

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

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

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

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




The Mat-Maker


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

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

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

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

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

"Where-away?"

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

Instantly all was commotion.

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

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

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

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

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

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




The First Lowering


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

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

"Ready," was the half-hissed reply.

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

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

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

"Captain Ahab?-" said Starbuck.

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

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

"Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the
omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled
along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless
bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip
for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that
almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip
into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to
gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down
its other side;- all these, with the cries of the headsmen and
harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the
wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with
outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;- all
this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of
his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man's
host encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world;-
neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that
man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the
charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming
round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the
gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in
the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our
downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up
to us from the bottom of the ocean.

The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers
together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us
like a white fire upon the prairie, in which unconsumed, we were
burning; immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other
boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming
furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving
scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no sign
of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to
bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing
now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the
waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to
ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole,
handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn
hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the
heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and
symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the
midst of despair.

Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or
boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still
spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of
the boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand
to his ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards
hitherto muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the
thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we
all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing
right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its
length.

Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant
it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base
of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen
no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were
dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely
landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had
cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The
ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light
upon some token of our perishing,- an oar or a lance pole.




The Hyena


There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed
affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast
practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and
more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his
own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while
disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and
persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how
knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and
gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of
sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself,
seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the
side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.  That odd
sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some
time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his
earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a
thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There
is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy
sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this
whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.

"Queequeg," said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the
deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the
water; "Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often
happen?" Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he
gave me to understand that such things did often happen.

"Mr. Stubb," said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb,
I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our
chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I
suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set
in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?"

"Certain. I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off
Cape Horn."

"Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing
close by; "you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will
you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery,
Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself
back-foremost into death's jaws?"

"Can't you twist that smaller?" said Flask. "Yes, that's the law. I
should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face
foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind
that!"

Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate
statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls
and capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep,
were matters of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering
that at the superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I
must resign my life into the hands of him who steered the boat-
oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness
upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings;
considering that the particular disaster to our own particular boat
was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale
almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that Starbuck,
notwithstanding, was famous for his great heedfulness in the fishery;
considering that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck's
boat; and finally considering in what a devil's chase I was
implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I
say, I thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my
will. "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my lawyer,
executor, and legatee."

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at
their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world
more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical
life that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded
upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled
away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be
as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a
supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case may
be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my
chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet
ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug
family vault.

Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my
frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction,
and the devil fetch the hindmost.




Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah


"Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had but one
leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the
plug-hole with my timber toe.  Oh! he's a wonderful old man!"

"I don't think it so strange, after all, on that account," said
Flask.  "If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different
thing. That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of
the other left, you know."

"I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel."

Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering
the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it
is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active
perils of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears
in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be
carried into the thickest of the fight.

But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering
that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of
dancer; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great
and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed,
then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any
maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the
joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.

Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little
of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes
of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and
giving his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat
actually apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt- above
all for Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's
crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the
heads of the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a
boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on
that head.  Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own
touching all that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery, the
sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a
little while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary
business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time after
this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of
making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one
of the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden
skewers, which when the line is running out are pinned over the
groove in the bow: when all this was observed in him, and
particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in
the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed
pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in
exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes
called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee
against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how
often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the
semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's
chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there;
all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at
the time. But almost everybody supposed that this particular
preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the
ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his
intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a
supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any
boat's crew being assigned to that boat.

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned
away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such
unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the
unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating
outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer
castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits
of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and
what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step
down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create
any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.

But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate
phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it
were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah
remained a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly
world like this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced
himself to be linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to
have some sort of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might
have been even authority over him; all this none knew, but one cannot
sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a
creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see
in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and
then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the
Oriental isles to the east of the continent- those insulated,
immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days
still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal
generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct
recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came,
eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon
why they were created and to what end; when though, according to
Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the
devils also, add the uncanonical Robbins, indulged in mundane amours.




The Spirit-Spout


Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; off the Azores; off the
Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the
Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality,
southerly from St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was
seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the
moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god
uprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these
moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and
stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been
day.  And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one
whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may
think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental
perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon,
companions in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval
there for several successive nights without uttering a single sound;
when, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard
announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner
started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the
rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.  "There she blows!" Had the
trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still
they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most
unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
lowering.

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The
best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head
manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind.  The strange,
upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the
hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel
like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two
antagonistic influences were struggling in her- one to mount direct
to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And
had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that
in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg
made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb
sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But
though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like
arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen
that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some
days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced:
again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it,
once more it disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us
night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at
it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as
the case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days,
or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be
advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet
seemed for ever alluring us on.

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things
invested the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore
that whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in
however far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was
cast by one selfsame whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time,
there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting
apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in
order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last
in the remotest and most savage seas.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in
which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a
devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas
so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our
vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like
prow.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began
howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas
that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the
blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of
silver chips, the foamflakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this
desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more
dismal than before.

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable
sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these
birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time
obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some
drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and
therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved
and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast
tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish
and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called
of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had
attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea,
where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish,
seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store,
or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and
unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still
beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be
descried.

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after
everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done
but passively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew
become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its
accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for
hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very
eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part
of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to
guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a
loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as
if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through
all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night
the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean
prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed
demanding repose he would not seek that respose in his hammock. Never
could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down
into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him with
closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain and
half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before
emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On
the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and
currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from
his tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was
thrown back so that the closed eves were pointed towards the needle
of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling.

Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.

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.




The Albatross


South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good
cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney
(Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at
the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to
a tyro in the far ocean fisheries- a whaler at sea, and long absent
from home.

As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral
appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all
her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees
furred over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild
sight it was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three
mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and
bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years of
cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and
swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided
close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each
other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one
ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen,
mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.

"Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?"

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in
the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his
hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove
to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still
increasing the distance between us. While in various silent ways the
seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous
incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale's name to
another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though he
would have lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the
threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage of his windward
position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect that
the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he
loudly hailed- "Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the
world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean!
and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address
them to-"

At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly,
then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small
harmless fish, that for some days before had been placidly swimming
by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged
themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks. Though in the
course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed
a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings.

"Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the
water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed
more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before
evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding
the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old
lion voice,- "Up helm! Keep her off round the world!"

Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud
feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only
through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where
those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

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




The Gam


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

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering
each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of
them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a
moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a
while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon
the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two
whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth- off
lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more
natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not
only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and
sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of
course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose
captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things
to talk about.

For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers
of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and
thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound
ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the
cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost
importance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning
whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the cruising-ground
itself, even though they are equally long absent from home. For one
of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and
now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the
people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the
whaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they
meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the
peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually
shared privations and perils.

Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number
of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when
they do occur there. is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them;
for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not
fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English
whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the
American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his
nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this
superiority in the English whaleman does really consist, it would be
hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill
more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years.  But
this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which
the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he
knows that he has a few foibles himself.

So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable- and they are so. Whereas,
some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic,
will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of
recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a
brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in
finical criticism upon each other's rig.  As for Men-of-War, when
they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of
silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there
does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly
love about it at all. As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are
in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as
possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's
cross-bones, the first hail is- "How many skulls?"- the same way that
whalers hail- "How many barrels?" And that question once answered,
pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on
both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous
likenesses.

But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another
whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a "Gam," a thing so
utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name
even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it,
and repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and
such like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen,
and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors,
cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a
question it would be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates,
say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any
peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation,
indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated
in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior
altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high
lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid
basis to stand on.

But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up
and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word,
Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does
not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many
years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born
Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated
into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.

GAM. NOUN- A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on
a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits
hy boats' crews, the two captains remaining, for the time, on board
of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.

There is another little item about Gamming which must not be
forgotten here. All professions have their own little peculiarities
of detail; so has the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or
slave ship, when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always
sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat
there, and often steers himself with a pretty little milliner's
tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has
no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at
all. High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the
water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for
a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and
therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew must leave the ship,
and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number, that
subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain,
having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing
like a pine tree. And often you will notice that being conscious of
the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from the sides of
the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the importance
of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is this any
very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting steering
oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-oar
reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely
wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by
settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of
the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of
foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a
spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again,
it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it
would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen
steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything
with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command,
he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps
being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for
ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well
authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an
uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say- to seize
hold of the nearest oarsman's hair, and hold on there like grim
death.




The Town-Ho's Story


(As told at the Golden Inn)

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there,
is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you
meet more travellers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned
almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave
us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the
White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the
Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a
certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called
judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This
latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming
what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be
narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For
that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the
Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate
white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to
Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the following night
Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that
way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the
rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on
those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and
by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this
matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never
transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper
place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the
ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on
lasting record.

For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once
narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one
saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden
Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian,
were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions
they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.

"Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am
about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of
Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days'
sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was
somewhere to the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the
pumps according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more
water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed
her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for
believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and
therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then
considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it
after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy
weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working
at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more
days went by and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it
sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the
captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the
islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.

"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance
favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the
way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically
relieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep
the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth,
well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous
breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety
at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not
been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder,
and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and
desperado from Buffalo.

"'Lakeman!- Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?'
said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but- I crave your
courtesy- may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,
gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well nigh as
large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far
Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had
yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions
popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing
aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours,- Erie, and Ontario,
and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,- possess an ocean-like
expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of
its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round
archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in
large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the
Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous
territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks;
here and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by the goat-like
craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings
of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild
barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry
wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered
forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in
Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of
prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar
Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as
well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant
ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech
canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as
any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out
of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a
midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an
inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as
much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his
infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to
nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed
our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite
as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh
from the latitudes of buckhorn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this
Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a
mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible
firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition
which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had
long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved
so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt- but,
gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her
prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again
increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps
every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like
our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping
their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should
the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect,
the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again
remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the
bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the
westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep
clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of
considerable length! that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible
coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is
only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those
waters, some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to
feel a little anxious.

"Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was
found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern
manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the
mate. He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home
anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I
suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any
sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any
fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can
conveniently gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this imagine,
solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared
that it was only on account of his being a part owner in her. So when
they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head
no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with
their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear
as any mountain spring, gentlemen- that bubbling from the pumps ran
across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee
scupper-holes.

"Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this
conventional world of ours- watery or otherwise; that when a person
placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very
significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway
against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and
bitterness; and if he had a chance he will pull down and pulverize
that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this
conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a
tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden
beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting
charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen,
which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to
Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet
as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and
Steelkilt knew it.

"Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on
with his gay banterings.

"'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin,
one of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling!
I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best
cut away his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys,
that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a gang
of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the
whole posse of 'em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the
bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd
tell him to jump overboard and scatter They're playing the devil with
his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple old soul,- Rad, and a
beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is invested in
looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model
of his nose.'

"'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney,
pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'

'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys,
lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines;
the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar
gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of
life's utmost energies.

"Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman
went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his
face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from
his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed
Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated
state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the
deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the
planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters
consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.

"Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of
household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly
attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case
of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the
inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in
seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing
their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the
prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides,
it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into
gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman
of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of
the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial
business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the
case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you
may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.

"But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost
as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had
spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will
understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman
fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat
still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's
malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in
him and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he
instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and
unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already
ireful being- a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really
valiant men even when aggrieved- this nameless phantom feeling,
gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.

"Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily
exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that
sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And
then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three
lads, as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the
pumps, had done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied,
with an oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner
unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile advancing upon the
still seated Lakeman, with an unlifted cooper's club hammer which he
had snatched from a cask near by.

"Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps,
for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating
Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow
still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he
remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed
Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously
commanding him to do his bidding.

"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windless, steadily
followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated
his intention not to obey.  Seeing, however, that his forbearance had
not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with
his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it
was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the
windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him
that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the
Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:

"'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to
yourself.'  But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him,
where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an
inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable
maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing
him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt,
clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back,
told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he
(Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been
branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched
the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in
his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale.

"Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
mastheads. They were both Canallers.

"'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whaleships in our
harbors, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are
they?'

"'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie
Canal. You must have heard of it.'

"'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and
hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'

"'Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and
ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for
such information may throw side-light upon my story.'

"For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire
breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities
and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps,
and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by
billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great
forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade;
by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery
of those noble Mohawk counties; especially, by rows of snow-white
chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one
continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless
life. There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans;
where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung
shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious
fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that
they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen,
most abound in holiest vicinities.

"'Is that a fair passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the
crowded plazza, with humorous concern.

"'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in
Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'

"'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of
all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we
have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present
Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison.  Oh! do not bow
and look surprised: you know the proverb all along this coast-
"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more
plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open-and "Corrupt as
Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the
blessed evangelist, St. Mark!- St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup!
Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.'

"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would
make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked he
is. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed,
flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his
red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny
deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise
which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned
hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of
the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold
swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own
canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I
thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one
of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at
times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as
to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of
this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild
whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates, and
that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much
distrusted by our whaling captains.  Nor does it at all diminish the
curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys
and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand
Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a
Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most
barbaric seas.

"'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha
upon his silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I
had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were
cold and holy as the hills.- But the story.'

"I had left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the
backstay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three
junior mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the
deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two
Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of
it towards the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in
this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of
harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike,
calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and
smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to
the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of
it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his
resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them
all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily
slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass,
these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade.

"'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing
them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the
steward. 'Come out of that, ye cut-throats!'

"Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there,
defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to
understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be the
signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands.  Fearing in
his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little
desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to
their duty.

"'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their
ringleader.

"'Turn to! turn to!- I make no promise; to your duty! Do you want to
sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he
once more raised a pistol.

"'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Aye, let her sink. Not a man of
us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against
us. What say ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was
their response.

"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his
eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:- 'It's
not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away;
it was boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him
not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here
against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the
forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my
hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a
fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and
we're your men; but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!'

"'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,
'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped
for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our
discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's
not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but
we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

"Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:- 'I tell you
what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a
shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us;
but till you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a hand's
turn.'

"'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there
till ye're sick of it. Down ye go.'

"'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were
against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded
him down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears
into a cave.

"As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the
Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over
the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and
loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock
belonging to the companionway.

Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something down
the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them- ten in number-
leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained
neutral.

"All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward
and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway;
at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after
breaking through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed
in peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at
the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the
dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.

"At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,
summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water
was then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit
were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and
pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every
day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a
confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary
summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the
forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of
the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of
ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at
discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to
the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his
babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning
three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the
desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were
left.

"'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.

"'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

"'Oh certainly,' the Captain, and the key clicked.

"It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of
seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that
had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place
as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt
proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparently of mind with him,
to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and
armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy
implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to
the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible,
seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they
joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that
den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other
two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing,
for anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each
insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the
rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected,
reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades
would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both of
them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a
time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must
come out.

"Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same
piece of treachery, namely: to be the foremost in breaking out, in
order to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to
surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such
conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination
still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle
chemistry of villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together;
and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls
to each other in three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords,
and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the Captain at
midnight.

"Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he
and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In
a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the
still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his
perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honor of securing a man
who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and
dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were
seized up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and
there they hung till morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing to
and fro before them, 'the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!'

"At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had
rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the
former he had a good mind to flog them all round- thought, upon the
while, he would do so- he ought to- justice demanded it; but for the
present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go
with a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the
vernacular.

"'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the
rigging- 'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and,
seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the
two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their
heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

"'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is
still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give
up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for
himself.'

"For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his
cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a
sort of hiss, 'What I say is this- and mind it well- if you flog me,
I murder you!'

"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'- and the Captain drew off
with the rope to strike.

"'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

"'But I must,'- and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.

"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the
Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the
deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his
rope, said, 'I won't do it- let him go- cut him down: d'ye hear?'

But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale
man, with a bandaged head, arrested them- Radney the chief mate. Ever
since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing
the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched
the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could
hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being willing and able
to do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and
advanced to his pinioned foe.

"'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

"'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking,
when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then
pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat,
whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down, all
hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the
iron pumps clanged as before.

"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running
up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the
crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at
their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for
salvation. Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the
contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had
resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to
the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body. But
in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed
to another thing- namely, not to sing out for whales, in case any
should be discovered. For, spite her leak, and spite of all her other
perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her captain
was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the day
his craft struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite
as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth
seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till
all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the
man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart.  He was in
Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to
run more than half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the
rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain,
upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or
two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of
his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseaman-like way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's
side. In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There
was a considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down
between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found
that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in
the morning of the third day from that in which he had been
betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding
something very carefully in his watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length
before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough
twine,- have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to him!' said a sailor.

"'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help
himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at
him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was
given him- neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next
night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of
the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his
hammock for a pillow.  Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the
silent helm- nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave
always ready dug to the seaman's hand- that fatal hour was then to
come; and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was
already stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed
in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being
the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to
step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he
would have done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the
second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid
Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted
out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was
Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do
whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;-
but that would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons- nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get
more into the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend
faint;- fill up his empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.- Now, gentlemen, so
suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship-
forgetful of the compact among the crew- in the excitement of the
moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had
been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a
phrensy. 'The White Whale- the White Whale!' was the cry from
captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours,
were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the
dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of
the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun,
shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning
sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these
events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was
charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a
fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his
lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of
command.  Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got
the start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than did
Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their
harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He
was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged
cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his
bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two
whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a
sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That
instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted,
and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into
the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the
spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly
seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale
rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his
jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went
down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had
slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
looking on, lie thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,
downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the
line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby
Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt,
caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase
again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.

"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port- a savage, solitary
place- where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the
Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted
among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double
war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.

"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain
called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of
heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting
vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites
necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard
work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea,
they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put
off with them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his
officers, he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded
and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the
poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their
peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best
whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred
miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which
seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from
it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of
Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under
water. The captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of
the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him
that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him
in bubbles and foam.

"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded
Steelkilt; 'no lies.'

"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

"'Very good. Let me board you a moment- I come in peace.' With that
he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale,
stood face to face with the captain.

"'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after
me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on
yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightning
strike me!'

"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping
into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.

"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the
roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due
time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck
befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were
providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the
sailor headed.  They embarked, and so for ever got the start of their
former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal
retribution.

"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,
and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small
native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all
right there, again resumed his cruisings.

"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses
to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that
destroyed him.

"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

"'I am, Don.'

"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing
wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me
if I seem to press.'

"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don
Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.

"'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,
gentlemen?'

"'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who
will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well
advised? this may grow too serious.'

"'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'

"'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the
company to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risks of the
archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no
need of this.'

"'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg
that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized
Evangelists you can.'

'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don
Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.

"'Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the
light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

"'So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be
true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I
have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'"

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




Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales


I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to
the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is
moored alongside the whaleship so that he can be fairly stepped upon
there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to
those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is
time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures
of the whale all wrong.

It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions
will be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian
sculptures. For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times
when on the marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues,
and on shields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in
scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like
St. George's; ever since then has something of the same sort of
license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale,
but in many scientific presentations of him.

Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting
to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of
Elephants, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless
sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits,
every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any
of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort
our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed
forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department
of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of
leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this
sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of
the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more
like the tapering of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true
whale's majestic flukes.

But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian
painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the
antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the
model of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in
painting the same scene in his own "Perseus Descending," make out one
whit better. The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates
on the surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of
howdah on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the
billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate leading
from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as
depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old
primers. What shall be said of these? As for the book-binder's whale
winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor- as
stamped and gilded on the backs and titlepages of many books both old
and new- that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature,
imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases. Though
universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this
book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old
Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the
Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a
comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a
species of the Leviathan.

In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you
will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all
manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and
Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain.  In the
title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning"
you will find some curious whales.

But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at
those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific
delineations, by those who know. In old Harris's collection of
voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book
of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in
the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In
one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are
represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over
their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made
of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.

Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain
Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round
Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the
Spermaceti Whale Fisheries." In this book is an outline purporting to
be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from
one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on
deck." I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for
the benefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me
say that it has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying
scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale
a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye
not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!

Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for
the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness
of mistake. Look at that popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature."
In the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an
alleged "whale" and a "narwhale." I do not wish to seem inelegant,
but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as
for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in
this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine
upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.

Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these
are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or
Greenland whale (that is to say the Right whale), even Scoresby, a
long experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have
its counterpart in nature.

But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he
gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that
picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary
retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is
not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the benefit
of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived
that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific
predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic
abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively
lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers
inform us.

As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage;
breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full
of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue
paint.

But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have
been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as
a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly
represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull
and spars.  Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the
living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his
portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is
only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast
bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and
out of that element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man
to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty
swells and undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumable
difference of contour between a young suckling whale and a full-grown
Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those young
sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is then the outlandish,
eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression
the devil himself could not catch.

But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at
all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,
that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though
Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library
of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed
utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading personal
characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any
leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the
mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully
invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that
so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in
the head, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown.
It is also very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of
which almost exactly answer to bones of the human hand, minus only
the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle,
ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in
their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial
covering.  "However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,"
said humorous Stubb one day, "he can never be truly said to handle us
without mittens."

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the
world which much remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may
hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any
very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of
finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only
mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living
contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no
small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it
seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity
touching this Leviathan.




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, &amp;c. But I
pass that matter by.

I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the
previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's
is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the
best. All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the
middle figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes,
capping his second chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm
Whales, though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of
some parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like in its general
effect.  Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are
pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That is
not his fault though.

Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but
they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable
impression. He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a
sad deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well
done, that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living
whale as seen by his living hunters.

But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to
be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent
attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble
Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath
the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in
the. air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The
prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing
upon the monster's spine; and standing in that prow, for that one
single incomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half
shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act
of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action of the whole thing is
wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the
whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob
in it; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale
in contrasting expressions of affright; while in the black stormy
distance the ship is bearing down upon the scene. Serious fault might
be found with the anatomical details of this whale, but let that
pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw so good a one.

In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside
the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his
black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the
Patagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so
that from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there
must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls
are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and
maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent
back. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through
the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and
causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught
nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the fore-ground is
all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is
the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of
the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered
fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the inserted
into his spout-hole.

Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he
was either practically conversant with his subject, or else
marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the
lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of
Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and
breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at
Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash
of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors
dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a
place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and
engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of
England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of
that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations
with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real
spirit of the whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American
whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the
mechanical outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the
whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is
about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid. Even
Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff
full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of
classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels;
and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the
inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified
Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent
voyager (I honor him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it
was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a
sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two
other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself "H. Durand." One of them, though not precisely adapted to our
present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It
is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler
anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the
loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the
background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect
is very fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the
hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of oriental
repose. The other engraving is quite a different affair: the ship
hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic
life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of
cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat,
hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving
chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled
for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its hole; while
from a sudden roll of the ship, the little craft stands half-erect
out of the water, like a rearing horse. From that ship, the smoke of
the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a
village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with
earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the
excited seamen.




Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in
Mountains; in Stars


On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen
a crippled beggar (or kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted
board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his
leg. There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats
(presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity)
is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these
ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and
exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his
justification has now come. His three whales are as good whales as
were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as
unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western
clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a
stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes,
stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and
Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm
Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone,
and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the
numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of
the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them
have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially
intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil
with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool
of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way
of a mariner's fancy.

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a
man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called
savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an
Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King
of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.

Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his
domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient
Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and
elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as
a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's
tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been
achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application.

As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With
the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth,
of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone
sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its
maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full
of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine
Dutch savage, Albert Durer.

Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs
of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the
forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much
accuracy.

At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales
hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter
is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking
whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of
some old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed
there for weathercocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that
are to all intents and purposes so labelled with "Hands off!" you
cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.

In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of
the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks
against them in a surf of green surges.

Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is
continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from
some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the
profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must
be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but
if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and
take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first
stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills,
that your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious
re-discovery; like the Soloma islands, which still remain incognita,
though once high-ruffled Mendanna trod them and old Figuera
chronicled them.

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace
out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them;
as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw
armies locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I
chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the
bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent
Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase
against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and
the Flying Fish.

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons
for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies,
to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents
really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!




Brit


Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast
meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right
Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues undulated round us, so
that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and
golden wheat.

On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure
from the attack of a Sperm-Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing
fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that
manner separated from the water that escaped at the lips.

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so
these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and
leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.

But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at
all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when
they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms
looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else.  And as
in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance
will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing
them to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the
soil; even so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this
species of the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognized at
last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe
that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all
parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.

Indeed. in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
deep with the same feeling that you do those of the shore. For though
some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land
are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view
of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties,
where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in
disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The
accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear
comparative analogy to him.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra
incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to
discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the
most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and
indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who
have gone upon the waters; though but a moment's consideration will
teach that, however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and
however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may
augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea
will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest
frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of
these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness
of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a
widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the
wrecked ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not
yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the
Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground
opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever
sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships
and crews.

But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but
it is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host
who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself
hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle
overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales
against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split
wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting
and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the
masterless ocean overruns the globe.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures
glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously
hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the
devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless
tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of
sharks. Consider once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all
whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since
the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most
docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you
not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this
appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man
there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed
by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not
off from that isle, thou canst never return!

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.




Squid


Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on
her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air
impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three
tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three
mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery
night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.

But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost
preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any
stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed
a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the
slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this
profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by
Daggoo from the main-mast-head.

In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher
and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed
before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus
glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank.  Then once
more arose, and silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is
this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on
re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every
man from his nod, the negro yelled out- "There!  there again! there
she breaches! right ahead! The White Whale, the White Whale!"

Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time
the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab
stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in
readiness to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance
in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm
of Daggoo.

Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect
the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the
particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his
eagerness betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner
did he distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick
intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering.

The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while,
with oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the
same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting
for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most
wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to
mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a
glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long
arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest
of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within
reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token
of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows,
an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck
still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild
voice exclaimed- "Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him,
than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!"

"What was it, Sir?" said Flask.

"The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld,
and returned to their ports to tell of it."

But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the
vessel; the rest as silently following.

Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected
with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it
being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it
with portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all
of them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet
very few of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its
true nature and form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to
the sperm whale his only food. For though other species of whales
find their food above water, and may be seen by man in the act of
feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones
below the surface; and only by inference is it that any one can tell
of what, precisely, that food consists. At times, when closely
pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms
of the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty
feet in length. They fancy that the monster to which these arms
belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that
the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in
order to attack and tear it.

There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in
which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking,
with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two
correspond. But much abatement is necessary with respect to the
incredible bulk he assigns it.

By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of
cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would
seem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.




The Line


With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well
as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere
presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible
whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp,
slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of
ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp
more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more
convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the
ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close
coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are
beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's
durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and
gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though
not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and
elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things),
is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a
dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a
golden-haired Circassian to behold.

The whale-line is only two thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By
experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one
hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain
nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line
measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the
boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of
a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of
densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of concentric spiralizations,
without any hollow but the "heart," or minute vertical tube formed at
the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling
would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire
body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its
tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this
business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards
through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free
it from all possible wrinkles and twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line
being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in
this; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily
into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American
tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes
a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one-half inch
in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice,
which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very
much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped
on the American tubline, the boat looks as if it were pulling off
with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from
everything. This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two
accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an
additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale
should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line
originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of
course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to
the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its
consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common
safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached
to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end
almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not
stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down
after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no
town-crier would ever find her again.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is
again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting
crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as
they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks
or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden
pin or skewer the size of a common squill, prevents it from slipping
out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and
is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms
(called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues
its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then
attached to the short-warp- the rope which is immediately connected
with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes
through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the
timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the
deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son
of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen
intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him
that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these
horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot
be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in
his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit- strange
thing! what cannot habit accomplish?- Gayer sallies, more merry
mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over
your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of
the whaleboat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six
burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew
pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you
may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
those repeated whaling disasters- some few of which are casually
chronicled- of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by
the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated
then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold
whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and
shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.  It is worse; for you cannot sit
motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking
like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the
slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and
simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a
Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could
never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm;
and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the
fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose
of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before
being brought into actual play- this is a thing which carries more of
true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why
say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with
halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift,
sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle,
everpresent perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though
seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more
of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.




Stubb Kills a Whale


If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents,
to Queequeg it was quite a different object.

"When you see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the
bow of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing
special to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the
spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the
Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen
call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of
porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of
more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the
in-shore ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed
in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in
that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out
of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum
will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the
seamen at the main and mizzen mast-heads were already drowsy. So that
at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for
every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the
slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests;
and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the
sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices
my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency
preserved me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under
our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in
the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy
back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a
mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and
anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, the whale looked like a
portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe,
poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the
sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into
wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the
vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth
the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted
the sparkling brine into the air.

"Clear away the boats! Luff!" cried Ahab. And obeying his own order,
he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and
ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the
leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few
ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be
alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man
must speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the
gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the
calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set.  Presently, as
we thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail
forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower
swallowed up.

"There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed
by Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a
respite was granted. After the full interval of his sounding had
elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the
smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb
counted upon the honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the
whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence of
cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.  Paddles were dropped,
and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb
cheered on his crew to the assault.

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his
jeopardy, he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting
from the mad yeast which he brewed.

"Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty of
time- but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all," cried
Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. "Start her, now; give
'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy-
start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool- cucumbers is the word-
easy, easy- only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and
raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys- that's
all. Start her!"

"Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old
war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. "Kee-hee!
Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his
seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.

"Ka-la! Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a
mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels
cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb, retaining his place in the van, still
encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from
his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the
welcome cry was heard- "Stand up, Tashtego!- give it to him!" The
harpoon was hurled. "Stern all!" The oarsmen backed water; the same
moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their
wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly
caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by
reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now
jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the
line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before
reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both
of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted
canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It
was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and
that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.

"Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him
seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into
it. More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its
place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all
fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places- stem for stern- a
staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part
of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you
would have thought the craft had two keels- one cleaving the water,
the other the air- as the boat churned on through both opposing
elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless
whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within,
even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted
over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man
with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to
the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching
almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole
Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till
at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.

"Haul in- haul in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while
yet the boat was being towed on.  Soon ranging up by his flank,
Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart
after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat
alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow,
and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks
down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood,
which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The
slanting sun playing upon their crimson pond in the sea, sent back
its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other
like red men.  And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was
agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff
after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart,
hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb
straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the
gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.

"Pull up- pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale
relaxed in his wrath. "Pull up!- close to!" and the boat ranged along
the fish's flank.  When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly
churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there,
carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel
after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which
he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold
watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is
struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing
called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood,
overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the
imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to
struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the
day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into
view! surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and
contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized
respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it
had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frightened air;
and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into
the sea. His heart had burst!

"He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.

"Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth,
Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment,
stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

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

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.




The Dart


A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat
pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as
temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the
foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a
strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for
often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be
flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet.  But however
prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is expected to
pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is expected to
set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only by
incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations;
and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while
all the other muscles are strained and half started- what that is
none know but those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very
heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same time. In this
straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at
once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry- "Stand up, and
give it to him!"  He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round
on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with
what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into
the whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body,
that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful;
no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and
disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their
blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are
absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship
owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer
that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how
can you expect to find it there when most wanted!

Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical
instant, that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and
harpooneer likewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent
jeopardy of themselves and every one else. It is then they change
places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the little craft,
takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both
foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from
first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no
rowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances
obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a
slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the
harpooneer that has caused them.

To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of
this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not
from out of toil.




The Crotch


Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters.

The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent
mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in
length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale
near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden
extremity of the harpoons, whose other naked, barbed end sloping
projects from the prow.  Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to
its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as a
backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is customary to have
two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first
and second irons.

But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the
coming drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a
hold. It is a doubling of the chances. But it very often happens that
owing to the instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale
upon receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the
harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the
second iron into him. Nevertheless, as the second iron is already
connected with the line, and the line is running, hence that weapon
must, at all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat,
somehow and somewhere; else the most terrible jeopardy would involve
all hands. Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in such cases;
the spare coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding chapter) making
this feat, in most instances, prudently practicable. But this
critical act is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal
casualties.

Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,
skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the
lines, or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all
directions. Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until
the whale is fairly captured and a corpse.

Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is
supplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the
first one be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these
particulars are faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to
elucidate several most important however intricate passages, in
scenes hereafter to be painted.




Stubb's Supper


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

Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly
eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for
securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman,
went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until
morning.

Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the
creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or
despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body
reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a
thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not
one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would
have thought from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that all hands
were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being
dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the
port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not
the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the stern, and by the
tall to the bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to the
vessel's, and seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured
the spars and rigging aloft, the two- ship and whale, seemed yoked
together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while the other
remains standing.

If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be
known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest,
betrayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an
unwonted bustle was he in that the staid Starbuck, his official
superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the sole management of
affairs. One small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb,
was soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he was
somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his
palate.

"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and
cut me one from his small!"

Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a
general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the
enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least before
realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then you find some
of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular
part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering
extremity of the body.

About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two
lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti
supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor
was Stubb the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night. Mingling
their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of
sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its
fatness. The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by
the sharp slapping of their tails against the hull, within a few
inches of the sleepers' hearts. Peering over the side you could just
see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black
waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge
globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head. This
particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous. How at such an
apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such
symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all
things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened to
the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight,
sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like
hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to
bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while
the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving
each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled,
the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely
carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you
to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much
the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough
for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders
of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting
alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or
a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like
instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and
occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most
hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when
you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more
jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a
whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend
your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the
expediency of conciliating the devil.

But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was
going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of
his own epicurean lips.

"Cook, cook!- where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening
his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his
supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if
stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook!- sail this way, cook!"

The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously
roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came
shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was
something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well
scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him,
came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs,
which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops;
this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of
command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's
sideboard; when, with both hands folded before him, and resting on
his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at
the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best
ear into play.

"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been
beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always
say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those
sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and
rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em;
tell 'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in
moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own
voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern,"
snatching one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach to them!"

Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the
deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand drooping his light low
over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the
other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the
side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb,
softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.

"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
noise dare.  You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips! Massa Stubb
say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor!
you must stop dat dam racket!"

"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden
slap on the shoulder,- "cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear
that way when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners,
cook!"

"Who dat? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.

"No, cook; go on, go on."

"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"-

"Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it, try that,"
and Fleece continued.

"Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,
fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness- 'top dat dam slappin' ob de
tail! How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slapping
and bitin' dare?"

"Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing. Talk
to 'em gentlemanly."

Once more the sermon proceeded.

"Your woraciousness, fellow-critters. I don't blame ye so much for;
dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur,
dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in
you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark
well goberned. Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil,
a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out
your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to
dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat
whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig
mout, brigger dan oders; but then de brig mouts sometimes has de
small bellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid,
but to bit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get
into de scrouge to help demselves."

"Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."

"No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scougin' and slappin'
each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching
to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and
dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont
hear you den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de
coral, and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."

"Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the
benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."

Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his
shrill voice, and cried-

"Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can;
fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust- and den die."

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

"All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in
the desired position.

"Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; "I shall now go
back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are
you, cook?"

"What dat do wid de 'teak, " said the old black, testily.

"Silence! How old are you, cook?"

"'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered.

"And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook,
and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak?" rapidly bolting
another mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a
continuation of the question. "Where were you born, cook?"

"'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke."

"Born in a ferry-boat! That's queer, too. But I want to know what
country you were born in, cook!"

"Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply.

"No, you didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to,
cook. You must go home and be born over again; you don't know how to
cook a whale-steak yet."

"Bress my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily, turning
round to depart.

"Come back here, cook;- here, hand me those tongs;- now take that bit
of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it
should be? Take it, I say"- holding the tongs towards him- "take it,
and taste it."

Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old
negro muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."

"Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong to the
church?"

"Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.

"And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town,
where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as
his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here,
and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?" said
Stubb. "Where do you expect to go to, cook?"

"Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.

"Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful
question. Now what's your answer?"

"When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly, changing his
whole air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere; but some
bressed angel will come and fetch him."

"Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And
fetch him where?"

"Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and
keeping it there very solemnly.

"So, then, you expect to go into our main-top, do you, cook, when you
are dead?  But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it
gets? Main-top, eh?"

"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.

"You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where
your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven
by crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you
don't get there, except you go the regular way, round by the
rigging. It's a ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's no
go. But none of us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear
my orders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other
a'top of your heart, when I'm giving my orders, cook.  What! that
your heart, there?- that's your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!- that's it-
now you have it. Hold it there now, and pay attention."

"All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as
desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears
in front at one and the same time.

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

But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.

"Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the
mid-watch. D'ye hear?  away you sail then.- Halloa! stop! make a bow
before you go.- Avast heaving again!  Whale-balls for breakfast-
don't forget."

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

A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored
alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density
that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the
side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low
beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from
the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is
ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden
float at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other
end is secured to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is
made to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having
girdled the whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit; and
being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast round the
smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with its broad
flukes or lobes.




The Whale as a Dish


That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp,
and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems
so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the
history and philosophy of it.

It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right
Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of
the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce
to be eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a
species of whale.  Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine
eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls,
and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or
veal balls. The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They
had a great porpoise grant from the crown.

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all
hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but
when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet
long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men
like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are
not so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have
rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most
famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being
exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain
Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a
whaling vessel- that these men actually lived for several months on
the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left ashore after trying
out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called
"fritters"; which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and
crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives'
dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh.  They have such an eatable look
that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands off.

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his
exceeding richness.  He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to
be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating
as the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a
solid pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy
that is; like the transparent, half jellied, white meat of a cocoanut
in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a
substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of
absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of it. In
the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen
to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry
there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made.

In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine
dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two
plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large
puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most
delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is
quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young
bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains,
by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able
to tell a calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires
uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with
an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the
saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at
him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with
abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the
consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly
murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no
doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a
murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by
oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if
any murderer does.  Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see
the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead
quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's
jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more
tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his
cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that
provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee,
civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground
and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my
civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what
is that handle made of?- what but the bones of the brother of the
very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after
devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with
what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of
Cruelty of Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within
the last month or two that the society passed a resolution to
patronize nothing but steel pens.




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.




Cutting In


It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio
professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was
turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would
have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea
gods.

In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other
ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted
green, and which no single man can possibly lift- this vast bunch of
grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower
mast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end
of the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then
conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles
was swung over the whale; to this block the great blubber hook,
weighing some one hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in
stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their
long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of
the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a
broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted,
and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence
heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the
entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like
the nailheads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles,
quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more
she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the
windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at
last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship
rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle
rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of
the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale
precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the
body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing
it. For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually
keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, and as the
blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the
"scarf," simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the
mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that
very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher
aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass
then cease heaving, for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping
mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every one
present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may
box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.

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




The Blanket


I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin
of the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced
whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion
remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale. Already you
know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the
consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic
and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen
inches in thickness.

Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any
creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness,
yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a
presumption; because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping
layer from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost
enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be
but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may
scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance,
somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is
almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being
dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather
hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which I use for
marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and
being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself
with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is
pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you
may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely
thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of
the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature,
as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous
to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and
more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this
skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk
of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in
quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only
three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea
may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere
part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as
that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net
weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.

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

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

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare
virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man!  admire and model thyself
after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too,
live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep
thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and
like the great whale, retain, O man!  in all seasons a temperature of
thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of
erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few
vast as the whale!




The Funeral


Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of
the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in
hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still
colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it
torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed
with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so
many insulting poniards in the whale.The vast white headless phantom
floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so
floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls,
augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost
stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and
mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, waited by the
joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost
in infinite perspectives.

There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all
in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or
speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I
ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his
funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vulturism of earth!
from which not the mightiest whale is free.

Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war
or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring
the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating
in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway
the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in
the log- shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabout: beware! And for years
afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly
sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped
there when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's
your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate
survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even
hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!

Thus, while in the life the great whale's body may have been a real
terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic
to a world.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than
the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe
in them.




The Sphynx


It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping
the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the
Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced
whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.

Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a
neck; on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there,
in that very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that
the surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet
intervening between him and his subject, and that subject almost
hidden in a discolored, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and
bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these untoward
circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in that
subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into
the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skillfully steer clear
of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a
critical point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not
marvel, then, at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to
behead a sperm whale?

When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a
cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small
whale it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with
a full grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale's head
embraces nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to
suspend such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a
whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn
in jewellers' scales.

The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head
was hoisted against the ship's side- about half way out of the sea,
so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native
element. And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over it,
by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and
every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane over the waves;
there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the
giant Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith.

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but
now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow
lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves
upon the sea.

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin.  Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to
gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took
Stubb's long spade still remaining there after the whale's
decapitation and striking it into the lower part of the
half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutchwise under one arm,
and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou
vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished
with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all
divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper
sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where
unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot;
where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with
bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land,
there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver
never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless
mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the
locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart
they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven
seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by
pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper
midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on
unharmed- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that
would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O
head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel
of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"

"Sail ho!" cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.

"Aye? Well, now, that's cheering," cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. "That
lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man.-
Where away?"

"Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze
to us!

"Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that
way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul
of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not
the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning
duplicate in mind."




The Jeroboam's Story


Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster
than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.

By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned
mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to
windward, and shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other
ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set
to see what response would be made.

Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships
of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which
signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective
vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the
whale commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean,
even at considerable distance, and with no small facility.

The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's
setting her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of
Nantucket. Squaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the
Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the
side-ladder was being rigged by Starbuck's order to accommodate the
visiting captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his
boat's stern in token of that proceeding being entirely
unnecessary. It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic
on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting the
Pequod's company. For, though himself and the boat's crew remained
untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and an
incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet
conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he
peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod.

But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an
interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the
Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep
parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by
this time it blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though,
indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the
boat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully
brought to her proper bearings again. Subject to this, and other the
like interruptions now and then, a conversation was sustained between
the two parties; but at intervals not without still another
interruption of a very different sort.

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular
appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual
notabilities make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish
man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant
yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded
walnut tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were
rolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his
eyes.

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed-
"That's he!  that's he!- the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho's
company told us of!" Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of
the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time previous
when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account and what
was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in question
had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the
Jeroboam. His story was this:

He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna
Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret
meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a
trapdoor, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he
carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing
gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange,
apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for
Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed
a steady, common sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand
candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; but
straightway upon the ship's getting out of sight of land, his
insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the
archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard. He
published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the
deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of all
Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he declared these
things;- the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited imagination,
and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united to invest
this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with
an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As
such a man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship,
especially as he refused to work except when he pleased, the
incredulous captain would fain have been rid of him; but apprised
that that individual's intention was to land him in the first
convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and
vials- devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in
case this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his
disciples among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the
captain and told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of
them would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish his
plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or
do what he would; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the
complete freedom of the ship. The consequence of all this was, that
the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and mates; and
since the epidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand than
ever; declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at his sole
command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure.
The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned
before him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him
personal homage, as to a god. Such things may seem incredible; but,
however wondrous, they are true. Nor is the history of fanatics half
so striking in respect to the measureless self-deception of the
fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceiving and
bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to the Pequod.

"I fear not thy epidemic, man," said Ahab from the bulwarks, to
Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern; "come on board."

But now Gabriel started to his feet.

"Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the
horrible plague!"

"Gabriel! Gabriel!" cried Captain Mayhew; "thou must either-" But
that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its
seethings drowned all speech.

"Hast thou seen the White Whale?" demanded Ahab, when the boat
drifted back.

"Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the
horrible tail!"

"I tell thee again, Gabriel, that-" But again the boat tore ahead as
if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a
succession of riotous waves rolled by which by one of those
occasional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving
it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale's head jogged about very
violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more
apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant.

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions
from Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that
seemed leagued with him.

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon
speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the
existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking
in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against
attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his
gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being
than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But
when, some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from
the mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardor to encounter
him; and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the
opportunity, despite all the archangel's denunciations and
forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his
boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and
many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting
one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal
mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth
prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his
divinity.  Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat's
bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his
wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance
for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by
its quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the
bodies of the oarsmen.  Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of
furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc
in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty
yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman's
head; but the mate for ever sank.

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the
Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as
any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus
annihilated; oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the
thigh-board, on which the headsman stands, is torn from its place and
accompanies the body. But strangest of all is the circumstance, that
in more instances than one, when the body has been recovered, not a
single mark of violence is discernible the man being stark dead.

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly
descried from the ship.  Raising a piercing shriek- "The vial! the
vial!" Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further
hunting of the whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with
added influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had
specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general
prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit
one of many marks in the wide margin allowed.  He became a nameless
terror to the ship.

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to
him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To
which Ahab answered- "Aye." Straightway, then, Gabriel once more
started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently
exclaimed, with downward pointed finger- "Think, think of the
blasphemer- dead, and down there!- beware of the blasphemer's end!"

Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, "Captain, I have
just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy
officers, if I mistake not.  Starbuck, look over the bag."

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four
oceans. Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only
received after attaining an age of two or three years or more.

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely
tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in
consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a
letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.

"Can'st not read it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it's
but a dim scrawl;- what's this?" As he was studying it out, Starbuck
took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the
end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the
boat, without its coming any closer to the ship.

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, "Mr. Har- yes,
Mr. Harry- (a woman's pinny hand,- the man's wife, I'll wager)- Aye-
Mr. Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam; why it's Macey, and he's dead!"

"Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife," sighed Mayhew; "but
let me have it."

"Nay, keep it thyself," cried Gabriel to Ahab; "thou art soon going
that way."

"Curses throttle thee!" yelled Ahab. "Captain Mayhew, stand by now to
receive it"; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck's hands, he
caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the
boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing;
the boat drifted a little towards the ship's stern; so that, as if by
magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel's eager hand. He
clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the
letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at
Ahab's feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way
with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot
away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the
jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to
this wild affair.




The Monkey-Rope


In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,
there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now
hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There
is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time
everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him
who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our
way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the
whale's back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole
there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and
weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was
inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was,
as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster's back for the special
purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require
that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole tensing
or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies
almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated
upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the
poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the
water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On
the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume- a
shirt and socks- in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to
uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as
will presently be seen.

Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the
bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful
duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon
the dead whale's back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a
dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship's steep side, did
I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called
in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas
belted round his waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we
proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my
narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the
time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more,
then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord,
it should drag me down in his wake.  So, then, an elongated Siamese
ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor
could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen
bond entailed.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,
that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to
perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock
company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and
that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into
unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort
of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could
have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering- while I
jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would
threaten to jam him- still further pondering, I say, I saw that this
situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that
breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese
connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks,
you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your
pills, you die.  True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you
may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of
life. But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would,
sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding
overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only
had the management of one end of it.

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.

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




Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale;
and Then Have a Talk Over Him


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

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually
drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,
gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the
Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
anywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of
those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not commissioned
to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them
near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale
had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the
announcement was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day,
if opportunity offered.

Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two
boats, Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further
and further away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at
the masthead. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of
tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft that one
or both the boats must be fast. An interval passed and the boats were
in plain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards the ship by
the towing whale. So close did the monster come to the hull, that at
first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going down in
a maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared
from view, as if diving under the keel. "Cut, cut!" was the cry from
the ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on the point of
being brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's side. But
having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding
very rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the same time
pulled with all their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few
minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while they still
slacked out the tightened line in one direction, and still plied
their oars in another, the contending strain threatened to take them
under. But it was only a few feet advance they sought to gain. And
they stuck to it till they did gain it; when instantly, a swift
tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, as the
strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under
her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its drippings,
that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water, while the
whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were free to
fly. But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering his
course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
him, so that they performed a complete circuit.

Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for
lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the
multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale's
body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking
at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting
fountains that poured from the smitten rock.

At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
turned upon his back a corpse.

While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his
flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing,
some conversation ensued between them.

"I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard," said
Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with
so ignoble a leviathan.

"Wants with it?" said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat's
bow, "did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm
Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a
Right Whale's on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that
ship can never afterwards capsize?"

"Why not?

"I don't know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying
so, and he seems to know all about ships' charms. But I sometimes
think he'll charm the ship to no good at last. I don't half like that
chap, Stubb. Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of
carved into a snake's head, Stubb?"

"Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of
a dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by;
look down there, Flask"- pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion
of both hands- "Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the
devil in disguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his
having been stowed away on board ship? He's the devil, I say. The
reason why you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of
sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him!
now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the
toes of his boots."

"He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but
I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging."

"No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do
ye see, in the eye of the rigging."

"What's the old man have so much to do with him for?"

"Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose."

"Bargain?- about what?"

"Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and
the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away
his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then
he'll surrender Moby Dick."

"Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?"

"I don't know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the
old flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and
gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home.  Well,
he was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil,
switching his hoofs, up and says, 'I want John.' 'What for?' says the
old governor. 'What business is that of yours,' says the devil,
getting mad,- 'I want to use him.' 'Take him,' says the governor- and
by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the Asiatic cholera
before he got through with him, I'll eat this whale in one
mouthful. But look sharp- ain't you all ready there? Well, then, pull
ahead, and let's get the whale alongside."

"I think I remember some such story as you were telling," said Flask,
when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
towards the ship, "but I can't remember where."

"Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded soladoes?
Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?"

"No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me,
Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now,
was the same you say is now on board the Pequod?"

"Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't the devil
live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever
see any parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has
a latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he can
crawl into a porthole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask?"

"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"

"Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship; "well, that's
the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and
string along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well,
that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age.  Nor all the coopers in
creation couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough."

"But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that
you meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now,
if he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is
going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard-
tell me that?

"Give him a good ducking, anyhow."

"But he'd crawl back."

"Duck him again; and keep ducking him."

"Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though- yes,
and drown you- what then?"

"I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black
eyes that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin
again for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he
lives, and hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so
much. Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil?
Who's afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him
and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about
kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the
people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!"

"Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?"

"Do I suppose it? You'll know it before long, Flask. But I am going
now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very
suspicious going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his neck, and
say- Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he makes any fuss,
by the Lord I'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to
the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail
will come short off at the stump- do you see; and then, I rather
guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, he'll sneak
off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his
legs."

"And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?"

"Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;- what else?"

"Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along,
Stubb?"

"Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship."

The boats were here halled, to tow the whale on the larboard side,
where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for
securing him.

"Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right
whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacety's."

In good time, Flask's saying proved true. As before, the Pequod
steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the
counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely
strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in
Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist
in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus,
some minds for ever keep trimming boat.  Oh, ye foolish! throw all
these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and
right.

In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the
ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the
case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut
off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately
removed and hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone
attached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothing like this, in
the present case, had been done.  The carcases of both whales had
dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule
carrying a pair of overburdening panniers.

Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever
and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his
own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his
shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only
to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish
speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing
things.




The Sperm Whale's Head - Contrasted View


Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us
join them, and lay together our own.

Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right
Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales
regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two
extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external
difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a
head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we
may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the
deck:- where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance
to study practical cetology than here?

In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between
these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but, there is
a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right
Whale's sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale's
head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense
superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present
instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt
color of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and
large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call
a "grey-headed whale."

Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads- namely, the
two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side
of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if
you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you
would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it
to the magnitude of the head.

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it is
plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more
than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the
whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy,
for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey
objects through your ears. You would find that you could only command
some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of
sight; and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were
walking straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you
would not be able to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon
you from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to speak;
but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for what is it
that makes the front of a man- what, indeed, but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the
eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so
as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar
position of the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by many
cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great
mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must
wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ
imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this
side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between
must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect,
be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two joined
sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are
separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing
the view. This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing always to
be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader
in some subsequent scenes.

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

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve
them.

But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an
entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads
for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external
leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a
quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the
eye. With respect to their ears, this important difference is to be
observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the ears of the
former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and
evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible
from without.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear
which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the
lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the
porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or
sharper of hearing?  Not at all.- Why then do you try to "enlarge"
your mind? Subtilize it.

Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand,
cant over the sperm whale's head, so, that it may lie bottom up;
then, ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the
mouth; and were it not that the body is now completely separated from
it, with a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth
Cave of his stomach.  But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look
about us where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking
mouth! from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a
glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems
like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at
one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it
overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific
portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the
fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far
more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see
some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw,
some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with
his body; for all the world like a ship's jibboom. This whale is not
dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac;
and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him
there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe,
who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.

In most cases this lower jaw- being easily unhinged by a practised
artist- is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of
extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard
white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious
articles including canes, umbrellasticks, and handles to
riding-whips.

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




The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View


Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the the Right
Whale's head.

As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a
Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly
rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather
inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred
years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a
shoemaker's last.  And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of
the nursery tale with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be
lodged, she and all her progeny.

But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume
different aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on
its summit and look at these two f-shaped spout-holes, you would take
the whole head for an enormous bass viol, and these spiracles, the
apertures in its soundingboard. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon
this strange, crested, comblike incrustation on the top of the mass-
this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the "crown,"
and the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale; fixing your
eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some
huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you
watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea
will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has
been fixed by the technical term "crown" also bestowed upon it; in
which case you will take great interest in thinking how this mighty
monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has
been put together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this
whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a
diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is
there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet
long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500
gallons of oil and more.

A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be
hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother
during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast,
when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a
slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I
at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian
wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is
about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there
were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy
sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimitar-shaped
slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from
the upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds
which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these
bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale
strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small
fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding
time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural
order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges,
whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an
oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is
far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical
probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far
greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem
reasonable.

In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the
wondrous "whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth; another, "hogs'
bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following
elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing
on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue on each
side of his mouth."

As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers,"
"blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks
and other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand
has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time that the
bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the
fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the
jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the
like thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for
protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.

But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,
standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing
all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you
not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon
its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the
softest Turkey- the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor
of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in
hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a
passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will
yield you about that amount of oil.

Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
with- that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no
great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible
of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are
there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely
anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external
spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.

Look your last now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet
lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the
other will not be very long in following.

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the
same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead
seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a
prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to
death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower
lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to
embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an
enormous practical resolution facing death? This Right Whale I take
to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have
taken up Spinoza in his latter years.

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.




The Battering-Ram


Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have
you, as a sensible physiologist, simply- particularly remark its
front aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you
investigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some
unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power
may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must either
satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain
an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true
events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.

You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm
Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane
to the water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes
considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the
long socket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that
the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed,
as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin. Moreover you
observe that the whale has no external nose; and that what nose he
has- his spout hole- is on the top of his head; you observe that his
eyes and ears are at the sides of his head; nearly one third of his
entire length from the front. Wherefore, you must now have perceived
that the front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead, blind wall,
without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever.
Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower,
backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the
slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from
the forehead do you come to the full cranial development. So that
this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad. Finally, though, as
will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most delicate
oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the substance
which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. In some
previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body
of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head; but
with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so
thick is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not
handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted
by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as
though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses'
hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.

Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded
Indian-men chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks,
what do the sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the
point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or
wood. No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork,
enveloped in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and
uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken
handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself this sufficiently
illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But supplementary to this,
it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess
what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of
distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know,
has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise
inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head altogether
beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the
water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope;
considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically
occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs
there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected
connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric
distension and contraction. If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness
of that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive of all
elements contributes.

Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable
wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a
mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled
wood is- by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the
smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the
specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this
expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more
inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all
ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the
Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed
the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your
eye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander
giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials
then? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil
at Lais?




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 recrossing, into ten thousand
infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole
extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the
great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great
tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited
forehead forms innumerable strange devices for emblematical adornment
of his wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always
replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish
valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of
all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its
absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious
substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature. Though
in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air,
after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful
crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just
forming in water. A large whale's case generally yields about five
hundred gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances,
considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is
otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what
you can.

I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was
coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not
possibly have compared with the silken pearl-colored membrane, like
the lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm
Whale's case.

It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since-
as has been elsewhere set forth- the head embraces one third of the
whole length of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty
feet for a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for
the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down
against a ship's side.

As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought
close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the
spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful,
lest a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and
wastingly let out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end
of the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and
retained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose
hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes in
that quarter.

Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and-
in this particular instance- almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm
Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.

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.




Cistern and Buckets


Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his
erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm,
to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has
carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two
parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this
block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of
the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on the
deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops
through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the
head. There- still high elevated above the rest of the company, to
whom he vivaciously cries- he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the
good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp
spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper
place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds
very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding
the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this
cautious search is over, a stout ironbound bucket, precisely like a
well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the
other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or
three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of
the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long
pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides
the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the
word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all
bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from
its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand,
and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again
goes through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no
more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and
harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of
the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at
once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that
wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment
his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head;
or whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or
whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without
stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no
telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket
came suckingly up- my God! poor Tashtego- like the twin reciprocating
bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this
great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went
clean out of sight!

"Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation
first came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting
one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold
on the whip itself the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the
head, almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom.
Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they
saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the
surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous
idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by
those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was
clearing the whip- which had somehow got foul of the great cutting
tackles- a sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable
horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore
out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till
the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one
remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed
every instant to be on the point of giving way; an event still more
likely from the violent motions of the head.

"Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one
hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should
drop, he would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the
foul line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well,
meaning that the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted
out.

"In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a
cartridge there?- Avast! How will that help him; jamming that
iron-bound bucket on top of his head?  Avast, will ye!"

"Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool;
the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her
glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging- now
over the sailors' heads, and now over the water- Daggoo, through a
thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous
tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down
to the bottom of the sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared
away, when a naked figure with a boardingsword in his hand, was for
one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud
splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One
packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every ripple,
as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the
diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and
pushed a little off from the ship.

"Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging
perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm
thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm
thrust forth from the grass over a grave.

"Both! both!- it is both!"-cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout;
and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand,
and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into
the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego
was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after
the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made
side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there;
then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and
upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that
upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well
knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great
trouble;- he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and
toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next
trial, he came forth in the good old way-head foremost. As for the
great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of
Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was
successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward
and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to
be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with
fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to
seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have
either seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an
accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than
the Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of
the Sperm Whale's well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the
lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink
in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have
thee there. Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell
in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving
little but the dense tendinous wall of the well- a double welded,
hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea
water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the
tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present
instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the head
remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and
deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing
his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a
running delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragment
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber
and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily
be recalled- the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking
honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of
it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died
embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey
head, and sweetly perished there?




The Prairie


To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has
as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as
for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of
Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the
dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not
only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies
the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail
upon the modifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have
Gall and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints
touching the phrenological characteristics of other beings than
man. Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the
application of these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my
endeavor. I try all things; I achieve what I can.

Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous
creature. He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central
and most conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most
modifies and finally controls their combined expression; hence it
would seem that its entire absence, as an external appendage, must
very largely affect the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape
gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is
deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no
face can be physiognomically in keeping without the elevated
open-work belfry of the nose.  Dash the nose from Phidias's marble
Jove, and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so
mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so stately, that the same
deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no
blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale
would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you
sail round his vast head in your jollyboat, your noble conceptions of
him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be
pulled. A pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon
obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his
throne.

In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to
be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his
head. This aspect is sublime.

In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull
has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain
defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the
mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German
Emperors to their decrees. It signifies- "God: done this day by my
hand." But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow
is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are
the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high,
and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal,
tideless mountain lakes; and above them in the forehead's wrinkles,
you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, as
the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. But in the
great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in
the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full
front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly
than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no
one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose,
eyes, cars, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that
one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly
lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile,
does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed its grandeur
does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that
horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead's middle,
which, in a man, is Lavater's mark of genius.

But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written
a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his
doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his
pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm
Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been
deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of
the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale
has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be
incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical
nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods
of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky;
in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat,
the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there
is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every
being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a
passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty
languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its
profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope
to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that
brow before you. Read it if you can.




The Nut


If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist
his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to
square.

In in full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet
in length.  Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is
as the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a
level base. But in life- as we have elsewhere seen- this inclined
plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous
superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull
forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under the long
floor of this crater- in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches
in length and as many in depth reposes the mere handful of this
monster's brain. The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent
forehead in life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like
the innermost citadel within the amplified fortifications of
Quebec. So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, that I have
known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has
any other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the
cubic-yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses,
and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping
with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part of him
as the seat of his intelligence.

It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan,
in the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for
his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel
any. The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow
to the common world.

If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view
of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its
resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and
from the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull
(scaled down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls,
and you would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the
depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you
would say- This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by
those negations, considered along with the affirmative fact of his
prodigious bulk and power, you can best form to yourself the truest,
though not the most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted
potency is.

But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain,
you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have
another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any
quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its
vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing
rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit,
that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious
external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to
perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton
of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was
inlaying, in a sort of basso-relieve, the beaked prow of his
canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have omitted an
important thing in not pushing their investigations from the
cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a
man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would
rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist
of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my
spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half
out to the world.

Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His
cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in
that vertebra the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches
across, being eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the
base downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the
canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of
large capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with much the
same strangely fibrous substance- the spinal cord- as the brain; and
directly communicates with the brain. And what is still more, for
many feet after emerging from the brain's cavity, the spinal cord
remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the
brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to
survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically? For, viewed in
this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper
is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of
his spinal cord.

But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I
would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to
the Sperm Whale's hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises
over one of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort,
the outer convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I
should call this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness
in the Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you
will yet have reason to know.




The Pequod Meets The Virgin


The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,
Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.

At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and
Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide
intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with
their flag in the Pacific.

For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her
respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to,
and dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently
standing in the bows instead of the stern.

"What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to
something wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!- a lamp-feeder!"

"Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;
he's coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see
that big tin can there alongside of him?- that's his boiling
water. Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."

"Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."

However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on
the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the
old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a
thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer
did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.

As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all
heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German
soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately
turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some
remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in
profound darkness- his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a
single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding
by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is
technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well
deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.

His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his
ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the
mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick,
that without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he
slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.

Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the
Pequod's keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of
their danger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight
before the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of
horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though
continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.

Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as
by the unusual yellowish incrustations over-growing him, seemed
afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this
whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is
not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all
social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their
back water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at
his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two
hostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious;
coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn
shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which
seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the
waters behind him to upbubble.

"Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache, I'm
afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse
winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first foul
wind ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so
before? it must be, he's lost his tiller."

As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck
load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her
way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then
partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his
devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he
had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were
hard to say.

"Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that wounded
arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.

"Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way, or the
German will have him."

With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this
one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most
valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were
going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit
for the time. At this juncture, the Pequod's keels had shot by the
three German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had,
Derick's boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his
foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being
already so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron
before they could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he
seemed quite confident that this would be the case, and occasionally
with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.

"The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and
dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes
ago!"- Then in his old intense whisper- "give way, greyhounds! Dog to
it!"

"I tell ye what it is, men"- cried Stubb to his crew- "it's against
my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous Yarman-
Pull- won't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love
brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don't
some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who's that been dropping an anchor
overboard- we don't budge an inch- we're becalmed. Halloo, here's
grass growing in the boat's bottom- and by the Lord, the mast there's
budding. This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long
of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?"

"Oh! see the suds he makes!" cried Flask, dancing up and down- "What
a hump- Oh, do pile on the beef- lays like a log! Oh! my lads, do
spring- slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads- baked
clams and muffins- ho, do, do, spring,- he's a hundred barreler-
don't lose him now- don't oh, don't!- see that Yarman- Oh, won't ye
pull for your duff, my lads- such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love
sperm? There goes three thousand dollars, men!- a bank!- a whole
bank! The bank of England!- Oh, do, do, do!- What's that Yarman about
now?"

At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at
the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double
view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time economically
accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.

"The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men, like
fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What
d'ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in
two-and-twenty pieces for the honor of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?"

"I say, pull like god-dam,"- cried the Indian.

Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the
Pequod's three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so
disposed, momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous
attitude of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three
mates stood up proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with
an exhilarating cry of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah for the
white-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!"

But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all
their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had
not a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught
the blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was
striving to free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's
boat was nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a
mighty rage;- that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and
Flask. With a shout, they took a mortal start forwards, and
slantingly ranged up on the German's quarter. An instant more, and
all four boats were diagonically in the whale's immediate wake, while
stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he
made.

It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was
now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual
tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of
fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering
flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically
sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating
fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted
broken circle in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical
hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make
known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was
chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking
respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him
unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis
jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man
who so pitied.

Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's
boat the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game,
Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually
long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.

But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all
three tigers- Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo- instinctively sprang to
their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed
their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their
three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and
white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's
headlong rush, bumped the German's aside with such force, that both
Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over
by the three flying keels.

"Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing
glance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up presently- all
right- I saw some sharks astern- St. Bernard's dogs, you know-
relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail
now. Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!- Here we go like three tin kettles
at the tail of a mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an
elephant in a tilbury on a plain- makes the wheelspokes fly, boys,
when you fasten to him that way; and there's danger of being pitched
out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow
feels when he's going to Davy Jones- all a rush down an endless
inclined plane! Hurrah!  this whale carries the everlasting mail!"

But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he
tumultuously sounded.  With a grating rush, the three lines flew
round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in
them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding
would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might,
they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at
last- owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks of
the boat, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue-
the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while the
three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to
sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of
expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But
though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is
this "holding on," as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp
barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments
the Leviathan into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his
foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted
whether this course is always the best; for it is but reasonable to
presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the
more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous surface of him-
in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet- the
pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing
atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here,
above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,
bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must
at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has
estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships, with all
their guns, and stores, and men on board.

As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any
sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its
depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that
silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing
and wrenching in agony!  Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were
visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin
threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an
eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is
this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said- "Canst
thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears?
The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart,
nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make
him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of
a spear!" This the creature?  this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should
follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in
his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea,
to hide him from the Pequod's fishspears!

In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats
sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad
enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the
wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his
head!

"Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines
suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to
them, as by magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale,
so that every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment,
relieved in great part from the downward strain at the bows, the
boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a
dense herd of white bears are scared from it into the sea.

"Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising."

The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's breadth
could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all
dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two
ship's length of the hunters.

His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land
animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their
veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least
instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one
of whose peculiarities it is, to have an entire non-valvular
structure of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small
a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole
arterial system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary
pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his life may
be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the
quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior
fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a
considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose
source is the well-springs of far-off and indiscernible hills. Even
now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over
his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were
followed by steady jets from the new made wound, which kept
continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was
only at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture
into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital
part of him had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly
call it, was untouched.

As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of
his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly
revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been,
were beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of
the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's
eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable
to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one
arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in
order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and
also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional
inoffensiveness by all to all.  Still rolling in his blood, at last
he partially disclosed a strangely discolored bunch or protuberance,
the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.

"A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there once."

"Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"

But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an
ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more
than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with
swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their
glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat
and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so
spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from
the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped
with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a
waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a
log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when
by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty
fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column
lowers and lowers to the ground- so the last long dying spout of the
whale.

Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body
showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures
unrifled. Immediately, by Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it
at different points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the
sunken whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the
cords. By very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale
was transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the
stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially
upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.

It so chanced that almost upon first him with the spade, the entire
length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the
lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of
harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales,
with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any
kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been
some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for
the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a
lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron,
the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance?
And when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long
before America was discovered.

What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further
discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over
sideways to the sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing
tendency to sink. However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs,
hung on to it to the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that
when at length the ship would have been capsized, if still persisting
in locking arms with the body; then, when the command was given to
break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon the
timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that
it was impossible to cast them off.  Meantime everything in the
Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like
walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and
gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were
started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain
handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable
fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low had
the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all
approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added
to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going over.

"Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the body, "don't be in
such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do
something or go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your
handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and
cut the big chains."

"Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter's heavy
hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began
slashing at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of
sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. With
a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the
carcase sank.

Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great
buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the
surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and
broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their
bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert
that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the
fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in
him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and
swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm
flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them! even
these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down,
twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt
imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the
Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a
ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there
are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days,
the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life.  But the
reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a
prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A
line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore
Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right
Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty
of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look
for it when it shall have ascended again.

It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard
from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again
lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a
Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of
its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout
is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is
often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were
now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute.  The Virgin crowding
all sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all
disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.




The Honor and Glory of Whaling


There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the
true method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches
up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with
its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so
many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way
or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the
reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so
emblazoned a fraternity.

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to
the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid
intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only
bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's
lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and
Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied
to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of
carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly
advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the
maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the
best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was
slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story;
for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of
the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a
whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to
be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the
Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in
triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this
story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda- indeed, by some
supposed to be indirectly derived from it- is that famous story of
St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a
whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely
jumbled together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion
of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby,
plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use
that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of
the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the
land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any
man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin,
have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the
creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is
depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the
great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was
unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus' case,
St. George's whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach;
and considering that the animal ridden by St.  George might have been
only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will
not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the
ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no
other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the
strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish,
flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being
planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the palms
of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of
him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a
whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we
harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order
of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honorable
company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a
whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with
disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowers we are
much better entitled to St.  George's decoration than they.

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that
antique Crockett and Kit Carson- that brawny doer of rejoicing good
deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether
that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It
nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless,
indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of
involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not
the whale. I claim him for one of our clan.

But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still
more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa;
certainly they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not
the prophet?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the
whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for
like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our
fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That
wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster,
which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the
godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our
Lord;- Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations,
has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the
God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after
one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to
preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose
perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before
beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained
something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these
Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost
depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman,
then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a
member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like
that?




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.




Pitchpoling


To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are
anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an
analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is
it to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may
possibly be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and
water are hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object
in view is to make the boat slide bravely.  Queequeg believed
strongly in anointing his boat, and one morning not long after the
German ship Jungfrau disappeared, took more than customary pains in
that occupation; crawling under its bottom, where it hung over the
side, and rubbing in the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to
insure a crop of hair from the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be
working in obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did it
remain unwarranted by the event.

Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down
to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered
flight, as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium.

Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's was foremost. By great
exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the
stricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his
horizontal flight, with added fleetness. Such unintermitted
strainings upon the planted iron must sooner or later inevitably
extract it. It became imperative to lance the flying whale, or be
content to lose him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was
impossible, he swam so fast and furious. What then remained?

Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and
countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often
forced, none exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called
pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts
nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an inveterate running
whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful distance to which
the long lance is accurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking
boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood included, the entire
spear is some ten or twelve feet in length; the staff is much
slighter than that of the harpoon, and also of a lighter material-
pine. It is furnished with a small rope called a warp, of
considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to the hand after
darting.

But before going further, it is important to mention here, that
though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance,
yet it is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently
successful, on account of the greater weight and inferior length of
the harpoon as compared with the lance, which in effect become
serious drawbacks. As a general thing, therefore, you must first get
to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play.

Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness
and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to
excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed
bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is
forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or
thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb
whistlingly gathers up the coil of the wrap in one hand, so as to
secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then
holding the lance full before his waistband's middle, he levels it at
the whale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses the
butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon
stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He
minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin.
Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb arch the
bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot
of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.

"That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's
immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it
were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old
Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the
jet, and we'd drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew
choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that
live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff."

Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is
repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in
skilful leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line
is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands,
and mutely watches the monster die.




The Fountain


That for six thousand years- and no one knows how many millions of
ages before- the great whales should have been spouting all over the
sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with
so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries
back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of
the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings- that all this
should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a
quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of
December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these
spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor- this is
surely a noteworthy thing.

Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times
is combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or
a cod might live a century, and never once raise its head above the
surface.  But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him
regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live by
inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere.  Wherefore the
necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot
in any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary
attitude, the Sperm Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet
beneath the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no
connexion with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle alone;
and this is on the top of his head.

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function
indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with
the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not
think I shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous
scientific words. Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in
a man could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his
nostrils and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to
say, he would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem,
this is precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives,
by intervals, his full hour and more (when at the bottom) without
drawing a single breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle
of air; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs
and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable
involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels,
when he quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated
blood. So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he
carries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel
crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for
future use in its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of
this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon
it is reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, when I
consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in
having his spoutings out, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I
mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will
continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all his
other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets
seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he
rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again,
to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so
that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his
regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are
told, will he finally go down to stay out his full term
below. Remark, however, that in different individuals these rates are
different; but in any one they are alike. Now, why should the whale
thus insist upon having his spoutings out, unless it be to replenish
his reservoir of air, ere descending for good? How obvious it is too,
that this necessity for the whale's rising exposes him to all the
fatal hazards of the chase. And not by hook or by net could this vast
leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the
sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great
necessities that strike the victory to thee!

In man, breathing is incessantly going on- one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has
to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he
will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday
of his time.

It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole;
if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water,
then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of
smell seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at
all answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so
clogged with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power
of smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout- whether it be
water or whether it be vapor- no absolute certainty can as yet be
arrived at on this head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm
Whale has no proper olfactories. But what does he want of them? No
roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea.

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his
spouting canal, and as that long canal- like the grand Erie Canal- is
furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward
retention of air or the upward exclusion of water, therefore the
whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so
strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what
has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had
anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something
by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an
excellent listener!

Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is
for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,
horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a
little to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe
laid down in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns
whether this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether
the spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath,
or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the
mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the
mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot
be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through
the spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem
to be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water.  But the Sperm
Whale's food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout
even if he would. Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time
him with your watch, you will find that when unmolested, there is an
undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary
periods of respiration.

But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out!
You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not
tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to
settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the
knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand
in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.

The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist
enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls
from it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a
close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water
cascading all around him. And if at such times you should think that
you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know
that they are not merely condensed from its vapor; or how do you know
that they are not those identical drops superficially lodged in the
spout-hole fissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the
whale's head? For even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day
sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in
the desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin of
water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a
cavity in a rock filled up with rain.

Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching
the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be
peering into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your
pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even
when coming into slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the
jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from
the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I know one, who coming
into still closer contact with the spout, whether with some
scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin
peeled off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the
spout is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it.  Another thing; I
have heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is
fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing
the investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly
spout alone.

Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides
other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale;
I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an
undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores;
all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and
profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous
profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante,
and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while
in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little
treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before
me; and ere long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and
undulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of
my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in
my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional
argument for the above supposition.

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




The Tail


Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope,
and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less
celestial, I celebrate a tail.

Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that point
of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it
comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty
square feet. The compact round body of its root expands into two
broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less
than an inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes
slightly overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings,
leaving a wide vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of
beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of
these flukes.  At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the
tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across.

The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut
into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:- upper,
middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long
and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running
crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much
as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of old
Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the
thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those
wonderful relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so
much to the great strength of the masonry.

But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not
enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and
woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side
the loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with
them, and largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the
confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to
a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to
do it.

Nor does this- its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the
graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease
undulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions
derive their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never
impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything
imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take
away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in
the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman
lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was
overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman
triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form,
mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the
divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian
pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied;
these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint
nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of
submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the
peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.

Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether
wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it
be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein
no fairy's arm can transcend it.

Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in
sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.

First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in
a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It
never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of
inferiority. To the whale his tail is the sole means of propulsion.
Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung
backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, leaping
motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only
serve to steer by.

Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only
fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in
his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his
tail. In striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from
it, and the blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in
the unobstructed air, especially if it descend to its mark, the
stroke is then simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can
withstand it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes
sideways through the opposing water, then partly owing to the light
buoyancy of the whale-boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a
cracked rib or a dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side,
is generally the most serious result. These submerged side blows are
so often received in the fishery, that they are accounted mere
child's play.  Some one strips off a frock, and the hole is stopped.

Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale
the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect
there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the
elephant's trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of
sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
slowness moves his immense flukes side to side upon the surface of
the sea; and if he feel but a sailor's whisker, woe to that sailor,
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch!
Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me
of Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and
with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed
their zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale
does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard
of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round
his trunk and extracted the dart.

Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of
the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast
corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as
if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The
broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the air! then smiting
the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would
almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the
light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you
would think that that was the smoke from the touch-hole.

Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the
flukes lies considerably below the level of his back, they are then
completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to
plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of
his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a
moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime
breach- somewhere else to be described- this peaking of the whale's
flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated
nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems
spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I
seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from
the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in
all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to
you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head
of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a
large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and
for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to
me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was
never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire worshippers. As
Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I then
testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all
beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of
antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the
profoundest silence.

The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk
of the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two
opposite organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which they
respectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a terror to
Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan's tail, his trunk is but the
stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant's trunk were
as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and
crash of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes, which in repeated
instances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all their
oars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses
his balls.

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.




The Grand Armada


The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward
from the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all
Asia. In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long
islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others,
form a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with
Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the
thickly studded oriental archipelagoes.  This rampart is pierced by
several sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales;
conspicuous among which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the
straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels bound to China from the west,
emerge into the China seas.

Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green
promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little
correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled
empire: and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and
silks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand
islands of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant
provision of nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of
the land, should at least bear the appearance, however ineffectual,
of being guarded from the all-grasping western world. The shores of
the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses
which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the
Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the
obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of
ships before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day,
have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with
the costliest cargoes of the east. But while they freely waive a
ceremonial like this, they do by no means renounce their claim to
more solid tribute.

Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the
low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the
vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at
the point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody
chastisements they have received at the hands of European cruisers,
the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed;
yet, even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English and
American vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly
boarded and pillaged.

With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Java sea, and
thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here
and there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine
Islands, and gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great
whaling season there. By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod
would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the
world, previous to descending upon the Line in the Pacific; where
Ahab, though everywhere else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted
upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the sea he was most known to
frequent; and at a season when he might most reasonably be presumed
to be haunting it.

But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his
crew drink air?  Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long
time, now, the circus-running sun had raced within his fiery ring,
and needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this,
too, in the whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien
stuff, to be transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering
whale-ship carries no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and
their wants. She has a whole lake's contents bottled in her ample
hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable
pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear old
prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the
Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish
fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian
streams.  Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China
from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the
whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of
soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like
themselves. So that did you carry them the news that another flood
had come; they would only answer- "Well, boys, here's the ark!"

Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of
Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most
of the ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen
as an excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained
more and more upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed,
and admonished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs
of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted
nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single
jet was descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with
any game hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when
the customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a
spectacle of singular magnificence saluted us.

But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with
which of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm
Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached
companies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in
extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it
would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn
league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection. To this
aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans, may be
imputed the circumstance that even in the best cruising grounds, you
may now sometimes sail for weeks and months together, without being
greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly saluted by what
sometimes seems thousands on thousands.

Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and
forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon,
a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the
noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the
Right Whale, which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like
the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting
spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist,
continually rising and falling away to leeward.

Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill
of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up into
the air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze,
showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis,
descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.

As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,
accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage
in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the
plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying
forward through the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their
semicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic
centre.

Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their
yet suspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they,
that chased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only
deploy into the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of
their number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated
caravan, Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like
the worshipped white-elephant in the coronation procession of the
Siamese! So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along,
driving these leviathans before us; when, of a sudden, the voice of
Tashtego was heard, loudly directing attention to something in our
wake.

Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in the
rear. It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling
something like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so
completely come and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally
disappearing. Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly
revolved in his pivot-hole, crying, "Aloft there, and rig whips and
buckets to wet the sail;- Malays, sir, and after us!"

As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should
fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in
hot pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the
swift Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase;
how very kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding
her on to her own chosen pursuit,- mere riding-whips and rowels to
her, that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced
the deck; in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and
in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such
fancy as the above seemed his. And when he glanced upon the green
walls of the watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, and
bethought him that through that gate lay the route to his vengeance,
and beheld, how that through that same gate he was now both chasing
and being chased to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd of
remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were
infernally cheering him on with their curses;- when all these
conceits had passed through his brain, Ahab's brow was left gaunt and
ribbed, like the black sand beach after some stormy tide had been
gnawing it, without being able to drag the firm thing from its place.

But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and
when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the
Pequod at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra
side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the
harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been
gaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so
victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake
of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually
the ship neared them; and the wind now dying away, word was passed to
spring to the boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed
wonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale, become notified of the three
keels that were after them,- though as yet a mile in their rear,-
than they rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions,
so that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked
bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.

Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and
after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce the
chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave
animating tokens that they were now at last under the influence of
that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the
fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The
compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and
steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and
like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they
seemed going mad with consternation. In all directions expanding in
vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by
their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction
of panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those of their
number, who, completely paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like
water-logged dismantled ships on the sea. Had these Leviathans been
but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce
wolves, they could not possibly have evinced such excessive
dismay. But this occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all
herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of thousands, the
lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary
horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in
the sheepfold of a theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest alarm
of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling,
jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best,
therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales
before us, for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is
not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced
nor retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is
customary in those cases, the boats at once separated, each making
for some one lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three
minutes' time, Queequeg's harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted
blinding spray in faces, and then running away with us like light,
steered straight for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on
the part of the whale struck under such circumstances, is in no wise
unprecedented; and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated;
yet does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the
fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into
the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist
in a delirious throb.

As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power
of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him;
as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we
flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset
boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving
to steer through complicated channels and straits, knowing not at
what moment it may be locked in and crushed.

But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off
from this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging
away from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while
all the time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking
out of our way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for
there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle,
though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed with. They
chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business.  "Out of the
way, Commodore!" cried one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden
rose bodily to the surface, and for an instant threatened to swamp
us. "Hard down with your tail, there!" cried a second to another,
which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cooling himself with his
own fan-like extremity.

All whale-boats carry certain curious contrivances, originally
invented by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares
of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they
cross each other's grain at right angles; a line of considerable
length is then attached to the middle of this block, and the other
end of the line being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a
harpoon. It is chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is
used. For then, more whales are close round you than you can possibly
chase at one time. But sperm whales are not every day encountered;
while you may, then, you must kill all you can. And if you cannot
kill them all at once, you must wing them, so that they can be
afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is, that at times like
these the drug, comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with
three of them. The first and second were successfully darted, and we
saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous
sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. They were cramped like
malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon flinging the third, in
the act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under
one of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and
carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom as the
seat slid from under him. On both sides the sea came in at the
wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in,
and so stopped the leaks for the time.

It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were
it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's way greatly
diminished; moreover, that as we went still further and further from
the circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed
waning. So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the
towing whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his
parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost
heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into
a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between
the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central
expanse the sea presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a
sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his
more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they
say lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the
distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric
circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each,
swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a
ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic
circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones, and so
have gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of
reposing whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the
herd, no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We
must watch for a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the
wall that had only admitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the
centre of the lake, we were occasionally visited by small tame cows
and calves; the women and children of this routed host.

Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving
outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods
in any one of those circles, the entire area at this juncture,
embraced by the whole multitude, must have contained at least two or
three square miles. At any rate- though indeed such a test at such a
time might be deceptive- spoutings might be discovered from our low
boat that seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon. I
mention this circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had
been purposely locked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide
extent of the herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the
precise cause of its stopping; or, possibly, being so young,
unsophisticated, and every way innocent and inexperienced; however it
may have been, these smaller whales- now and then visiting our
becalmed boat from the margin of the lake- evinced a wondrous
fearlessness and confidence, or else a still becharmed panic which it
was impossible not to marvel at. Like household dogs they came
snuffing round us, right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till
it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated
them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their backs
with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the time
refrained from darting it.

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and
still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For,
suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing
mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed
shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a
considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants
while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as
if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing
mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly
reminiscence;- even so did the young of these whales seem looking up
towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in
their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also
seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from
certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured
some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a
little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered
from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal
reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring,
the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate
side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the
plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from
foreign parts.

"Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him fast!
him fast!- Who line him! Who struck?- Two whale; one big, one
little!"

"What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.

"Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.

As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds
of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and
shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling
towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical
cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still
tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the
chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes
entangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby
trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed divulged to
us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours in the
deep.

And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations
and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely
and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yes, serenely
revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed
Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in
mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round
me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal
mildness of joy.

Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,
still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or
possibly carrying on the war within the first circle, where abundance
of room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the
sight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to
and fro across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our
eyes. It is sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than
commonly powerful and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by
sundering or maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting
a short-handled cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for
hauling it back again. A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in
this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from
the boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon line; and in
the extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing among the
revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the
battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went.

But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he
seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at
first the intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we
perceived that by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery,
this whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he
had also run away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free
end of the rope attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in
the coils of the harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade
itself had worked loose from his flesh. So that tormented to madness,
he was now churning through the water, violently flailing with his
flexible tail, and tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and
murdering his own comrades.

This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright.  First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted
by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly
to heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries
vanished; in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more
central circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long
calm was departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like
to the tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson
breaks up in Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon
their inner centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common
mountain. Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck
taking the stern.

"Oars! Oars!" he intensely whispered, seizing the helm- "gripe your
oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him
off, you Queequeg- the whale there!- prick him!- hit him! Stand up-
stand up, and stay so! Spring men- pull, men; never mind their backs-
scrape them!- scrape away!"

The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving
a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate
endeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way
rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching for another
outlet. After many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly
glided into what had just been one of the outer circles, but now
crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre. This
lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg's hat,
who, while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his
hat taken clean from his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden
tossing of a pair of broad flukes close by.

Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon
resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having
clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless;
but the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged
whales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which
Flask had killed and waited. The waif is a pennoned pole, two or
three of which are carried by every boat; and when additional game is
at hand, are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale,
both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior
possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near.

The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that
sagacious saying in the Fishery,- the more whales the less fish. Of
all the drugged whales only one was captured.  The rest contrived to
escape for the time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen,
by some other craft than the Pequod.

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.




Schools and Schoolmasters


The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm
Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing
those vast aggregations.

Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must
have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals
each. Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two
sorts; those composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering
none but young vigorous males, or bulls as they are familiarly
designated.

In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see
a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm,
evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight
of his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman,
swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by
all the solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast between
this Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is
always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at
full growth, are not more than one-third of the bulk of an
average-sized male. They are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare
say, not to exceed half a dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless,
it cannot be denied, that upon the whole they are hereditarily
entitled to embonpoint.

It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in
leisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for
the full flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just
returned, perhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern seas, and
so cheating summer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the
time they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equator
awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation of the
cool season there, and so evade the other excessive temperature of
the year.

When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family. Should any unwarranted pert young Leviathan
coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the
ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases
him away! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him
are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though
do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario
out of his bed; for alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the
ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival
admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly
battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower jaws,
sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy
like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are
captured having the deep scars of these encounters,- furrowed heads,
broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and
dislocated mouths.

But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at
the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to
watch that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again
and revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young
Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand
concubines. Granting other whales to be in sight, the fisherman will
seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks
are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is
small. As for the sons and daughters they beget, why, those sons and
daughters must take care of themselves; at least, with only the
maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that
might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however
much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his
anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good
time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines; as years and
dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a
general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and
virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the
impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands
the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all
alone among the meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and
warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.

Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so
is the lord and master of that school technically known as the
schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however
admirably satirical, that after going to school himself, he should
then go abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly
of it. His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived
from the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised
that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must
have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a
country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days,
and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into
some of his pupils.

The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm
Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale- as a solitary Leviathan is
called- proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel
Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he
takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she
is, though she keeps so many moody secrets.

The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously
mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while
those females are characteristically timid, the young males, or
forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious
of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;
excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met,
and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal
gout.

The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like
a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and
wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking
rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he
would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this
turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and
separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.

Another point of difference between the male and female schools is
still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a
Forty-barrel-bull- poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike
a member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with
every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long,
as themselves to fall a prey.




Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish


The allusion to the waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale
fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.

It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in
company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be
finally killed and captured by another vessel; and herein are
indirectly comprised many minor contingencies, all partaking of this
one grand feature. For example,- after a weary and perilous chase and
capture of a whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reason of
a violent storm; and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a
second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk
of life or line. Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would
often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written or
unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases.

Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative
enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General
in A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written
whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own
legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system
which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and
the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling
with other People's Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a
Queen Anne's forthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the
neck, so small are they.

I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.

II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.

But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to
expound it.

First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at
all controllable by the occupant or occupants,- a mast, an oar, a
nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all
the same. Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif,
or any other recognized symbol of possession; so long as the party
wailing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it
alongside, as well as their intention so to do.

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the
whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder
knocks- the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist.  True, among the more
upright and honorable whalemen allowances are always made for
peculiar cases, where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for
one party to claim possession of a whale previously chased or killed
by another party. But others are by no means so scrupulous.

Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover
litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a
hard chase of a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the
plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last,
through peril of their lives, obliged to forsake not only their
lines, but their boat itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of
another ship) came up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and
finally appropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs. And
when those defendants were remonstrated with, their captain snapped
his fingers in the plaintiffs' teeth, and assured them that by way of
doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their line,
harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the whale at the
time of the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the
recovery of the value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat.

Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was the
judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on to
illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case,
wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife's
viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in
the course of years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action
to recover possession of her.  Erskine was on the other side; and he
then supported it by saying, that though the gentleman had originally
harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason of
the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned
her; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; and
therefore when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then
became that subsequent gentleman's property, along with whatever
harpoon might have been found sticking in her.

Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the
whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative to each other.

These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the
very learned Judge in set terms decided, to wit,- That as for the
boat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely
abandoned it to save their lives; but that with regard to the
controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged to the
defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the
final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made
off with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles;
and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a right to
them. Now the defendants afterwards took the fish; ergo, the
aforesaid articles were theirs.

A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge,
might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of
the matter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling
laws previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord
Ellenborough in the above cited case; these two laws touching
Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will on reflection, be found the
fundamentals of all human jurisprudence; for notwithstanding its
complicated tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the
Temple of the Philistines, has but two props to stand on.

Is it not a saying in every one's mouth, Possession is half of the
law: that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But
often possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and
souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof
possession is the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is
the widow's last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected
villain's marble mansion with a doorplate for a waif; what is that
but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the
broker, gets from the poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep
Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but
a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of Savesoul's income of L100,000
seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of
broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of Savesoul's
help) what is that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish. What are the
Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What to
that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a
Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas
but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the
whole of the law?

But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the
kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is
internationally and universally applicable.

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck
the Spanish standard by way of wailing it for his royal master and
mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What
India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States?
All Loose-Fish.

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is
the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to
the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers
but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And
what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?




Heads or Tails


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

Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with
the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the
coast of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have
the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A
division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is
no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is
to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects
a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast- and Loose-Fish,
it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous
principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a
separate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In
the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the
above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a
circumstance-that happened within the last two years.

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one
of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and
beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off
from the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under
the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord
Warden.  Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all
the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become
by assignment his. By some writers this office is called a
sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at
times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of
that same fobbing of them.

Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their
trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their
fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good L150 from the
precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their
wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their
respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian and
charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and
laying it upon the whale's head, he says- "Hands off! this fish, my
masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon this
the poor mariners in their respectful consternation- so truly
English- knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their
heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the
stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften
the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of
Blackstone. At length one of them, after long scratching about for
his ideas, made bold to speak,

"Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"

"The Duke."

"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"

"It is his."

"We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is
all that to go to the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for
our pains but our blisters?"

"It is his."

"Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of
getting a livelihood?"

"It is his."

"I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of
this whale."

"It is his."

"Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?"

"It is his."

In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of
Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some
particular lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small
degree be deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, ali
honest clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his
Grace, begging him to take the case of those unfortunate mariners
into full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in substance replied
(both letters were published) that he had already done so, and
received the money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if
for the future he (the reverend gentleman) would decline meddling
with other people's business. Is this the still militant old man,
standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing
alms of beggars?

It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the
Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must
needs inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally
invested with that right. The law itself has already been set
forth. But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the
whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen, "because of its
superior excellence." And by the soundest commentators this has ever
been held a cogent argument in such matters.

But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A
reason for that, ye lawyers!

In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pin-money, an old King's
Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: "Ye tail is ye
Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone."
Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the
Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But
this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad
mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a
mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk
here.

There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers- the
whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain
limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's
ordinary revenue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the
matter; but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be
divided in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly
dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically
regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed
congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in
law.




The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud


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

It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when
we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory, mid-day sea, that the
many noses on the Pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers than
the three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell
was smelt in the sea.

"I will bet something now," said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts
are some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought
they would keel up before long."

Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the
distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of
whale must be alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed
French colors from his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture
sea-fowl that circled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it was
plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a
blasted whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea,
and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived,
what an unsavory odor such a mass must exhale; worse than an Assyrian
city in the plague, when the living are incompetent to bury the
departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that no
cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are there
those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil
obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no
means of the nature of attar-of-rose.

Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the
Frenchman had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed
even more of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be
one of those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a
sort of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct
bodies almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless,
in the proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever
turn up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun
blasted whales in general.

The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed he
recognized his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
knotted round the tail of one of these whales.

"There's a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing in
the ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! I well knew that these
Crappoes of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes
lowering their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale
spouts; yes, and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold
full of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing
that all the oil they will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's
wick into; aye, we all know these things; but look ye, here's a
Crappo that is content with our leavings, the drugged whale there, I
mean; aye, and is content too with scraping the dry bones of that
other precious fish he has there. Poor devil! I say, pass round a
hat, some one, and let's make him a present of a little oil for dear
charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from that drugged whale there,
wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell. And
as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get more oil by chopping
up and trying out these three masts of ours, than he'll get from that
bundle of bones; though, now that I think of it, it may contain
something worth a good deal more than oil; yes, ambergris. I wonder
now if our old man has thought of that. It's worth trying. Yes, I'm
for it;" and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.

By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that
whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with
no hope of escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the
cabin, Stubb now called his boat's crew, and pulled off for the
stranger. Drawing across her bow, he perceived that in accordance
with the fanciful French taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was
carved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted green,
and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there;
the whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red
color. Upon her head boards, in large gilt letters, he read "Bouton
de Rose,"- Rose-button, or Rose-bud; and this was the romantic name
of this aromatic ship.

Though Stubb did not understand the Bouton part of the inscription,
yet the word rose, and the bulbous figure-head put together,
sufficiently explained the whole to him.

"A wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with his hand to his nose, "that
will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!"

Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck, he
had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close
to the blasted whale; and so talk over it.

Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he
bawled- "Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses
that speak English?"

"Yes," rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to
be the chief-mate.

"Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White Whale?"

"What whale?"

"The White Whale- a Sperm Whale- Moby Dick, have ye seen him?

"Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale- no."

"Very good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute."

Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab leaning
over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two
hands into a trumpet and shouted- "No, Sir! No!" Upon which Ahab
retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman.

He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the
chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort
of bag.

"What's the matter with your nose, there?" said Stubb. "Broke it?"

"I wish it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose at all!"
answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was
at very much. "But what are you holding yours for?"

"Oh, nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain't
it? Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies,
will ye, Bouton-de-Rose?"

"What in the devil's name do you want here?" roared the Guernseyman,
flying into a sudden passion.

"Oh! keep cool- cool? yes, that's the word! why don't you pack those
whales in ice while you're working at 'em? But joking aside, though;
do you know, Rose-bud, that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil
out of such whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a gill
in his whole carcase."

"I know that well enough; but, d'ye see, the Captain here won't
believe it; this is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer
before. But come aboard, and mayhap he'll believe you, if he won't
me; and so I'll get out of this dirty scrape."

"Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow," rejoined
Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene
presented itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were
getting the heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they
worked rather slow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a
good humor. All their noses upwardly projected from their faces like
so many jibbooms. Now and then pairs of them would drop their work,
and run up to the mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking they
would catch the plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals
held it to their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of their
pipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing
tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories.

Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding
from the Captain's round-house abaft; and looking in that direction
saw a fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar
from within. This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain
remonstrating against the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself
to the Captain's round-house (cabinet he called it) to avoid the
pest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and
indignations at times.

Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to
the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the
stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited
ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable
a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the
Guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the
ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, but otherwise
was quite frank and confidential with him, so that the two quickly
concocted a little plan for both circumventing and satirizing the
Captain, without his at all dreaming of distrusting their
sincerity. According to this little plan of theirs, the Guernsey-man,
under cover of an interpreter's office, was to tell the Captain what
he pleased, but as coming from Stubb; and as for Stubb, he was to
utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in him during the
interview.

By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a
small and dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain,
with large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton
velvet vest with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb
was now politely introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once
ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting between them.

"What shall I say to him first?" said he.

"Why," said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals,
"you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish
to me, though I don't pretend to be a judge."

"He says, Monsieur," said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his
captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain
and chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from
a blasted whale they had brought alongside."

Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.

"What now?" said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.

"Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him
carefully, I'm certain that he's no more fit to command a whale-ship
than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he's a baboon."

"He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one,
is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he
conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish."

Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his
crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast
loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.

"What now?" said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned to
them.

"Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that- that- in
fact, tell him I've diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps
somebody else."

"He says, Monsieur, that he's very happy to have been of any service
to us."

Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties
(meaning himself and mate), and concluded by inviting Stubb down into
his cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.

"He wants you to take a glass of wine with him," said the
interpreter.

"Thank him heartily; but tell him it's against my principles to drink
with the man I've diddled. In fact, tell him I must go."

"He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit of his drinking;
but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then
Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from
these whales, for it's so calm they won't drift."

By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat,
hailed the Guernsey-man to this effect,- that having a long tow-line
in his boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out
the lighter whale of the two from the ship's side.  While the
Frenchman's boats, then, were engaged in towing the ship one way,
Stubb benevolently towed away at his whale the other way,
ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually long tow-line.

Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the
whale; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance,
while the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's whale. Whereupon
Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to
give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of
his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced
an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would
almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and
when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like
turning up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English
loam. His boat's crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping
their chief, and looking anxious as gold-hunters.

And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and
screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning
to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased,
when suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a
faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells
without being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then
along with another, without at all blending with it for a time.

"I have it, I have it," cried Stubb, with delight, striking something
in the subterranean regions, "a purse! a purse!"

Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of
something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old
cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it
with your thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash color. And
this, good friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any
druggist.  Some six handfulls were obtained; but more was unavoidably
lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured
were it not for impatient Ahab's loud command to Stubb to desist, and
come on board, else the ship would bid them good-bye.




Ambergris


Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as
an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain
Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on
that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late
day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a
problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French
compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite
distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also
dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found
except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle,
odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and
ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and
spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious
candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and
also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is
carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains
into claret, to flavor it.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should
regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a
sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the
cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How
to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering
three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out
of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris,
certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might
be sailors' trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they
were nothing, more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that
manner.

Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be
found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of
that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and
incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory.
And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is
that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of
all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental
manufacturing stages, is the worst.

I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but
cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against
whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds,
might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said
of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the
slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling
is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another
thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad.  Now how
did this odious stigma originate?

I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the
Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries
ago. Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out
their oil at sea as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting
up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes
of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness of
the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to
which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence
is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these
whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth
somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city
graveyard, for the foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.

I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in
former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg,
which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in
his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name
imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in
order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to
be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for that
purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds;
and when the works were in full operation certainly gave forth no
very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different with a South Sea
Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after
completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume
fifty days in the business of boding out; and in the state that it is
casked, the oil is nearly scentless.  The truth is, that living or
dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means
creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people
of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the
nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant,
when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking
abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true,
seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's
flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady
rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm
Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to
that famous elephant, with jeweled tusks, and redolent with myrrh,
which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the
Great?




The Castaway


It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a
most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's
crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the
sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever
accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her
own.

Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the
boats. Some few hands are reserved called shipkeepers, whose province
it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a
general thing, these shipkeepers are as hardy fellows as the men
comprising the boats' crews. But if there happen to be an unduly
slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain
to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little
negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have
heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic
midnight, so gloomy-jolly.

In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony
and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar color,
driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by
nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over
tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant,
genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever
enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any
other race. For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but
three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days. Nor
smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for
even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony,
panelled in king's cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life's
peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he
had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred
his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus
temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly
illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to
ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County
in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the
green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the
round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the
clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the
pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning
jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he
lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the
sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery
effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once
the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel
stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to the story.

It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman
chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed;
and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.

The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;
but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and
therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb
observing him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his
courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.

Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as
the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which
happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The
involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in
hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack
whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with
him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the
water. That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the
line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up
to the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line,
which had taken several turns around his chest and neck.

Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He
hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath,
he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb,
exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked face
plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less
than half a minute, this entire thing happened.

"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was
saved.

So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed
by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these
irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain,
business-like, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially;
and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The
substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except- but all the rest
was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general,
Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will
sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better. Moreover,
as if perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted
conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a
margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice,
and concluded with a peremptory command "Stick to the boat, Pip, or
by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can't
afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for
thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and
don't jump any more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that
though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which
propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was
under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this
time he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale
started to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried
traveller's trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a
beautiful, bounteous, blue day! the spangled sea calm and cool, and
flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater's
skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea,
Pip's ebon head showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was
lifted when he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb's inexorable back was
turned upon him; and the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole
mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the
centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black head to
the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the
brightest.

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the
awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self
in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?
Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea- mark how
closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.

But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No;
he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his
wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to
Pip very quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such
considerations towards oarsmen jeopardized through their own
timidity, is not always manifested by the hunters in all similar
instances; and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost
invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the
same ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies.

But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and
Stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent
upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him
miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;
but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot;
such, at least, they said he was. The sea had leeringly kept his
finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned
entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where
strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before
his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded
heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip
saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of
the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot
upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his
shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and
wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial
thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe,
feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

For the rest blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen
what like abandonment befell myself.




A Squeeze of the Hand


That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the
Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling
of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.

While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed
in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm;
and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully
manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon.

It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I
found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about
in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back
into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times
sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener!
such a softener; such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in
it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as
it were, to serpentine and spiralize.

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands
among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, wove almost
within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged
all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as. I snuffed
up that uncontaminated aroma,- literally and truly, like the smell of
spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a
musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that
inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost
began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare
virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I
felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any
sort whatsoever.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that
sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till
a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself
unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their
hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate,
friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was
continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes
sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why
should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest
ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us
all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves
universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since
by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all
cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of
attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the
fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle,
the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am
ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the
night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in
a jar of spermaceti.

Now, while discoursing of sperm it behooves to speak of other things
akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the
try-works.

First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the
tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his
flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons- a wad of muscle- but
still contains some oil. After being severed from the whale, the
white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the
mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of
the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber,
and often participating to a considerable degree in its
unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to
behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled
tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of
the deepest crimson and purple.  It is plums of rubies, in pictures
of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating
it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It
tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh
of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed
the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison
season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards
of Champagne.

There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up
in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very
puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an
appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of
the substance. It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most
frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing,
and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin,
ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing.

Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but
sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the
dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the
Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those
inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.

Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's
vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's
nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering
part of Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for
the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved
along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by
nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all
impurities.

But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at
once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its
inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle
for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When
the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment
is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side,
lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the
workmen. They generally go in pairs,- a pike-and-gaffman and a
spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon
of the same name.  The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his
gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold
it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about.  Meanwhile,
the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it
into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make
it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will
sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts
off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very
much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.




The Cassock


Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the
windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small
curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have
seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the
wondrous cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his
unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of
these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable
cone,- longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at
the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an
idol, indeed, it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such
an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea;
and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and
destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook
Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of
Kings.

Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and
assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the
mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as
if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field.
Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically
to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This
done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a
good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last
hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken
down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the pointed
extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other end,
he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands
before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial
to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him,
while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.

That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse,
planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub
beneath it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets
from a rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a
conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an
archbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!

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




The Try-Works


Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly
distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of
the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the
completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were
transported to her planks.

The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most
roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar
strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of
brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height.
The foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly
secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all
sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping,
battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots,
two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in
use, they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with
soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver
punchbowls. During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will
crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. While
employed in polishing them- one man in each pot, side by side- many
confidential communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is
a place also for profound mathematical meditation. It was in the left
hand try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone diligently circling
round me, that I was first indirectly struck by the remarkable fact,
that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone
for example, will descend from any point in precisely the same time.

Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of
the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted
with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented
from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow
reservoir extending under the entire inclosed surface of the
works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept
replenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There are no
external chimneys; they open direct from the rear wall. And here let
us go back for a moment.

It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were
first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee
the business.

"All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the
works."  This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting
his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said
in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for
a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of
quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out,
the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still
contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed
the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming
misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns
by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke
is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but
you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo
odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It
smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument
for the pit.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the
carcass; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean
darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce
flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to
some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with
broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates,
and folded them in conflagrations.

The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide
hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes
of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge
pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the
scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames
darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The
smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there
was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap
into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further
side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a
sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed,
looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched
in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and
sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy
of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious
emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their
unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as
their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the
flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the
harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and
dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship
groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and
further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully
champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on
all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden
with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of
darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac
commander's soul.

So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours
silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for
that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness,
the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the
fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire,
these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to
yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me
at a midnight helm.

But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since
inexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing
sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The
jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned against it; in my ears
was the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the wind; I
thought my eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers
to the lids and mechanically stretching them still further
apart. But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to
steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the
card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed
before me but a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of
redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing
thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing
from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of death,
came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the
crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way,
inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my
brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's
stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I
faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into
the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful
the relief from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and the
fatal contingency of being brought by the lee!

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with
thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the
first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire,
when its redness makes all things look ghastly.  To-morrow, in the
natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils
in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least
gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp-
all others but liars!

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's
accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of
deserts and of griefs beneath the moon.  The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this
earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than
sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true- not true, or
undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man
of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and
Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity."
ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's
wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast
crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls
Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and
throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise,
and therefore jolly;- not that man is fitted to sit down on
tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably
wondrous Solomon.

But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the
congregation of the dead."  Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest
it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a
wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is
a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the
blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in
the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge,
that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the
mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even
though they soar.




The Lamp


Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's
forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single
moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay
in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness;
a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.

In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in
darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as
he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth
an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest
night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps-
often but old bottles and vials, though- to the copper cooler at the
tryworks, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He
burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore,
unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral
contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He
goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and
genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own
supper of game.




Stowing Down and Clearing Up


Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off
described from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors,
and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed
alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the
headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his
great padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in
due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through
the fire;- but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this
part of the description by rehearsing- singing, if I may- the
romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and
striking them down into the hold, where once again leviathan returns
to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the surface :is
before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.

While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the
six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and
rolling this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are
slewed round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously
scoot across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at
last man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops,
rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex
officio, every sailor is a cooper.

At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the
great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open,
and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the
hatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled
up.

In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream
with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous
masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie
about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has
besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with
unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on
all hands the din is deafening.

But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in
this self-same ship!  and were it not for the tell-tale boats and
try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant
vessel, with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured
sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason
why the decks never look so white as just after what they call an
affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the
whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness
from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye
quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and
with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full
tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the
numerous implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully
cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon
the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of
sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the
combined and, simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's
company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded,
then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift
themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck,
fresh and all aglow as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest
Holland.

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and
humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;
propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object
not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To
hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were
little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly
allude to. Away, and bring us napkins!

But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men
intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will
again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small
grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the
severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing
straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they
have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,- they only
step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass,
and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and
burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the
equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have
finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless
dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning
the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of "There
she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through
the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing!
Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings
extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm;
and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its
defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the
soul; hardly is this done, when- There she blows!- the ghost is
spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go
through young life's old routine again.

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two
thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with
thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage- and, foolish as I am,
taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope.




The Doubloon


Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his
quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and
mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration
it has not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most
plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and
stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When
he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the
pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with
the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his walk he
again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance
fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same
aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing,
if not hopefulness.

But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And
some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are
little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except
to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up
some morass in the Milky Way.

Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of
the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden
sands, the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now
nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of
copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it
still preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless
crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the
livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any
pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon
where the sunset last left it. For it was set apart and sanctified to
one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one
and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale's
talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night,
wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live
to spend it.

Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the
sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes;
sun's disks and stars, ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners
waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold
seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories,
by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.

It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy
example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,
REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country
planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator,
and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the
unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw
the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on
another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a
segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their
usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial
point at Libra.

Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now
pausing.

"There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and
all other grand and lofty things; look here,- three peaks as proud as
Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the
courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab;
all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder
globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn
but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains
for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve
itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see!
aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months
before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to
storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live
in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe
to work on. So be it, then."

"No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws have
left their mouldings there since yesterday," murmured Starbuck to
himself, leaning against the bulwarks. "The old man seems to read
Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin
inspectingly. He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three
mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some
faint earthly symbol.  So in this vale of Death, God girds us round;
and over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a
beacon and a hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her
mouldy soil; but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance
half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at
midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze
for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still
sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely."

"There now's the old Mogul," soliloquized Stubb by the try-works,
"he's been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and
both with faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine
fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I
have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer's Hook, I'd not look at it
very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion,
I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my
voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your
doubloons of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of
Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and
half joes, and quarter joes. What then should there be in this
doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda!
let me read it once. Halloa! here's signs and wonders truly! That,
now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what
my almanack below calls ditto. I'll get the almanack; and as I have
heard devils can be raised with Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try my hand
at raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with the
Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see now. Signs and
wonders; and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem; here they
are- here they go- all alive: Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull
and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he
wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the
threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book!
you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll
do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the
thoughts. That's my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts
calendar, and Bowditch's navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs
and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and
significant in wonders!  There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist-
hark! By Jove, I have it!  Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is
the life of man in one round chapter; and now I'll read it off,
straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or
the Ram- lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull- he
bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins- that is, Virtue
and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and
drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies
in the path- he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw;
we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we
marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the
Scales- happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very
sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the
Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang
comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing
himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the
battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing,
and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours
out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or
the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and
the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive
and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble;
and so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye!
Adieu, Doubloon! But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round
the try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll have to say. There;
he's before it; he'll out with something presently. So, so; he's
beginning."

"I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever
raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's
all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's
true; and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty
cigars. I won't smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and
here's nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to
spy 'em out."

"Shall I call that Wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has
a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a
sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman-
the old hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to
the sea. He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on
the other side of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that
side; and now he's back again; what does that mean? Hark!  he's
muttering- voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and
listen!"

"If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when
the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs, and
know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old
witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The
horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what's
the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign- the roaring and
devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee."

"There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg- all
tattooing- looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the
Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;
thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I
suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the black
country. And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of
his thigh- I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't know
what to make of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some
king's trowsers. But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil,
Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his
pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of his? Ah, only
makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the
coin- fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way
comes Pip- poor boy! would he had died, or I; he's half horrible to
me. He too has been watching all of these interpreters myself
included- and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthly idiot
face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!"

"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

"Upon my soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his
mind, poor fellow! But what's that he says now- hist!"

"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

"Why, he's getting it by heart- hist! again."

"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

"Well, that's funny."

"And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a
crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw!
caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There
he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more
poked into the sleeves of an old jacket."

"Wonder if he means me?- complimentary- poor lad!- I could go hang
myself.  Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity. I can
stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's too crazy-witty
for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering."

"Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all one
fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the
consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for
when aught's nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow
desperate. Ha! ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is
a pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree
once, and found a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey's
wedding ring. How did it get there? And so they'll say in the
resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a
doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh,
the gold! the precious, precious gold!- the green miser'll hoard ye
soon! Hish! hish! God goes 'mong the worlds blackberrying.  Cook! ho,
cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and
get your hoe-cake done!"




Leg and Arm


The Pequod of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of
London.

"Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?"

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colors,
bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was
standing in his hoisted quarter-deck, his ivory leg plainly revealed
to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own
boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, goodnatured, fine-looking
man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that
hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of
his jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a huzzar's
surcoat.

"Hast seen the White Whale!"

"See you this?" and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,
he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden
head like a mallet.

"Man my boat!" cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars
near him- "Stand by to lower!"

In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his
crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the
stranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the
excitement of the moment, Ahab had forgotton that since the loss of
his leg he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but
his own, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy
mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be
rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's warning. Now, it
is no very easy matter for anybody- except those who are almost
hourly used to it, like whalemen- to clamber up a ship's side from a
boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up
towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down
to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of
course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab
now found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again;
hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly
hopte to attain.

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward
circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his
luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And
in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the
two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the
perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him
a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not
seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a
cripple to use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted
a minute, because the strange captain, observing at a glance how
affairs stood, cried out, "I see, I see!- avast heaving there! Jump,
boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle."

As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or
two previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive
curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the
end. This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it
all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like
sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree),
and then giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time
also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon
one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung
inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan
head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other
captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, and crossing
the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus
way, "Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!- an arm and a
leg!- an arm that never can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that never
can run. Where did'st thou see the White Whale?- how long ago?"

"The White Whale," said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm
towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had
been a telescope; "there I saw him, on the Line, last season."

"And he took that arm off, did he?" asked Ahab, now sliding down from
the capstan, and resting on the Englishman's shoulder, as he did so.

"Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?"

"Spin me the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?"

"It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,"
began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White Whale at that
time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and
my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too,
that went milling and milling round so that my boat's crew could only
trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer
gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing
great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and
wrinkles."

"It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his
suspended breath.

"And harpoons sticking in near his starboad fin."

"Aye, aye- they were mine- my irons," cried Ahab, exultingly- "but
on!"

"Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly. "Well,
this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all
afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!

"Aye, I see!- wanted to part it; free the fast-fish- an old trick- I
know him."

"How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "I do not
know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there
somehow; but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards
pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of
the other whale's; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how
matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was- the noblest and
biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life- I resolved to capture him, spite
of the boiling rage he seemed to be in.  And thinking the hap-hazard
line would get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for
I have a devil of a boat's crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing
all this, I say, I jumped into my first mate's boat- Mr. Mounttop's
here (by the way, Captain- Mounttop; Mounttop- the captain);- as I
was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was
gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon,
let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir-
hearts and souls alive, man- the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind
as a bat- both eyes out- all befogged and bedeadened with black foam-
the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the
air, like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was
groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was
groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it overboard- down
comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving
each half in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed
through the wreck, as though it was all chips. We all struck out. To
escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole
sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking
fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the
fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the
barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here"
(clapping his hand just below his shoulder); "yes, caught me just
here, I say, and bore me down to Hell's flames, I was thinking; when,
when, all of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb ript its way
along the flesh- clear along the whole length of my arm- came out
nigh my wrist, and up I floated;- and that gentleman there will tell
you the rest (by the way, captain- Dr. Bunger, ship's surgeon:
Bunger, my lad,- the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the
yarn."

The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all
the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote
his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but
sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woolen frock or shirt, and
patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention
between a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in
the other, occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs
of the two crippled captains. But, at his superior's introduction of
him to Ahab, he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his
captain's bidding.

"It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-surgeon; "and, taking
my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy-"

"Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship," interrupted the one-armed
captain, addressing Ahab; "go on, boy."

"Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing
hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use- I did all I could;
sat up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of
diet-"

"Oh, very severe!" chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly
altering his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night,
till he couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed,
half seas over, about three o'clock in the morning.  Oh, ye stars! he
sat up with me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great
watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you
dog, laugh out! why don't ye? You know you're a precious jolly
rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I'd rather be killed by you than kept
alive by any other man."

"My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"- said
the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab- "is
apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that
sort. But I may as well say- en passant, as the French remark- that I
myself- that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy- am
a strict total abstinence man; I never drink-"

"Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits
to him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on- go on
with the arm story."

"Yes, I may as well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about
observing, sir, before Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that
spite of my best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse
and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon
ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long. I measured it
with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew what was
threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory
arm there; that thing is against all rule"- pointing at it with the
marlingspike- "that is the captain's work, not mine; he ordered the
carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end,
to knock some one's brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine
once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this
dent, sir"- removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and
exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the
slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound-
"Well, the captain there will tell you how that came there; he
knows."

"No, I don't," said the captain, "but his mother did; he was born
with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you- you Bunger! was there ever such
another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought
to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages,
you rascal."

"What became of the White Whale?" now cried Ahab, who thus far had
been impatiently listening to this byeplay between the two
Englishmen.

"Oh!" cried the one-armed captain, "oh, yes! Well; after he sounded,
we didn't see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I
didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick,
till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard
about Moby Dick- as some call him- and then I knew it was he."

"Did'st thou cross his wake again?"

"Twice."

"But could not fasten?"

"Didn't want to try to; ain't one limb enough? What should I do
without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so
much as he swallows."

"Well, then," interrupted Bunger, "give him your left arm for bait to
get the right. Do you know, gentlemen"- very gravely and
mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession- "Do you know,
gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably
constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for him
to completely digest even a man's arm? And he knows it too. So that
what you take for the White Whale's malice is only his
awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only
thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old
juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making
believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him
in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when
I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see?
No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully
incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer,
if you are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for
the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why,
in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another chance
at you shortly, that's all."

"No, thank you, Bunger," said the English Captain, "he's welcome to
the arm he has, since I can't help it, and didn't know him then; but
not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him
once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in
killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm
in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so,
Captain?"- glancing at the ivory leg.

"He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let
alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all
a magnet! How long since thou sawist him last? Which way heading?"

"Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's," cried Bunger, stoopingly
walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; "this man's
blood- bring the thermometer!- it's at the boiling point!- his pulse
makes these planks beat!- sir!"- taking a lancet from his pocket, and
drawing near to Ahab's arm.

"Avast!" roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks- "Man the
boat!  Which way heading?"

"Good God!" cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.
"What's the matter? He was heading east, I think.- Is your Captain
crazy?"  whispering Fedallah.

But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to
take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower.

In a moment he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men
were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed
him. With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his
own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.




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 &amp; Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion,
comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and
Bourbons, in point of real historical interest. How long, prior to
the year of our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence,
my numerous fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775)
it fitted out the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the
Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous (ever since
1726) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard
had in large fleets pursued the Leviathan, but only in the North and
South Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that
the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with
civilized steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century
they were the only people of the whole globe who so harpooned him.

In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,
and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape
Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of
any sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky
one; and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious
sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other ships, English
and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific
were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the
indefatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons-
how many, their mother only knows- and under their immediate
auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense, the British
government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling
voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval
Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some
service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the
same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a
tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship- well called
the "Syren"- made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that
the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The
Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a
Nantucketer.

All honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists
to the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long
ago have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other
world.

The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast
sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight
somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the
forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps- every
soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine
gam I had- long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his
ivory heel- it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of
that ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if
I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we
flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall
came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands-
visitors and all- were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy
that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly
furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung
there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all
drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by and by
we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again,
though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle,
rather too much diluted and pickled it for my taste.

The beef was fine- tough, but with body in it. They said it was
bullbeef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for
certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but
substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I
fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you after
they were swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked
their pitching out of you like billiard-balls. The bread- but that
couldn't be helped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic, in short, the
bread contained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was
not very light, and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner
when you ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm,
considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers, including his own
live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a
jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack
fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band.

But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other
English whalers I know of- not all though- were such famous,
hospitable ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the
can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking,
and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these
English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I been at
all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.

The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,
Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant
in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions,
touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the
English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English
whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is
not normal and natural, but incidental and particular; and,
therefore, must have some special origin, which is here pointed out,
and will be still further elucidated.

During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an
ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew
must be about whalers. The title was, "Dan Coopman," wherefore I
concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam
cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I
was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production
of one "Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned
man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa
Claus and St. Potts, to whom I handed the work for translation,
giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble- this same Dr.
Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that "Dan Coopman"
did not mean "The Cooper," but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient
and learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and,
among other subjects, contained a very interesting account of its
whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed, "Smeer," or "Fat,"
that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for the larders and
cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated
by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:

                        400,000 lbs. of beef.
                     60,000 lbs. Friesland pork.
                     150,000 lbs. of stock fish.
                      550,000 lbs. of biscuit.
                     72,000 lbs. of soft bread.
                      2,800 firkins of butter.
                 20,000 lbs. of Texel Leyden cheese.
         144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article).
                        550 ankers of Geneva.
                       10,800 barrels of beer.

Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in
the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole
pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.

At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all
this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were
incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and
Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary
tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish,
&amp;c., consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient
Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the
amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed, seems
amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures,
being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation,
and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar
Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the
convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.

The quantity of the beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as
those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of
that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch
whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea,
did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each
of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all;
therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for
a twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that
ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so
fuddled as one might fancy them to have been, were the right sort of
men to stand up in a boat's head, and take good aim at flying whales;
this would seem somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and
hit them too. But this was very far North, be it remembered, where
beer agrees well with the constitution; upon the Equator, in our
southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at
the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue to
Nantucket and New Bedford.

But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers
of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English
whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they,
when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of
the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties
the decanter.




A Bower in the Arsacides


Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have
chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and
in detail upon some few interior structural features. But to a large
and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to
unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose,
unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of
the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his
ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.

But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the
fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the
whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures
on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a
specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a
full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a
roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,
Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;
the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters,
ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of
leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and
cheeseries in his bowels.

I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been
blessed with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I
belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the
deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the
harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. Think you I let the chance
go, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the
seal and reading all the contents of that young cub?

And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am
indebted to my late royal friend Tranque, king of Tranque, one of the
Arsacides. For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the
trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the
Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm
villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from what our
sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.

Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being
gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had
brought together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious
of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful
devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic
canoes; and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the
wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.

Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with
his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted
droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been
stripped of its fathomdeep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry
in the sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the
Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.

The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with
Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the
priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic
head again sent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a
bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like
the hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.

It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy
Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the
industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous
carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and
woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all
their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the
message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the
lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving
the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!- pause!- one
word!- whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore
all these ceaseless toilings?  Speak, weaver!- stay thy hand!- but
one single word with thee! Nay- the shuttle flies- the figures float
from forth the loom; the fresher-rushing carpet for ever slides
away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened,
that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look
on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear
the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all
material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the
flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the
walls, bursting from the opened casements.  Thereby have villainies
been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din
of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard
afar.

Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging- a gigantic idler!
Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed
around him, the mighty idler seemed the sunning weaver; himself all
woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher
verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised
Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him
curly-headed glories.

Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw
the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the
real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel
as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the
priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I
paced before this skeleton- brushed the vine aside- broke through the
ribs- and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid
its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbors. But soon my line was
out; and following back, I emerged from the opening where I
entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.

Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the
skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived
me taking the altitude of the final rib, "How now!" they shouted;
"Dar'st thou measure this our god! That's for us." "Aye, priests-
well, how long do ye make him, then?" But hereupon a fierce contest
rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each
other's sconces with their yard-sticks- the great skull echoed- and
seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements.

These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be
it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied
measurements I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can
refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they
tell me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country,
where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other
whales. Likewise, have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New
Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call "the only perfect
specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United States."
Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name,
a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his possession the skeleton
of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown
magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's.

In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons
belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir
Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir
Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a
great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony
cavities- spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan- and swing all day
upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors
and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a
bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence
for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence
to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for
the unrivalled view from his forehead.

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




Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton


In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain
statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton
we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.

According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly
base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the
largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to
my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest
magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and
something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a
whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen
men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population
of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants.

Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to
this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's
imagination?

Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,
jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now
simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his
unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large
a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far
the most complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated
concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your
mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a
complete notion of the general structure we are about to view.

In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two
feet: so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have
been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one
fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two
feet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some
fifty feet of plain backbone. Attached to this back-bone, for
something less than a third of its length, was the mighty circular
basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.

To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,
extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled
the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some
twenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise,
for the time, but a long, disconnected timber.

The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was
nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each
successively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one
of the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches.  From
that part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last
only spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they
all bore a seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs
were the most arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for
beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams.

In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton
of the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The
largest of the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that
part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the
greatest depth of the invested body of this particular whale must
have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib
measured but little more than eight feet. So that this rib only
conveyed half of the true notion of the living magnitude of that
part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw but a naked spine, all
that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh,
muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw
but a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and
majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!

How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to
try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely pouring over
his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful
wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the
eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can
the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.

But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a
crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But
now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.

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




The Fossil Whale


From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon
to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could
not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in
imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to
tail, and the yards he measured about the waist; only think of the
gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like
great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck
of a line-of-battle-ship.

Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me
to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not
overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him
out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him
in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it
now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and
antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the
Leviathan- to an ant or a flea- such portly terms might justly be
deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text,
the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this enterprise under
the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that
whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these
dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of
Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous
lexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a
lexicon to be used by a whale author like me.

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,
though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing
of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an
inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my
thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with
their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the
whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and
men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the
revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole
universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the
virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To
produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and
enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be
who have tried it.

Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my
credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time
I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals
and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise,
by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in
the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters
now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in
what are called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at
any rate intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and
those whose remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all
the Fossil Whales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period,
which is the last preceding the superficial formations. And though
none of them precisely answer to any known species of the present
time, they are yet sufficiently akin to them in general respects, to
justify their taking rank as Cetacean fossils.

Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their
bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various
intervals, been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in
France, in England, in Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama. Among the more curious of such remains is
part of a skull, which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue
Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon the
palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred in excavating the
great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier pronounced these
fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown Leviathanic
species.

But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost
complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842,
on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken
credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the
fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and
bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of
it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it
turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a
departed species. A significant illustration of the fact, again and
again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes
but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen
rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the
London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the
most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have
blotted out of existence.

When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,
jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances
to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing
on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical
Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back
to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun;
for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and
I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when
wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics;
and in all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an
inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world
was the whale's; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the
present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree
like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the
Pharaoh's.  Methuselah seems a schoolboy. I look round to shake hands
with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence
of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before
all time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over.

But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to
claim for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the
unmistakable print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of
Denderah, some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite
ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, similar to the
grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the moderns. Gliding
among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there swimming in that
planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.

Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the
antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous postdiluvian reality, as
set down by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.

"Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams
of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are
oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine,
that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whale can
pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the matter is, that
on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles
into the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em. They
keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying
upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the
Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This
Rib (says John Leo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years before
I saw it. Their Historians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy'd of
Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that
the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the
Temple."

In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be
a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.




Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? - Will He Perish?


Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from
the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether,
in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from
the original bulk of his sires.

But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the
present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are
found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period
prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those
belonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its
earlier ones.

Of all the pre-adamite whale yet exhumed, by far the largest is the
Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than
seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already
seen, that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton
of a large sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen's
authority, that Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet
long at the time of capture.

But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods;
may it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?

Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of
such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For
Pliny tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and
Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length-
Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of
Banks and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member of
the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales
(reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards;
that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the French
naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning
of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundred
metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work was
published so late as A.D. 1825.

But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day
is as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where
Pliny is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell
him so. Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the
Egyptian mummies that were buried thousands of years before even
Pliny was born, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modern
Kentuckian in his socks; and while the cattle and other animals
sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the
relative proportions in which they are drawn, just as plainly prove
that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only
equal, but far exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh's fat kine;
in the face of all this, I will not admit that of all animals the
whale alone should have degenerated.

But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient
look-outs at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating even
through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and
lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted
along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan
can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether
he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last
whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself
evaporate in the final puff.

Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of
buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands
the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and
scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous
river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a
dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would
seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape
speedy extinction.

But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a
period ago- not a good lifetime- the census of the buffalo in
Illinois exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the
present day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region;
and though the cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of
man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily
forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship
hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done
extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of
forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian
hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset
suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of
moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted on horse
instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but forty
thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be
statistically stated.

Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favor of the
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former
years (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in
small pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in
consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much
more remunerative.  Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those
whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in
immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries,
yokes, and pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into
vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And
equally fallacious seems the conceit, that because the so-called
whale-bone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former years
abounding with them, hence that species also is declining. For they
are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast is no
longer enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other and
remoter strand has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar
spectacle.

Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have
two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever
remain impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the
frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the
savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at
last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate
glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes!
and in a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all
pursuit from man.

But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one
cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that
this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their
battalions. But though for some time past a number of these whales,
not less than 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'west coast
by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations which render
even this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing
argument in this matter.

Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the
populousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what
shall we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at
one hunting the King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those
regions elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate
climes. And there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants,
which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by
Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East-
if they still survive there in great numbers, much more may the great
whale outlast all hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in,
which is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe
and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined.

Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity
of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,
therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult
generations must be contemporary. And what this is, we may soon gain
some idea of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and
family vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men,
women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding
this countless host to the present human population of the globe.

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his
species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas
before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the
Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he
despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded,
like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale
will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the
equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.




Ahab's Leg


The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel
Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence
to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of
his boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering
shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole
there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the
steersman (it was, as ever, something about his not steering
inflexibly enough); then, the already shaken ivory received such an
additional twist and wrench, that though it still remained entire,
and to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely
trustworthy.

And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his
pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab, did at times give careful heed to
the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it
had not been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket,
that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and
insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable
casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it
had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it
without extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely
cured.

Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that
all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct
issue of former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the
most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as
inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with
every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their
like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both tie ancestry
and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of
Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain
canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have
no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary,
shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell's despair;
whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to
themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the
grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in
the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the
highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness
lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic
significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their
diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the
genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among
the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of
all the glad, hay-making suns, and softcymballing, round
harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods
themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in
the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more
properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other
particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to
some, why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after
the sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such
Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought
speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the
dead. Captain Peleg's bruited reason for this thing appeared by no
means adequate; though, indeed, as touching all Ahab's deeper part,
every revelation partook more of significant darkness than of
explanatory light. But, in the end, it all came out; this one matter
did, at least. That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary
recluseness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting,
dropping circle ashore, who for any reason, possessed the privilege
of a less banned approach to him; to that timid circle the above
hinted casualty- remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by
Ahab- invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the
land of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him,
they had all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the
knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it was, that not till
a considerable interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the
Pequod's decks.

But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the
air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or
not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he
took plain practical procedures;- he called the carpenter.

And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without
delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him
supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale)
which had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a
careful selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be
secured. This done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg
completed that night; and to provide all the fittings for it,
independent of those pertaining to the distrusted one in use.
Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its
temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate the affair, the
blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the forging of
whatever iron contrivances might be needed.




The Carpenter


Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a
woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most
part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary
and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from
furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's
carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this
stage.

Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those
belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-hand,
practical extent, alike experienced in numerous trades and callings
collateral to his own; the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and
outbranching trunk of all those numerous handicrafts which more or
less have to do with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the
application to him of the generic remark above, this carpenter of the
Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical
emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or
four years' voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to
speak of his readiness in ordinary duties:- repairing stove boats,
sprung spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting
bull's eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, and
other miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special
business; he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of
conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.

The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so
manifold, was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished
with several vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of
wood. At all times except when whales were alongside, this bench was
securely lashed athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.

A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its
hole: the carpenter claps it into one of his ever ready vices, and
straightway files it smaller. A lost landbird of strange plumage
strays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of
right-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter
makes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsmen sprains his wrist: the
carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion
stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar; screwing each
oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the
constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings:
the carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the
carpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him
be seated there; but the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the
unconcluded operation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice,
the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him
draw the tooth.

Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike
indifferent and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of
ivory; heads he deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held
for capstans. But while now upon so wide a field thus variously
accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too; all
this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But
not precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for
a certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it
so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed
one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible
world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still
eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig
foundations for cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in
him, involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;-
yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, crutch-like,
antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now and then with
a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served to pass the
time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah's
ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer,
whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss; but
what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might
have originally pertained to him? He was a stript abstract; an
unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living
without premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might
almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a
sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem
to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had
been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or
uneven; but merely by kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal
process. He was a pure manipulater; his brain, if he had ever had
one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He
was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in
parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior- though a little
swelled- of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of
various sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls,
pens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors
wanted to use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do
was to open that part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for
tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they were.

Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a
common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow
anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of
quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But
there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or
more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning
life-principle in him; this it was, that kept him a great part of the
time soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning wheel, which also
hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a sentry-box and this
soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep himself
awake.




Ahab and the Carpenter


The Deck - First Night Watch

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

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

AHAB (advancing)
(During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing at times)

Well, manmaker!

Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the
length. Let me measure, sir.

Measured for a leg! good. Well, it's not the first time. About it!
There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here,
carpenter; let me feel its grip once.  So, so; it does pinch some.

Oh, sir, it will break bones- beware, beware!

No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this
slippery world that can hold, man. What's Prometheus about there?-
the blacksmith, I mean- what's he about?

He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.

Right. It's a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a
fierce red flame there!

Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for his kind of fine work.

Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that
old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a
blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what's made in fire must
properly belong to fire; and so hell's probable. How the soot flies!
This must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter,
when he's through with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel
shoulder-blades; there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack.

Sir?

Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man after a
desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then,
chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel then, legs with roots to 'em,
to stay in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no
heart at all, brass forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine
brains; and let me see- shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but
put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards. There, take
the order, and away.

Now, what's he speaking about, and who's he speaking to, I should
like know? Shall I keep standing here? (aside.)

'Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here's
one. No, no, no; I must have a lantern.

Ho, ho! That's it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.

What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?
Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.

I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.

Carpenter? why that's- but no;- a very tidy, and, I may say, an
extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here,
carpenter;- or would'st thou rather work in clay?

Sir?- Clay? clay, sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.

The fellow's impious! What art thou sneezing about?

Bone is rather dusty, sir.

Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself under
living people's noses.

Sir?- oh! ah!- I guess so;- yes- dear!

Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good
workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well
for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall
nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it;
that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I
mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?

Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard
something curious on that score; how that a dismasted man never
entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still
pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?

It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine was;
so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the
soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there
to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle?

I should humbly call it a poser, sir.

Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking
thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing
precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy
spite? In thy most solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear
eavesdroppers? Hold, don't speak! And if I still feel the smart of my
crushed leg, though it be now so long dissolved; then, why mayst not
thou, carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, and without a
body? Hah!

Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over
again; I think I didn't carry a small figure, sir.

Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.- How long before
the leg is done?

Perhaps an hour, sir.

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

CARPENTER (resuming work).

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




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 ale? Starbuck! I'll
not have the Burtons hoisted."

"What will the owners say, sir?"

"Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the
Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to
me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my
conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its
commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's keel.- On
deck!"

"Captain Ahab," said the reddening mate, moving further into the
cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it
almost seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest
outward manifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than
half distrustful of itself; "A better man than I might well pass over
in thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye,
and in a happier, Captain Ahab."

"Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?-
On deck!"

"Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir- to be
forbearing! Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto,
Captain Ahab?"

Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most
South-Sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,
exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one
Captain that is lord over the Pequod.- On deck!"

For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery
cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the
blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half
calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and
said: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask
thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab
beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man."

"He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!"
murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. "What's that he said- Ahab
beware of Ahab- there's something there!" Then unconsciously using
the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the
little cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed,
and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.

"Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck," he said lowly to the
mate; then raising his voice to the crew: "Furl the t'gallant-sails,
and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up
Burtons, and break out in the main-hold."

It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as
respecting Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of
honesty in him; or mere prudential policy which, under the
circumstance, imperiously forbade the slightest symptom of open
disaffection, however transient, in the important chief officer of
his ship. However it was, his orders were executed; and the Burtons
were hoisted.

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




Queequeg in His Coffin


Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold
were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it
being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the
slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight
sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did
they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the
lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy
corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of
the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the
flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and
shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoop, were hoisted out, till at
last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull
echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs, and
reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted
demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all
Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit
them then.

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him
nigh to his endless end.

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;
dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the
higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as
harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but-
as we have elsewhere seen- mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and
finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all
day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the
clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among
whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called. Poor Queequeg!
when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped
over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to
his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that
dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a
well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor
pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he
caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after
some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill
of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few
long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his
frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his
cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing
fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and
mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a
wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not
die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they
grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like
the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over
you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange
things in his face, as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster
died. For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet
was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which
alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which
only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that- let us
say it again- no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier
thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over
the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock,
and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and
the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards
his destined heaven.

Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,
what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he
asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day
was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket
he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the
rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned
that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those dark
canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for
it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a
dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be
floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they
believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible
horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue
heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added,
that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock,
according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the
death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of
Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like
a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that
involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.

Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter
was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might
include. There was some heathenish, coffin-colored old lumber aboard,
which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal
groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin
was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of
the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the
indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the
forecastle and took Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly
chalking Queequeg's person as he shifted the rule.

"Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the Long Island
sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and
general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length
the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting
two notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks
and his tools, and to work.

When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he
lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring
whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.

Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every
one's consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly
brought to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all
mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since
they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows
ought to be indulged.

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with
an attentive eye.  He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden
stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin
along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request,
also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within; a flask of
fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth
scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being
rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his
final bed, that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it
had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his
bed and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his
breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he
called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a
leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but
his composed countenance in view. "Rarmai" (it will do; it is easy)
he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock.

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all
the while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings,
took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.

"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving?
where go ye now?  But if the current carry ye to those sweet Antilles
where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one
little errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long:
I think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him;
for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;-
I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beat ye
your dying march."

"I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in
violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in
their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been
really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond
faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings
heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that,
but there?- Hark! he speaks again; but more wildly now."

"Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his
harpoon? Lay it across here.- Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a
game cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!-
mind ye that; Queequeg dies game!- take ye good heed of that;
Queequeg dies game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he
died a coward; died all a'shiver;- out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find
Pip, tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a
coward! Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! I'd never beat my
tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more
dying here.  No, no! shame upon all cowards- shame upon them! Let'em
go drown like Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!"

During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip
was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.

But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now
that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied;
soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box; and thereupon, when
some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that
the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;- at a critical
moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was
leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he
could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live
or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He
answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a
man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him:
nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,
unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and
civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six months
convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well
again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at
length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but
eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet,
threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a
little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and
poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.

With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order
there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner
of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was
striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on
his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet
and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written
out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a
mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in
his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one
volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his
own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore
destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon
they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought
it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of
his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg- "Oh,
devilish tantalization of the gods!"




The Pacific


When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea; were it not for other things I could have greeted my dear
Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my
youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a
thousand leagues of blue.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose
gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath;
like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried
Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures,
wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four
continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow
unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned
dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls,
lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds;
the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.

To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld,
must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost
waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its
arms. The same waves wash the moles of the new-built California
towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men and lave
the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than
Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and
low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans.
Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk
about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart
of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the
seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.

But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing, like an
iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with
one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee
isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with
the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea;
that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be
swimming. Launched at length upon these almost final waters, and
gliding towards the Japanese cruising-ground, the old man's purpose
intensified itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vice; the
Delta of his forehead's veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his
very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, "Stern all!
the White Whale spouts thick blood!"




The Blacksmith


Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in
these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active
pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered
old blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again,
after concluding his contributory work for Ahab's leg, but still
retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being
now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and
bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or
new shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would
be surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding
boat-spades, pikeheads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching
his every sooty movement, as he toiled.  Nevertheless, this old man's
was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no
impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn;
bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled
away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his
hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it was.- Most
miserable!

A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful
appearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage
excited the curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of
their persisted questionings he had finally given in; and so it came
to pass that every one now knew the shameful story of his wretched
fate.

Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the
road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly
felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a
leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities
of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out
the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet
uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama.

He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly
encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin. He had
been an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a
house and garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife,
and three blithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a
cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. But one night, under
cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning
disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and
robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith
himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family's
heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that fatal
cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for
prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was
in the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it;
so that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no
unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing
of her young-armed old husband's hammer; whose reverberations,
muffled by passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not
unsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stout Labor's iron lullaby, the
blacksmith's infants were rocked to slumber.

Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely?
Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin
came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and
her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their
after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death
plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily
toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left
the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life
should make him easier to harvest.

Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew
more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the
last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes,
glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the
bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold;
the mother dived down into the long church-yard grass; her children
twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old man
staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his
grey head a scorn to flaxen curls!

Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it
is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense
Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the
death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some
interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and
all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of
unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and
from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to
them- "Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the
guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without
dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your
now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious
than death. dome hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within the
churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!"

Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by
fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so
Perth went a-whaling.




The Forge


With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about
mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter
placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in
the coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, when Captain Ahab
came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern
bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused;
till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began
hammering it upon the anvil- the red mass sending off the sparks in
thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.

"Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always flying
in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;- look here,
they burn; but thou- thou liv'st among them without a scorch."

"Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab," answered Perth,
resting for a moment on his hammer; "I am past scorching-, not easily
can'st thou scorch a scar."

"Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely
woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in
others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why
dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do
the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?- What wert
thou making there?"

"Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it."

"And can'st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such
hard usage as it had?"

"I think so, sir."

"And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never
mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?"

"Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one."

"Look ye here then," cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning
with both hands on Perth's shoulders; "look ye here- here- can ye
smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith," sweeping one hand across
his ribbed brow; "if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I
lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my
eyes. Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam?"

"Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?"

"Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for
though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into
the bone of my skull- that is all wrinkles! But, away with child's
play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!"  jingling the
leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. "I, too, want a
harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part,
Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own
fin-bone. There's the stuff," flinging the pouch upon the
anvil. "Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of
the steel shoes of racing horses."

"Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the
best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work."

"I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from
the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge
me first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer
these twelve together like the yarns and strands of a
tow-line. Quick! I'll blow the fire."

When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one,
by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron
bolt. "A flaw!" rejecting the last one. "Work that over again,
Perth."

This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when
Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then,
regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him
the glowing rods, after the other, and the hard pressed forge
shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently,
and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse
or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside.

"What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?" muttered
Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. "That Parsee smells fire like
a fusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan."

At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and
as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water
near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face.

"Would'st thou brand me, Perth?" wincing for a moment with the pain;
"have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?"

"Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this
harpoon for the White Whale?"

"For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them
thyself, man.  Here are my razors- the best of steel; here, and make
the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea."

For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would
fain not use them.

"Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave,
sup, nor pray till- but here- to work!"

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the
shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the
blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to
tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.

"No, no- no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy,
there!  Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give
me as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A
cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the
heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.

"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!"
deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured
the baptismal blood.

Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of
hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the
socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some
fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great
tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a
harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings,
Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and now for the seizings."

At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread
yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the
pole was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the
rope was traced halfway along the pole's length, and firmly secured
so, with inter-twistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope-
like the Three Fates- remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked
away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of
the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he
entered his cabin, light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous
sound was heard. Oh! Pip, thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting
eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black
tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it!




The Gilder


Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese
cruising ground the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often,
in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty
hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily
pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an
interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising;
though with but small success for their pains.

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow
heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so
sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like
hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times
of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy
of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath
it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but
conceals a remorseless fang.

These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he
regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing
only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through
high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie:
as when the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears,
while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.

The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these
there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied
children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when
the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your
most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting,
interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.

Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as
temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem
to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath
upon them prove but tarnishing.

Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in
ye,- though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,- in
ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and
for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal
on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the
mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms
crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady
unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed
gradations, and at the last one pause:- through infancy's unconscious
spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common
doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's
pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round
again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies
the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails
the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the
foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose
unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity
lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.

And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into
that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:-

"Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's
eyes!- Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping
cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look
deep down and do believe."

And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scale, leaped up in that same
golden light:-

"I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths
that he has always been jolly!"




The Pequod Meets The Bachelor


And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing
down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been
welded.

It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her
last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in
glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously,
sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground,
previous to pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red
bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended,
bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long
lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and
jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on every
side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two
barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw
slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main
truck was a brazen lamp.

As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most
surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising
in the same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months
without securing a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and
bread been given away to make room for the far more valuable sperm,
but additional supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the
ships she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the
captain's and officers' state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had
been knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the
broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a
centerpiece. In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and
pitched their chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that
the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it;
that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that
the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled
them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the
captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his
hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction.

As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the
barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and
drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her
huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like poke or stomach
skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the
clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and
harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped
with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamental
boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three
Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were
presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship's
company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from
which the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost thought
they were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries they
raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled into
the sea.

Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the
ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was
full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual
diversion.

And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,
with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's
wakes- one all jubilations for things passed, the other all
forebodings as to things to come- their two captains in themselves
impersonated the whole striking contrast of the scene.

"Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander,
lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.

"Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply.

"No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the
other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!"

"Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"

"Not enough to speak of- two islanders, that's all;- but come aboard,
old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your
brow. Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and
homeward-bound."

"How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou
art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me
an empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will
mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!"

And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the
other stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted;
the crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards
the receding Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their
gaze for the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over
the taffrail, eyed the homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a
small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial,
seemed thereby bringing two remote associations together, for that
vial was filled with Nantucket soundings.




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!"




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.




The Quadrant


The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab,
coming from his cabin cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman
would ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners
quickly run to the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes
centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to
point the ship's prow for the equator. In good time the order
came. It was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his
high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of
the sun to determine his latitude.

Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing
focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks
lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this
nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of
God's throne.  Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with colored
glasses, through which to take sight of that solar fire. So, swinging
his seated form to the roll of the ship, and with his
astrological-looking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in
that posture for some moments to catch the precise instant when the
sun should gain its precise meridian.  Meantime while his whole
attention was absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling beneath him on the
ship's deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab's, was eyeing the same
sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and
his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length
the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory
leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise
instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up
towards the sun and murmured to himself: "Thou seamark! thou high and
mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly where I am- but canst thou cast
the least hint where I shall be? Or canst thou tell where some other
thing besides me is this moment living? Where is Moby Dick? This
instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look into the
very eye that is even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that
is even now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither
side of thee, thou sun!"

Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its
numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered:
"Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores,
and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but
what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where
thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that
holds thee: no!  not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop
of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with
thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain
toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that
heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are
even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this
earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the
crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his
firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!" dashing it to the deck, "no
longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's compass,
and the level deadreckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct
me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye," lighting from the boat to
the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly
pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"

As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live and
dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a
fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself- these passed over
the mute, motionless Parsee's face. Unobserved he rose and glided
away; while, awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen
clustered together on the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing
the deck, shouted out- "To the braces! Up helm!- square in!"

In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled
upon her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised
upon her long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting
on one sufficient steed.

Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's
tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck.

"I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full
of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down,
down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of
thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!"

"Aye," cried Stubb, "but sea-coal ashes- mind ye that, Mr. Starbuck-
sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well! I heard Ahab mutter,
'Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine;
swears that I must play them, and no others.' And damn me, Ahab, but
thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!"




The Candles


Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal
crouches in spaced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most
effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows
tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that
in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst
of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that
cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.

Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and
bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly
ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the
thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled mast
fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the
tempest had left for its after sport.

Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at
every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional
disaster might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb
and Flask were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer
lashing of the boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though
lifted to the very top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat
(Ahab's) did not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against
the reeling ship's high teetering side, stove in the boat's bottom at
the stern, and left it again, all dripping through like a sieve.

"Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck," said Stubb, regarding the wreck,
"but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You
see, Mr.  Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it
leaps, all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as
for me, all the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck
here. But never mind; it's all in fun: so the old song says;"-
(sings.)

                       Oh! jolly is the gale,
                      And a joker is the whale,
                      A' flourishin' his tail,-
         Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
                       lad, is the Ocean, oh!

                       The scud all a flyin',
                    That's his flip only foamin';
                   When he stirs in the spicin',-
         Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
                       lad, is the Ocean, oh!

                      Thunder splits the ships,
                    But he only smacks his lips,
                      A tastin' of this flip,-
         Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
                       lad, is the Ocean, oh!

"Avast Stubb," cried Starbuck, "let the Typhoon sing, and strike his
harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold
thy peace."

"But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a
coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is,
Mr. Starbuck, there's no way to stop my singing in this world but to
cut my throat. And when that's done, ten to one I sing ye the
doxology for a wind-up."

"Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own."

"What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else,
never mind how foolish?"

"Here!" cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing
his hand towards the weather bow, "markest thou not that the gale
comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby
Dick? the very course he swung to this day noon? now mark his boat
there; where is that stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is
wont to stand- his stand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and
sing away, if thou must!

"I don't half understand ye: what's in the wind?"

"Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to
Nantucket," soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb's
question. "The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn
it into a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to
windward, all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward- I see
it lightens up there; but not with the lightning."

At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness,
following the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at
the same instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.

"Who's there?"

"Old Thunder!" said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his
pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by
elbowed lances of fire.

Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry
off the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea
some ships carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the
water. But as this conductor must descend to considerable depth, that
its end may avoid all contact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept
constantly towing there, it would be liable to many mishaps, besides
interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and more or less
impeding the vessel's way in the water; because of all this, the
lower parts of a ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard; but
are generally made in long slender links, so as to be the more
readily hauled up into the chains outside, or thrown down into the
sea, as occasion may require.

"The rods! the rods!" cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished
to vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting
flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post. "Are they overboard? drop them
over, fore and aft. Quick!"

"Avast!" cried Ahab; "let's have fair play here, though we be the
weaker side. Yet I'll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and
Andes, that all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let
them be, sir."

"Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! the corpusants!

All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each
tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each
of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air,
like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.

"Blast the boat! let it go!" cried Stubb at this instant, as a
swashing sea heaved up under his own little craft so that its gunwale
violently jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. "Blast it!"-
but slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the
flames; and immediately shifting his tone he cried- "The corpusants
have mercy on us all!"

To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance
of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate
curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a
seething sea; but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common
oath when God's burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His
"Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" has been woven into the shrouds and the
cordage.

While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from
the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle,
all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a faraway
constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the
gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and
seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted
mouth of Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely
gleamed as if they too had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by
the preternatural light, Queequeg's tattooing burned like Satanic
blue flames on his body.

The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once
more the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A
moment or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against
some one. It was Stubb. "What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy
cry; it was not the same in the song."

"No, no, it wasn't; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I
hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?-
have they no bowels for a laugh?  And look ye, Mr. Starbuck- but it's
too dark to look. Hear me, then; I take that mast-head flame we saw
for a sign of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is
going to be chock a' block with sperm-oil, d'ye see; and so, all that
sperm will work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three
masts will yet be as three spermaceti candles- that's the good
promise we saw."

At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb's face slowly beginning
to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: "See! see!" and
once more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed
redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor.

"The corpusants have mercy on us all," cried Stubb, again.

At the base of the main-mast, full beneath the doubloon and the
flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab's front, but with his head
bowed away from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging
rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number
of the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung
pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard
twig. In various enchanted attitudes like the standing, or stepping,
or running skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the
deck; but all their eyes upcast.

"Aye, aye, men!" cried Ahab. "Look up at it; mark it well; the white
flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast
links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against
it; blood against fire! So."

Then turning- the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his
foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eve, and high-flung right
arm, he stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.

"Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian
once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that
to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and
I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor
reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill;
and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy
speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake
life will dispute unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the
midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands
here. Though but a point at best; whenceso'er I came; whereso'er I
go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me,
and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe.  Come
in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at
thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest
navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still
remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest
me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee."

Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap
lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest,
closes his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them.

"I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it
wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I
can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the
homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take
it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and
ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling in some
stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to
thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am
darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins
cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou
magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my
fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou
done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou
knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly
knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that
of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There
is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all
thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through
thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou
foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy
incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with
haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I
leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee;
defyingly I worship thee!"

"The boat! the boat!" cried Starbuck, "look at thy boat, old man!""

Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly
lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his
whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused
the loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb
there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent
harpoon burned there like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab
by the arm- "God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! 't is an ill
voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we
may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better
voyage than this."

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces- though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the
aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous
cry. But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and
snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them;
swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a
rope's end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from
the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab
again spoke:-

"All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and
heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye
may know to what tune this heart beats: look ye here; thus I blow out
the last fear!" And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the
flame.

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood
of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render
it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for
thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners
did run from him in a terror of dismay.




The Deck Toward the End of the First Night Watch


Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him.

We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working
loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?"

"Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway them up
now."

"Sir!- in God's name!- sir?"

"Well."

"The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?"

"Strike nothing, and stir nothing but lash everything. The wind
rises, but it has not got up to my table-hands yet. Quick, and see to
it.- By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of
some coasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots!
Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of
mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but
cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh
aloft there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know that
the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!"




Zklif jxd flkhzlvjk zlkcxv


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

No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but
you will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how
long ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn't you once say
that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something
extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with
powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn't
you say so?"

"Well, suppose I did? What then! I've part changed my flesh since
that time, why not my mind? Besides, supposing we are loaded with
powder barrels aft and lucifers forward; how the devil could the
lucifers get afire in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man,
you have pretty red hair, but you couldn't get afire now. Shake
yourself; you're Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might fill
pitchers at your coat collar.  Don't you see, then, that for these
extra risks the Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees?
Here are hydrants, Flask. But hark, again, and I'll answer ye the
other thing.  First take your leg of from the crown of the anchor
here, though, so I can pass the rope; now listen. What's the mighty
difference between holding a mast's lightning-rod in the storm, and
standing close by a mast that hasn't got any lightning-rod at all in
a storm?  Don't you see, you timber-head, that no harm can come to
the holder of the rod, unless the mast is first struck? What are you
talking about, then? Not one ship in a hundred carries rods, and
Ahab,- aye, man, and all of us,- were in no more danger then, in my
poor opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing
the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would have every man
in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running up the
corner of his hat, like a militia officer's skewered feather, and
trailing behind like his sash. Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's
easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can
be sensible."

"I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard."

"Yes, when a fellow's soaked through, it's hard to be sensible,
that's a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind;
catch the turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down
these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again.
Tying these two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands
behind him. And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. These
are your iron fists, hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder,
Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings
with an uncommon long cable, though. There, hammer that knot down,
and we've done. So; next to touching land, lighting on deck is the
most satisfactory. I say, just wring out my jacket skirts, will ye?
Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask; but seems to me, a
long-tailed coat ought always to be worn in all storms afloat. The
tails tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d'ye
see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs,
Flask. No more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I must mount a
swallow-tail, and drive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes
my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from
heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad."




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!"




The Musket


During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the
Pequod's jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to
the deck by its spasmodic motions even though preventer tackles had
been attached to it- for they were slack- because some play to the
tiller was indispensable.

In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed
shuttlecock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the
needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was
thus with the Pequod's; at almost every shock the helmsman had not
failed to notice the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon
the cards; it is a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some
sort of unwonted emotion.

Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through
the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb- one engaged forward
and the other aft- the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and
main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away
to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are
cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.

The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a
storm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went through
the water with some precision again; and the course- for the present,
East-south-east- which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more
given to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had
only steered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now
bringing the ship as near her course as possible, watching the
compass meanwhile, lo! a good sign! the wind seemed coming round
astern; aye, the foul breeze became fair!

Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of "Ho! the fair
wind!  oh-ye-ho cheerly, men!" the crew singing for joy, that so
promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portends
preceding it.

In compliance with the standing order of his commander- to report
immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided
change in the affairs of the deck,- Starbuck had no sooner trimmed
the yards to the breeze- however reluctantly and gloomily,- that he
mechanically went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.

Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a
moment. The cabin lamp- taking long swings this way and that- was
burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's
bolted door,- a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of
upper panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a
certain humming silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by
all the roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were
shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against the forward
bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck's
heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely
evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good
accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.

"He would have shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very
musket that he pointed at me;- that one with the studded lock; let me
touch it- lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly
lances, strange, that I should shake so now.  Loaded? I must
see. Aye, aye; and powder in the pan;- that's not good. Best spill
it?- wait. I'll cure myself of this. I'll hold the musket boldly
while I think.- I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair?
Fair for death and doom,- that's fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind
that's only fair for that accursed fish.- The very tube he pointed at
me!- the very one; this one- I hold it here; he would have killed me
with the very thing I handle now.- Aye and he would fain kill all his
crew. Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has
he not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas,
gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding
log?  and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would have
no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered
to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?- Yes, it would
make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship
come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this
ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this instant- put
aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep?
Yes, just there,- in there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still
alive, and soon awake again. I can't withstand thee, then, old
man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken
to; all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands,
this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy
vow; say'st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!- But is there no
other way? no lawful way?- Make him a prisoner to be taken home?
What! hope to wrest this old man's living power from his own living
hands? Only a fool would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted
all over with ropes and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this
cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I
could not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his howlings; all
comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leave me on the long
intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The land is hundreds of
leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone here upon
an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me and
law.- Aye, aye, 'tis so.- Is heaven a murderer when its lightning
strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin
together?- And would I be a murderer, then, if"- and slowly,
stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's
end against the door.

"On this level, Ahab's hammock swings within; his head this way. A
touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.- Oh
Mary! Mary!- boy! boy! boy!- But if I wake thee not to death, old
man, who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day
week may sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I?
shall I?- The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main
topsails are reefed and set!  she heads her course."

"Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!"

Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's
tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb
dream to speak.

The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the
panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel, but turning from the
door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.

"He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and
tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say."




The Needle


Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her
on like giants' palms outspread. The strong unstaggering breeze
abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the
whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning
light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of
his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings,
as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over
everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly
leaps with light and heat.

Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every
time the teetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he
turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she
profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's
rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his
undeviating wake.

"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot
of the sun.  Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun
to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the
sea!"

But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.

"East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.

"Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist. "Heading East at
this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"

Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its
very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.

Thrusting his head half-way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one
glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment
he almost seemed to stagger.  Standing behind him Starbuck looked,
and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as
infallibly going West.

But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the
old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened
before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses-
that's all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it."

"Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the pale
mate, gloomily.

Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more
than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic
energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know,
essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is
not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be. Instances
where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite
down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at
times been still more fatal; all its loathsome virtue being
annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use
than an old wife's knitting needle. But in either case, the needle
never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or
lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate
reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were the
lowermost one inserted into the kelson.

Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the
transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended
hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the
needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship's
course to be changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once
more the Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for
the supposed fair one had only been juggling her.

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said
nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and
Flask- who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his
feelings- likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though
some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their
fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained
almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a
certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible
Ahab's.

For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper
sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.

"Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked
thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So,
so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck- a
lance without the pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the
sail-maker's needles. Quick!"

Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now
about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have
been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile
skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted
compasses. Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by
transpointed needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to
be passed over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and
evil portents.

"Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old
Ahab's needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his
own, that will point as true as any."

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as
this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic
might follow. But Starbuck looked away.

With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the
lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade
him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the
maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he
placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly
hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as
before. Then going through some small strange motions with it-
whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely
intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain- he called for
linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two
reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by
its middle, over one of the compass cards. At first, the steel went
round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last
it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching
for this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing
his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,- "Look ye, for yourselves,
if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that
compass swears it!"

One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes
could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they
slunk away.

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
fatal pride.




The Log and Line


While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the
log and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident
reliance upon other means of determining the vessel's place, some
merchantmen, and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly
neglect to heave the log; though at the same time, and frequently
more for form's sake than anything else, regularly putting down upon
the customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well as the
presumed average of progression every hour. It had been thus with the
Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached hung, long
untouched, just beneath the railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and
spray had damped it; sun and wind had warped it; all the elements had
combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. But heedless of all this,
his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance upon the reel, not
many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered how his quadrant
was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level log and
line. The ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows rolled in
riots.

"Forward, there! Heave the log!"

Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly
Manxman. "Take the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."

They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where
the deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping
into the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.

The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting
handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved,
so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced
to him.

Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty
turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old
Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to
speak.

"Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have
spoiled it."

"'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled
thee? Thou seem'st to hold. Oh, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not
thou it."

"I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey
hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing, 'specially with a
superior, who'll ne'er confess."

"What's that? there now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's
granite-founded College; but methinks he's too subservient. Where
wert thou born?"

"In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir."

"Excellent! Thou'st hit the world by that."

"I know not, sir, but I was born there."

"In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good. Here's a
man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of
Man; which is sucked in- by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind
wall butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it!  So."

The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a
long dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to
whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows,
the towing resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger
strangely.

"Hold hard!"

Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the
tugging log was gone.

"I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad
sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here,
Tahitian; reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make
another log, and mend thou the line. See to it."

"There he goes now; to him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer
seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in,
Tahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken,
and dragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?"

"Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whaleboat. Pip's
missing. Let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here,
fisherman. It drags hard; I guess he's holding on.  Jerk him, Tahiti!
Jerk him off we haul in no cowards here. Ho! there's his arm just
breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off- we haul in no
cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here's Pip, trying to get on
board again."

"Peace, thou crazy loon," cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.
"Away from the quarter-deck!"

"The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab, advancing.
"Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?

"Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!"

"And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils
of thy eyes.  Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls
to sieve through! Who art thou, boy?"

"Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! One hundred
pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high- looks cowardly-
quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip the coward?"

"There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens!
look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned
him, ye creative libertines.  Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's
home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre,
boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven by my heart-strings. Come,
let's down."

"What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's
hand, and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing
as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a
man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old
Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with
the white, for I will not let this go."

"Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in
gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient
gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing
not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and
gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than
though I grasped an Emperor's!"

"There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft
with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of
the rotten line- all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best
have a new line altogether. I'll see Mr.  Stubb about it."




The Life-Buoy


Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her
progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod
held on her path towards the Equator.  Making so long a passage
through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long,
sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously
mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous
and desperate scene.

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before
the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch- then
headed by Flask- was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and
unearthly- like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all
Herod's murdered Innocents- that one and all, they started from their
reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned
all transfixed by listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that
wild cry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of
the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan
harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman- the oldest
mariner of all- declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were
heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.

Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when
he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not
unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings.  He hollowly laughed, and
thus explained the wonder.

Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great
numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or
some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and
kept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of
wall. But this only the more affected some of them, because most
mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising
not only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from
the human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen
peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under
certain circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for
men.

But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At
sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;
and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for
sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was
thus with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may,
he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard- a cry and a
rushing- and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and
looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of
the sea.

The life-buoy- a long slender cask- was dropped from the stern, where
it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to
seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had
shrunken, so that it slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled
at its every pore; and the studded iron-bound cask followed the
sailor to the bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth
but a hard one.

And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look
out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground;
that man was swallowed up in the deep.  But few, perhaps, thought of
that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this
event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a
fore-shadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an
evil already presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason of
those wild shrieks they had heard the night before. But again the old
Manxman said nay.

The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to
see to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and
as in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of
the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was
directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to
be; therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided
with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg
hinted a hint concerning his coffin.

"A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.

"Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.

"It will make a good enough one," said Flask, "the carpenter here can
arrange it easily."

"Bring it up; there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a
melancholy pause. "Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so- the
coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."

"And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a
hammer.

"Aye."

"And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron.

"Aye."

"And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his hand
as with a pitch-pot.

"Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin,
and no more.- Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me."

"He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he
baulks. Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he
wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he
won't put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with
that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It's like
turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side
now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business- I don't like it at
all; it's undignified; it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do
tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but
clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that
regularly begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway,
and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler's job, that's at
an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It's the old
woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection
all old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who
ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's the reason
I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore when I kept my
job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken into their lonely old
heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but
snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over
the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the
snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before
with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied
up in rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty
Aroostook hemlock; I don't budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing
about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods
make bridal bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and
hearses. We work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not
for us to ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too
confounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I'll do the
job, now, tenderly. I'll have me- let's see- how many in the ship's
company, all told? But I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty
separate, Turk's-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all
round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there'll be thirty
lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very
often beneath the sun!  Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and
marling-spike! Let's to it."




The Deck


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

Back lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand
complies with my humor more genially than that boy.- Middle aisle of
a church! What's here?"

"Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
hatchway!"

"Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault."

"Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does."

"Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
shop?"

"I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?"

"Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?"

"Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
they've set me now to turning it into something else."

"Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolizing, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and
the next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of
those same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much
of a jack-of-all-trades."

"But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do."

"The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade
in hand. Dost thou never?"

"Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that; but
the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because
there was none in his spade, sir.  But the caulking mallet is full of
it. Hark to it."

"Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what
in all things makes the sounding-board is this- there's naught
beneath. And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the
same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the
coffin knock against the churchyard gate, going in?

"Faith, sir, I've-"

"Faith? What's that?"

"Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like- that's all,
sir."

"Um, um; go on."

"I was about to say, sir, that-"

"Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight."

"He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I've heard that the Isle of Albermarle, one of the
Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me
some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle.
He's always under the Line- fiery hot, I tell ye! He's looking this
way- come, oakum; quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the
cork, and I'm the professor of musical glasses- tap, tap!"

(Ahab to himself)

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




The Pequod Meets The Rachel


Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly
down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At
the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as
the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful
sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all
life fled from the smitten hull.

"Bad news; she brings bad news," muttered the old Manxman. But ere
her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere
he could hopefully hail, Ahab's voice was heard.

"Hast seen the White Whale?"

"Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?"

Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected
question; and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the
stranger captain himself, having stopped his vessel's way, was seen
descending her side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon
clinched the Pequod's main-chains, and he sprang to the
deck. Immediately he was recognized by Ahab for a Nantucketer he
knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged.

"Where was he?- not killed!- not killed!" cried Ahab, closely
advancing.  "How was it?"

It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous,
while three of the stranger's boats were engaged with a shoal of
whales, which had led them some four or five miles from the ship; and
while they were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and
head of Moby Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very
far to leeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged boat- a reserved one-
had been instantly lowered in chase.  After a keen sail before the
wind, this fourth boat- the swiftest keeled of all- seemed to have
succeeded in fastening- at least, as well as the man at the mast-head
could tell anything about it. In the distance he saw the diminished
dotted boat; and then a swift gleam of bubbling white water; and
after that nothing more; whence it was concluded that the stricken
whale must have indefinitely run away with his pursuers, as often
happens.  There was some apprehension, but no positive alarm, as
yet. The recall signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came on;
and forced to pick up her three far to windward boats- ere going in
quest of the fourth one in the precisely opposite direction- the ship
had not only been necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till
near midnight, but, for the time, to increase her distance from
it. But the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she crowded
all sail- stunsail on stunsail- after the missing boat; kindling a
fire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the
look-out. But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance
to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though
she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and
not finding anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered
her boats; and though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet
not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.

The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal
his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with
his own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five
miles apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as
it were.

"I will wager something now," whispered Stubb to Flask, "that some
one in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap,
his watch- he's so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of
two pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the
height of the whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale he
looks-pale in the very buttons of his eyes- look- it wasn't the coat-
it must have been the-"

"My boy, my own boy is among them. For God's sake- I beg, I conjure"-
here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far had but
icily received his petition.  "For eight-and-forty hours let me
charter your ship- I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it-
if there be no other way- for eight-and-forty hours only- only that-
you must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing."

"His son!" cried Stubb, "oh, it's his son he's lost! I take back the
coat and watch- what says Ahab? We must save that boy."

"He's drowned with the rest on 'em, last night," said the old Manx
sailor standing behind them; "I heard; all of ye heard their
spirits."

Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the
Rachel's the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was
one of the Captain's sons among the number of the missing boat's
crew; but among the number of the other boats' crews, at the same
time, but on the other hand, separated from the ship during the dark
vicissitudes of the chase, there had been still another son; as that
for a time, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the
cruellest perplexity; which was only solved for him by his chief
mate's instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure of a whaleship
in such emergencies, that is, when placed between jeopardized but
divided boats, always to pick up the majority first. But the captain,
for some unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning
all this, and not till forced to it by Ahab's iciness did he allude
to his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose
father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer's
paternal love, had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils
and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his
race. Nor does it unfrequently occur, that Nantucket captains will
send a son of such tender age away from them, for a protracted three
or four years' voyage in some other ship than their own; so that
their first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall be unenervated by
any chance display of a father's natural but untimely partiality, or
undue apprehensiveness and concern.

Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of
Ahab; and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but
without the least quivering of his own.

"I will not go," said the stranger, "till you say aye to me. Do to me
as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a
boy, Captain Ahab- though but a child, and nestling safely at home
now- a child of your old age too- Yes, yes, you relent; I see it-
run, run, men, now, and stand by to square in the yards."

"Avast," cried Ahab- "touch not a rope-yarn"; then in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word- "Captain Gardiner, I will not do
it. Even now I lose time, Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and
may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr.  Starbuck, look at the
binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn
off all strangers; then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as
before."

Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,
leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and
utter rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his
enchantment, Gardiner silently hurried to the side; more fell than
stepped into his boat, and returned to his ship.

Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange
vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every
dark spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards
were swung around; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now
she beat against a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while
all the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men,
as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the
boughs.

But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly
saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without
comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were
not.




The Cabin


(Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him hy the hand to
follow.)

Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is
coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have
thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing
to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes
my most desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall
serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit
here in my own screwed chair; another screw to it, thou must be."

"No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for
your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I
remain a part of ye."

"Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
fidelity of man!- and a black! and crazy!- but methinks
like-cures-like applies to him too; he grows so sane again."

"They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, whose
drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living
skin. But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must
go with ye."

"If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in
him. I tell thee no; it cannot be."

"Oh good master, master, master!

"Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is
mad. Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck,
and still know that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!- Met!
True art thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for
ever bless thee; and if it come to that,- God for ever save thee, let
what will befall."

(Ahab goes; Pip steps one step forward.)

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




The Hat


And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab,- all other whaling waters swept- seemed to
have chased his foe into an oceanfold, to slay him the more securely
there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and
longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a
vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually
encountered Moby Dick;- and now that all his successive meetings with
various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac
indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether
sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something
in the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble
souls to see. As the unsetting polar star, which through the
livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady,
central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the
constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so,
that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide
beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.

In this foreshadowing interval, too, all humor, forced or natural,
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more
strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed
ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped
mortar of Ahab's iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about
the deck, ever conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them.

But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours
when he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have
seen that even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable
Parsee's glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at
times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest
the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the
men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether
indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast
upon the deck by some unseen being's body. And that shadow was always
hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly
been known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours:
but never sat or leaned; his wan but wondrous eves did plainly say-
We two watchmen never rest.

Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon
the deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his
pivot-hole, or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating
limits,- the main-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing
in the cabin-scuttle,- his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if
to step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however
motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that
he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching
hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes
were really closed at times; or whether he was still intently
scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a
whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in
beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that
the night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him; and so,
day after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath the
planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.

He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,- breakfast
and dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which
darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over,
which still grow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper
verdure. But though his whole life was now become one watch on deck;
and though the Parsee's mystic watch was without intermission as his
own; yet these two never seemed to speak- one man to the other-
unless at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it
necessary. Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the
twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like
asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men
were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange.  At
times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far
parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the
main-mast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the
Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his
abandoned substance.

And yet, somehow, did Ahab- in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,
and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,- Ahab
seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again
both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the
lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all
rib and keel was solid Ahab.

At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was
heard from aft,- "Man the mast-heads!"- and all through the day, till
after sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the
striking of the helmsman's bell, was heard- "What d'ye see?- sharp!
sharp!"

But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the
children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the
monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity; at
least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to
doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the
sight he sought. But if these suspicions were really his, he
sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them, however his
actions might seem to hint them.

"I will have the first sight of the whale myself,"- he said. "Aye!
Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands he rigged a nest
of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved
block, to secure to the mainmast head, he received the two ends of
the downwardreeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared,
pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done,
with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked
round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his
glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah;
and then settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,-
"Take the rope, sir- I give it into thy hands, Starbuck." Then
arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to
hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope
at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand
clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for
miles and miles,- ahead astern, this side, and that,- within the wide
expanded circle commanded at so great a height.

When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in
the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea
is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under
these circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in
strict charge to some one man who has the special watch of
it. Because in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various
different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by
what is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these
ropes are being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it
would be but a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant
watchman, the hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crew
be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea. So Ahab's
proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the only strange thing
about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one only man who
had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the slightest degree
approaching to decision- one of those too, whose faithfulness on the
look-out he had seemed to doubt somewhat; it was strange, that this
was the very man he should select for his watchman; freely giving his
whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person's hands.

Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten
minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly
incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these
latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his
head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a
thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards,
and went eddying again round his head.

But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed
not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have
marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost
the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in
almost every sight.

"Your hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab,
though somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air
dividing them.

But already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long
hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away
with his prize.

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to
replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin
would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that
omen accounted good. Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk
flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last
disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a minute
black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into
the sea.




The Pequod Meets The Delight


The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the
life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most
miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried.  As she drew nigh, all
eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some
whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine
feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.

Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and
some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but
you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the
peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.

"Hast seen the White Whale?"

"Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and
with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.

"Hast killed him?"

"The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that," answered the
other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose
gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.

"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,
Ahab held it out, exclaiming- "Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this
hand I hold his death!  Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning
are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place
behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"

"Then God keep thee, old man- see'st thou that"- pointing to the
hammock- "I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only
yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest
were buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb." Then turning
to his crew- "Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail,
and lift the body; so, then- Oh! God"- advancing towards the hammock
with uplifted hands- "may the resurrection and the life-"

"Brace forward! Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.

But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the
sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea;
not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have
sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.

As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy
hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief.

"Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her wake.
"In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us
your taffrail to show us your coffin!"




The Symphony


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

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

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades
and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it
were, that distinguished them.

Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle
air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion- most seen
here at the Equator- denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving
alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly
firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in
the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of
the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
forehead of heaven.

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky!
how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I
seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol
around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which
grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze,
the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But
the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel,
for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air,
that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother
world, so long cruel- forbidding- now threw affectionate arms round
his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over
one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her
heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab
dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such
wealth as that one wee drop.

Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the
side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless
sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful
not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and
stood there.

Ahab turned.

"Starbuck!"

"Sir."

"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On
such a day- very much such a sweetness as this- I struck my first
whale- a boy-harpooneer of eighteen!  Forty- forty- forty years ago!-
ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and
peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty
years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make
war on the horrors of the deep!  Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those
forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life
I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned,
walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small
entrance to any sympathy from the green country without- oh,
weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!- when
I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me
before- and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare- fit
emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!- when the poorest landsman
has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh
bread to my mouldy crusts- away, whole oceans away, from that young
girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day,
leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow- wife? wife?- rather a
widow with her husband alive? Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I
married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling
blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old
Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey- more a demon than a
man!- aye, aye! what a forty years' fool- fool- old fool, has old
Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm
at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is
Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary
load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me?
Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to
weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I
look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint,
bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the
piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!- crack my heart!-
stave my brain!- mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey
hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus
intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into
a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than
to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearthstone! this
is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No,
no; stay on board, on board!- lower not when I do; when branded Ahab
gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not
with the far away home I see in that eye!"

"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!
why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let
us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck's- wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!- this instant let me
alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would
we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they
have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."

"They have, they have. I have seen them- some summer days in the
morning. About this time- yes, it is his noon nap now- the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come
back to dance him again."

"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every
morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of
his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for
Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away!
See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the
hill!"

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook,
and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.

"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst
not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts
this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an
errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some
invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one
small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that
thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned
round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the
handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded
sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang
that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the
judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and
a mild looking sky; and the airs smells now, as if it blew from a
far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes
of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the
new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last
on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's
scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swarths- Starbuck!"

But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen
away.

Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there, Fedallah was
motionlessly leaning over the same rail.




The Chase - First Day


That night, in the mid-watch when the old man- as his wont at
intervals- stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and
went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely,
snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing
nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be
near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given
forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor
was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and
then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the
odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to
be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.

The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently
vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea
directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the
pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like
marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.

"Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!"

Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the
forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps
that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did
they appear with their clothes in their hands.

"What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.

"Nothing, nothing sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.

"T'gallant sails!- stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!"

All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for
swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they
were hoisting him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way
aloft, and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between
the main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in
the air.  "There she blows!- there she blows! A hump like a
snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"

Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous
whale they had so long been pursuing.  Ahab had now gained his final
perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just
beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian's
head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the
whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea
revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent
spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same
silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and
Indian Oceans.

"And did none of ye see it before?" cried Ahab, hailing the perched
men all around him.

"I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and
I cried out," said Tashtego.

"Not the same instant; not the same- no, the doubloon is mine, Fate
reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised
the White Whale first. There she blows!- there she blows!- there she
blows! There again!- there again!" he cried, in long-drawn,
lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the
whale's visible jets. "He's going to sound! In stunsails! Down
top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay
on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So;
steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All
ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck;
lower, lower,- quick, quicker!" and he slid through the air to the
deck.

"He is heading straight to leeward, sir," cried Stubb, "right away
from us; cannot have seen the ship yet."

"Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!- brace up!
Shiver her!- shiver her!- So; well that! Boats, boats!"

Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were dropped; all the boat-sails
set- all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to
leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up
Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.

Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the
sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the
ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves;
seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless
hunter came so nigh seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire
dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an
isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest,
fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the
slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft
Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his
broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the
shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into
the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright
bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by
the light toes of hundreds of gay fowls softly feathering the sea,
alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff
rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered
pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at
intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and
fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked
on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons.

A gentle joyousness- a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness,
invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away
with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely,
leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching
fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not
Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White
Whale as he so divinely swam.

On each soft side- coincident with the parted swell, that but once
leaving him then flowed so wide away- on each bright side, the whale
shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters
who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had
ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the
vesture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou
glidest on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no matter how
many in that same way thou mayst have bejuggled and destroyed before.

And thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea, among
waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby
Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his
submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his
jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an
instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's
Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air,
the grand god revealed himself, sounded and went out of
sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing, the white
sea-fowls longingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.

With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift,
the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's
reappearance.

"An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he
gazed beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide
wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his
eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery
circle. The breeze now freshened; the sea began to swell.

"The birds!- the birds!" cried Tashtego.

In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were
now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few yards began
fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with
joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's; Ahab
could discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and
down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger
than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying
as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two
long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the
undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled
jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the
sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored
marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar,
Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then,
calling upon Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the
bows, and seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their
oars and stand by to stern.

Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis,
its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale's head while yet
under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with
that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted
himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head
lengthwise beneath the boat.

Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled
for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner
of a biting shark slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within
his mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high
up into the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The
bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of
Ahab's head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White
Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her
mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms;
but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to
gain the uttermost stern.

And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as
the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and
from his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be
darted at from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as
it were; and while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a
quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac
Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed
him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with
all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly
strove to wrench from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the
jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and
snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft,
bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again
in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated
aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck clinging
to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them
across.

At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the
first to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his
head, a movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment
his hand had made one final effort to push the boat out of the
bite. But only slipping further into the whale's mouth, and tilting
over sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the
jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell
flat-faced upon the sea.

Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little
distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in
the billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled
body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose- some twenty or
more feet out of the water- the now rising swells, with all their
confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing
their shivered spray still higher into the air.  So, in a gale, the
but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the
Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud.

But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly
round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his
vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more
deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden
him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's
elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in
the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to
swim,- though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a
whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed
bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From the boat's
fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eved him; the
clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not succor him; more
than enough was it for them to look to themselves. For so revolvingly
appalling was the White Whale's aspect, and so planetarily swift the
ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally
swooping upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed, still
hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to strike,
lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of the
jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that case could they
themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they remained
on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now become
the old man's head.

Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the
ship's mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon
the scene; and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!-
"Sail on the"- but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby
Dick, and whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again,
and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,- "Sail on the
whale!- Drive him off!"

The Pequod's prows were pointed-, and breaking up the charmed circle,
she effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he
sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.

Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white
brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily
strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom for
a time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one
trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails
came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines.

But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the
more abbreviate it.  In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes
condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains
kindly diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such
hearts, though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods
decree it, in their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly
made up of instantaneous intensities; for even in their pointless
centres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of
inferior souls.

"The harpoon," said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on
one bended arm- "is it safe?"

"Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it," said Stubb, showing
it.

"Lay it before me;- any missing men?"

"One, two, three, four, five;- there were five oars, sir, and here
are five men."

"That's good.- Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him!
there! there!  going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!- Hands
off from me! The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the
sail; out oars; the helm!"

It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being
picked up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the
chase is thus continued with what is called double-banked oars. It
was thus now. But the added power of the boat did not equal the added
power of the whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every
fin; swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, that if now,
under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an
indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew
endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining
at the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one brief
vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it sometimes happens, offered
the most promising intermediate means of overtaking the chase.
Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were soon swayed up to
their cranes- the two parts of the wrecked boat having been
previously secured by her- and then hoisting everything to her side,
and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with
stunsails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod
bore down in the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At the well known,
methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly
announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported
as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the
deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the
allotted hour expired, his voice was heard.- "Whose is the doubloon
now? D'ye see him?" and if the reply was No, sir!  straightway he
commanded them to lift him to his perch. In this way the day wore on;
Ahab, now aloft and motionless; anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.

As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men
aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to
a still greater breadth- thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched
hat, at every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been
dropped upon the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to
shattered stern.  At last he paused before it; and as in an already
over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail across,
so over the old man's face there now stole some such added gloom as
this.

Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to
evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place
in his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed-
"The thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir,
ha! ha!"

"What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man!
did I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I
could swear thou wert a paltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard
before a wreck."

"Aye, sir," said Starbuck drawing near, "'tis a solemn sight; an
omen, and an ill one."

"Omen? omen?- the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to
man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and
give an old wives' darkling hint.- Begone! Ye two are the opposite
poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is
Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the
millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold,
cold- I shiver!- How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for
every spout, though he spout ten times a second!"

The day was nearly done; only the helm of his golden robe was
rustling. Soon it was almost dark, but the look-out men still
remained unset.

"Can't see the spout now, sir;- too dark"- cried a voice from the
air.

"How heading when last seen?"

"As before, sir,- straight to leeward."

"Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night. Down royals and
top-gallant stunsails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before
morning; he's making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm
there! keep her full before the wind!- Aloft! come down!- Mr. Stubb,
send a fresh hand to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till
morning."- Then advancing towards the doubloon in the main-mast-
"Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide
here till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first
raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man's;
and if on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum
shall be divided among all of ye! Away now! the deck is thine, sir!"

And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and
slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals
rousing himself to see how the night wore on.

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.




The Chase - Second Day


At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.

"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the
light to spread.

"See nothing, sir."

"Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
for;- the top-gallant sails!- aye, they should have been kept on her
all night. But no matter- 'tis but resting for the rush."

Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular
whale, continued through day into night, and through night into day,
is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For
such is the wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible
confidence acquired by some great natural geniuses among the
Nantucket commanders; that from the simple observation of a whale
when last descried, they will, under certain given circumstances,
pretty accurately foretell both the direction in which he will
continue to swim for a time, while out of sight, as well as his
probable rate of progression during that period. And, in these cases,
somewhat as a pilot, when about losing sight of a coast, whose
general trending he well knows, and which he desires shortly to
return to again, but at some further point; like as this pilot stands
by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the cape at present
visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen
headland, eventually to be visited: so does the fisherman, at his
compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and diligently
marked, through several hours of daylight, then, when night obscures
the fish, the creature's future wake through the darkness is almost
as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the pilot's
coast is to him. So that to this hunter's wondrous skill, the
proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all
desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as
the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly
known in its every pace, that, with watches in their hands, men time
his rate as doctors that of a baby's pulse; and lightly say of it,
the up train or the down train will reach such or such a spot, at
such or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions when these
Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, according to the
observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so many hours
hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about
reached this or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to render
this acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the sea
must be the whaleman's allies; for of what present avail to the
becalmed or wind-bound mariner is the skill that assures him he is
exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable
from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching
the chase of whales.

The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a
cannonball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level
field.

"By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the deck
creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are
two brave fellows!- Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me,
spine-wise, on the sea,- for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel. Ha, ha!
we go the gait that leaves no dust behind!"

"There she blows- she blows!- she blows!- right ahead!" was now the
mast-head cry.

"Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it- ye can't escape- blow on and
split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow
your trump- blister your lungs!- Ahab will dam off your blood, as a
miller shuts his watergate upon the stream!"

And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies
of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old
wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them
might have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight
through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all
sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding
bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the
stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's
suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their
wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these
things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great
bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as
irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so
enslaved them to the race.

They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them
all; though it was put together of all contrasting things- oak, and
maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp- yet all these ran
into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both
balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the
individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt
and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all
directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did
point to.

The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one
hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others,
shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the
rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and
ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite
blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them!

"Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after
the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been
heard. "Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts
one odd jet that way, and then disappears."

It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken
some other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon
proved; for hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope
belayed to its pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an
orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharge
of rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard,
as- much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less
than a mile ahead- Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any
calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic
fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity;
but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his
utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms
his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a
mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven
miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes
off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of
defiance.

"There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to
Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved
against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised,
for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and
stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling
intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.

"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour
and thy harpoon are at hand!- Down! down all of ye, but one man at
the fore. The boats!- stand by!"

Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like
shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and
halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped
from his perch.

"Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat- a spare
one, rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine-
away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!"

As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the
first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for
the three crews. Ahab's boat was central; and cheering his men, he
told them he would take the whale head-and-head,- that is, pull
straight up to his forehead,- a not uncommon thing; for when within a
certain limit, such a course excludes the coming onset from the
whale's sidelong vision. But ere that close limit was gained, and
while yet all three boats were plain as the ship's three masts to his
eye; the White Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in
an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, and a
lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and heedless of
the iron darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on
annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made. But
skilfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers in
the field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by
a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's unearthly slogan tore
every other cry but his to shreds.

But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed
and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the
three lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of
themselves, warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in
him; though now for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to
rally for a more tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab
first paid out more line; and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in
upon it again- hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls- when
lo!- a sight more savage than the embattled teeth of sharks!

Caught and twisted- corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose
harpoons and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came
flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's
boat. Only one thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he
critically reached within- through- and then, without- the rays of
steel; dragged in the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the
bowsman, and then, twice sundering the rope near the chocks- dropped
the intercepted fagot of steel into the sea; and was all fast again.
That instant, the White Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining
tangles of the other lines; by so doing, irresistibly dragged the
more involved boats of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed
them together like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and
then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom,
in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced
round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of
punch.

While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out
after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture,
while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial,
twitching his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and
Stubb was lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while
the old man's line- now parting- admitted of his pulling into the
creamy pool to rescue whom he could;- in that wild simultaneousness
of a thousand concreted perils,- Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed
drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires,- as, arrow-like, shooting
perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad
forehead against its bottom, and sent it turning over and over, into
the air; till it fell again- gunwale down- and Ahab and his men
struggled out from under it, like seals from a sea-side cave.

The first uprising momentum of the whale- modifying its direction as
he struck the surface- involuntarily launched him along it, to a
little distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and
with his back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his
flukes from side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the
least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly
drew back, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if
satisfied that his work for that time was done, he pushed his pleated
forehead through the ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled
lines, continued his leeward way at a traveller's methodic pace.

As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at,
and safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists,
and ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances;
inextricable intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all
these were there; but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have
befallen any one. As with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now
found grimly clinging to his boat's broken half, which afforded a
comparatively easy float; nor did it so exhaust him as the previous
day's mishap.

But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him;
as instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the
shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist
him. His ivory leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp
splinter.

"Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who
he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has."

"The ferrule has not stood, sir," said the carpenter, now coming up;
put good work into that leg."

"But no bones broken, sir, I hope," said Stubb with true concern.

"Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!- d'ye see it.- But even
with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living
bone of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor
white whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his
own proper and inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor,
any mast scrape yonder roof?- Aloft there! which way?"

"Dead to leeward, sir."

"Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest
of the spare boats and rig them- Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the
boat's crews."

"Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir."

"Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!"

"Sir?"

"My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane- there, that
shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him
yet. By heaven it cannot be!-missing?- quick! call them all."

The old man's hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company,
the Parsee was not there.

"The Parsee!" cried Stubb- "he must have been caught in-"

"The black vomit wrench thee!- run all of ye above, alow, cabin,
forecastle- find him- not gone- not gone!"

But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was
nowhere to be found.

"Aye, sir," said Stubb- "caught among the tangles of your line- I
thought I saw him dragging under."

"My line! my line? Gone?- gone? What means that little word?- What
death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the
belfry. The harpoon, too!- toss over the litter there,- d'ye see it?-
the forged iron, men, the white whale's- no, no, no,- listered fool!
this hand did dart it!- 'tis in the fish!- Aloft there! Keep him
nailed-Quick!- all hands to the rigging of the boats- collect the
oars- harpooneers! the irons, the irons!- hoist royals higher- a pull
on all the sheets!- helm there! steady, steady for your life! I'll
ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through
it, but I'll slay him yet!

"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck;
"never, never wilt thou capture him, old man- In Jesus' name no more
of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice
stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee;
thy evil shadow gone- all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:-
what more wouldst thou have?- Shall we keep chasing this murderous
fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the
bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world?
Oh, oh,- Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"

"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that
hour we both saw- thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in
this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm
of this hand- a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab,
man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and
me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates'
lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou
obeyest mine.- Stand round men, men. Ye see an old man cut down to
the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely
foot. 'Tis Ahab- his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that
moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half-stranded, as ropes
that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I
break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's
hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called
omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning
things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for
evermore. So with Moby Dick- two days he's floated- to-morrow will be
the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,- but only to spout his
last! D'ye feel brave men, brave?"

"As fearless fire," cried Stubb.

"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he
muttered on: "The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the
same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly
I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in
mine!- The Parsee- the Parsee!- gone, gone? and he was to go before:-
but still was to be seen again ere I could perish- How's that?-
There's a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the
ghosts of the whole line of judges:- like a hawk's beak it pecks my
brain. I'll, I'll solve it, though!"

When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.

So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as
on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the
grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by
lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and
sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the
broken keel of Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another
leg; while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed
within his scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone
backward on its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.




The Chase - Third Day


The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of
the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.

"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.

"In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's
all. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a
lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a
summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its
throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that
world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab
never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for
mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and
privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness;
and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for
that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm- frozen
calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents
turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now;
this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that
sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy
clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow
it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the
tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere
this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and
ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as
fleeces. Out upon it!- it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no
more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a
cave, and slink there.  And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the
wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and
bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a
coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to
receive a single blow.  Even Ahab is a braver thing- a nobler thing
than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that
most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are
bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most
special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I
say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and
gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the
clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous
mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of
the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land
swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last.  And by the
eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship
on; these Trades, or something like them- something so unchangeable,
and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there!
What d'ye see?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!
Aye, aye, it must be so. I've over-sailed him. How, got the start?
Aye, he's chasing me now; not I, him- that's bad; I might have known
it, too. Fool! the lines- the harpoons he's towing.  Aye, aye, I have
run him by last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the
regular look outs! Man the braces!"

Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's
quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the
braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in
her own white wake.

"Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck
to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the
rail. "God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and
from the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in
obeying him!"

"Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket.
"We should meet him soon."

"Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding, and
once more Ahab swung on high.

A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now
held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points
off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly
from the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of
fire had voiced it.

"Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On
deck there!- brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye. He's
too far off to lower yet, Mr.  Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over
that helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must
down. But let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea;
there's time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young;
aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the
sand-hills of Nantucket! The same- the same!- the same to Noah as to
me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They
must lead somewhere- to something else than common land, more palmy
than the palms.  Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to
windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye,
good bye, old mast-head! What's this?- green? aye, tiny mosses in
these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab's head!
There's the difference now between man's old age and matter's. But
aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though
are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all. By heaven this
dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. I can't compare
with it; and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the
lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What's
that he said? he should still go before me, my pilot; and yet to be
seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea,
supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all night I've been
sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more
thou toldist direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab,
there thy shot fell short. Good bye, mast-head- keep a good eye upon
the whale, the while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night,
when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail."

He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered
through the cloven blue air to the deck.

In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's
stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to
the mate,- who held one of the tackle- ropes on deck- and bade him
pause.

"Starbuck!"

"Sir?"

"For the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage,
Starbuck."

"Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."

"Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing,
Starbuck!"

"Truth, sir: saddest truth."

"Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the
flood;- and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb,
Starbuck. I am old;- shake hands with me, man."

Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.

"Oh, my captain, my captain!- noble heart- go not- go not!- see, it's
a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!"

"Lower away!"-cried Ahab, tossing the mate's arm from him. "Stand by
for the crew!"

In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.

"The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window
there; "O master, my master, come back!"

But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and
the boat leaped on.

Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship,
when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters
beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars,
every time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the
boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the
whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently
following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the
banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first
sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had
been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all
such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to
the senses of the sharks- a matter sometimes well known to affect
them,- however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without
molesting the others.

"Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and
following with his eyes the receding boat- "canst thou yet ring
boldly to that sight?- lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and
followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical
third day?- For when three days flow together in one continuous
intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the
noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing- be that
end what it may. Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and
leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,- fixed at the top of a
shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and
skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl; thou fadest
in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown
wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds
sweep between- Is my journey's end coming? My legs feel faint; like
his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,- beat it yet? Stir
thyself, Starbuck!- stave it off- move, move! speak aloud!- Mast-head
there! See ye my boy's hand on the hill?- Crazed;- aloft there!- keep
thy keenest eye upon the boats:- mark well the whale!- Ho! again!-
drive off that hawk! see! he pecks- he tears the vane"- pointing to
the red flag flying at the main-truck- "Ha, he soars away with it!-
Where's the old man now?  see'st thou that sight, oh Ahab!- shudder,
shudder!"

The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the
mast-heads- a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had
sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on
his way a little sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew
maintaining the profoundest silence, as the head-bent waves hammered
and hammered against the opposing bow.

"Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads
drive them in!  ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin
and no hearse can be mine:- and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!"

Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then
quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of
ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a
subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled
with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot
lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping
veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then
fell swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the
waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly
sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like
new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.

"Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward
to the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded
in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that
fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his
broad white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted
together; as head on, he came churning his tail among the boats; and
once more flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from
the two mates' boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of
their bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a scar.

While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and as
the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank
as he shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed
round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns
in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions
of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen;
his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full
upon old Ahab.

The harpoon dropped from his hand.

"Befooled, befooled!"- drawing in a long lean breath- "Aye, Parsee! I
see thee again.- Aye, and thou goest before; and this, this then is
the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last
letter of thy word. Where is the second hearse?  Away, mates, to the
ship! those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and
return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die- Down, men! the first
thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I
harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey
me.- Where's the whale? gone down again?"

But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with
the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last
encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was
now again steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,-
which thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him,
though for the present her headway had been stopped. He seemed
swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing
his own straight path in the sea.

"Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third
day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that
madly seekest him!"

Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled
to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was
sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's
face as he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel
about, and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious
interval. Glancing upwards he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo,
eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were
rocking in the two staved boats which had just been hoisted to the
side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One after the other,
through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses of
Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new
irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he heard the hammers in the
broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his
heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or flag was gone
from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained
that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and
nails, and so nail it to the mast.

Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the resistance
to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some
latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White
Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so
rapidly nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's last start
had not been so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over
the waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously
stuck to the boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that
the blades became jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in
the sea, at almost every dip.

"Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull
on! 'tis the better rest, the sharks' jaw than the yielding water."

"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"

"They will last long enough! pull on!- But who can tell"- he
muttered- "whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
Ahab?- But pull on! Aye, all alive, now- we near him. The helm! take
the helm! let me pass,"- and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him
forward to the bows of the still flying boat.

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along
with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its
advance- as the whale sometimes will- and Ahab was fairly within the
smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled
round his great Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,
with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the
hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked
into a morass, Moby Dick sidewise writhed; spasmodically rolled his
nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so
suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated
part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have
been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen- who
foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore
unprepared for its effects- these were flung out; but so fell, that,
in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to
its level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again;
the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and
swimming.

Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering
sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with
the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on
their seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the
treacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the
empty air!

"What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!- 'tis whole again; oars! oars!
Burst in upon him!"

Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale
wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that
evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship;
seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking
it- it may be- a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down
upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands!
stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?"

"The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.

"Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea that ere it be for
ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I
see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! will ye not save my ship?"

But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the
sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two
planks burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily
disabled boat lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading,
splashing crew, trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring
water.

Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head hammer
remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him
as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his
own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon
the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as
soon as he.

"The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of
air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a
woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say- ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is
this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities?
Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up
helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on
towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by
me now!"

"Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now
help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou
grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but
Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a
mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood!
I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I
call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his
ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with thee, would ye but
hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be
plenty of gulping soon!  Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes
and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers!  A most mouldy and
over salted death, though;- cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask,
for one red cherry ere we die!"

"Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I
hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers
will now come to her, for the voyage is up."

From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive;
hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained
in their hands, just as they had darted from their various
employments; all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which
from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a
broad band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he
rushed. Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his
whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid
white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till
men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like
dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their
bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as
mountain torrents down a flume.

"The ship! The hearse!- the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat;
"its wood could only be American!"

Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its
keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far
off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for
a time, he lay quiescent.

"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy
hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked
keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm,
and Pole-pointed prow,- death- glorious ship! must ye then perish,
and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest
shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel
my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your
furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone
life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll,
thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple
with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit
my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one
common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to
pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned
whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with
igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;- ran foul. Ahab
stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him
round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their
victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was
gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew
out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the
sea, disappeared in its depths.

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then
turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through
dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the
gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while
fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty
perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking
look-outs on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone
boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every
lancepole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round
in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of
the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the
flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the
destroying billows they almost touched;- at that instant, a red arm
and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act
of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A
sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from
its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and
incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its
broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and
simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage
beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the
bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak
thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of
Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to
hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and
helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen
white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the
great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years
ago.
