Moby-Dick

ETYMOLOGY.

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

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

ETYMOLOGY

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

“WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from
roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.”
—Webster’s Dictionary.

“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger.
Wallen; A.S. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.”
—Richardson’s Dictionary.

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

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

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

EXTRACTS.

“And God created great whales.” —Genesis.

“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him;
One would think the deep to be hoary.” —Job.

“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
—Jonah.

“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play
therein.” —Psalms.

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

“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless
gulf of his paunch.” —Holland’s Plutarch’s
Morals.

“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among
which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balæne, take up as much in length as
four acres or arpens of land.” —Holland’s Pliny.

“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former,
one was of a most monstrous size. * * This came towards us, open-mouthed,
raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a
foam.” —Tooke’s Lucian. “The True
History.”

“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which
had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the
king. * * * The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were
forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had
killed sixty in two days.” —Other or Octher’s verbal
narrative taken down from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D.
890.

“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter
into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great
security, and there sleeps.” —MONTAIGNE.
—Apology for Raimond Sebond.

“Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.”
—Rabelais.

“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.”
—Stowe’s Annals.

“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling
pan.” —Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms.

“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity
of oil will be extracted out of one whale.” —Ibid.
“History of Life and Death.”

“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward
bruise.” —King Henry.

“Very like a whale.” —Hamlet.

“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine.”
—The Fairie Queen.

“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
calm trouble the ocean till it boil.” —Sir William Davenant.
Preface to Gondibert.

“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hosmannus
in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit.”
—Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V.
E.

“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
…
Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.”
—Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands.

“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.”
—Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan.

“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in
the mouth of a whale.” —Pilgrim’s Progress.

“That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.” —Paradise
Lost.

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

“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil
swimming in them.” —Fuller’s Profane and Holy State.

“So close behind some promontory lie
    The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
    Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.”
—Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.

“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his
head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it will be
aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.” —Thomas Edge’s
Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchass.

“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which nature has
placed on their shoulders.” —Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into
Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.

“Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon
them.” —Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation.

“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * *

Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable. * * *

They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale, for the
first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * *

I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings
in his belly. * * *

One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that
was white all over.” —A Voyage to Greenland,
A.D. 1671. Harris Coll.

“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one eighty
feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed),
besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it
stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.” —Sibbald’s
Fife and Kinross.

“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti
whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man,
such is his fierceness and swiftness.” —Richard
Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans.
A.D. 1668.

“Whales in the sea
God’s voice obey.”
—N. E. Primer.

“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward
of us.” —Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe,
A.D. 1729.

* * * * * “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such
an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”
—Ulloa’s South America.

“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”
—Rape of the Lock.

“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take
up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the
comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.”
—Goldsmith, Nat. Hist.

“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak
like great whales.” —Goldsmith to Johnson.

“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found
to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing
ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in
order to avoid being seen by us.” —Cook’s Voyages.

“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great
dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even
their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles
of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too
near approach.” —Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s
and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in 1772.

“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.”
—Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in
1778.

“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?” —Edmund
Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery.

“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.”
—Edmund Burke. (somewhere.)

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

“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.”
—Falconer’s Shipwreck.

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

“So fire with water to compare,
    The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
    To express unwieldy joy.”
—Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London.

“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke,
with immense velocity.” —John Hunter’s account of the
dissection of a whale. (A small sized one.)

“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that
pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the
whale’s heart.” —Paley’s Theology.

“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.”
—Baron Cuvier.

“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any
till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.”
—Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti
Whale Fishery.

“In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”
—Montgomery’s World before the Flood.

“Io! Pæan! Io! sing.
To the finny people’s king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.”
—Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale.

“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales
spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing
to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children
will go for bread.” —Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket.

“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of
a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.”
—Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.

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

“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his
spout; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!”
—Cooper’s Pilot.

“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales
had been introduced on the stage there.” —Eckermann’s
Conversations with Goethe.

“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have
been stove by a whale.” —“Narrative of the Shipwreck of
the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by
a large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean.” By Owen Chace of
Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, 1821.

“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
        The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
        As it floundered in the sea.”
—Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

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

“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.”
—Scoresby.

“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the infuriated
Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head, and with wide
expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes at the boats with his
head; they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly
destroyed. * * *

It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so
interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the
Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so
little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that
of late years must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient
opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.” —Thomas
Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale, 1839.

“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than
the True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a
formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently
displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at
once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the
most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.”
—Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe,
1840.

October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the
mast-head.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”
“Steady, sir.”
“Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”
“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she
breaches!”
“Sing out! sing out every time!”
“Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—thar
she blows—bowes—bo-o-os!”
“How far off?”
“Two miles and a half.”
“Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands.”
—J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize. 1846.

“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
Nantucket.” —“Narrative of the Globe Mutiny,”
by Lay and Hussey survivors. A.D. 1828.

Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for
some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat;
himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they
saw the onset was inevitable.” —Missionary Journal of Tyerman
and Bennett.

“Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and
peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or
nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year to the
National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.”
—Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the U. S. Senate, on the
application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828.

“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a
moment.” —“The Whale and his Captors, or The
Whaleman’s Adventures and the Whale’s Biography, gathered on the
Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble.” By Rev. Henry T.
Cheever.

“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I
will send you to hell.” —Life of Samuel Comstock (the
mutineer), by his brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the
whale-ship Globe narrative.

“The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if
possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they failed of
their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale.”
—McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary.

“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward
again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem to
have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West
Passage.” —From “Something”
unpublished.

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

“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect having
seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form arches over
gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that
these were the ribs of whales.” —Tales of a Whale Voyager to the
Arctic Ocean.

“It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled
among the crew.” —Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking
of the Whale-Ship Hobomack.

“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they departed.”
—Cruise in a Whale Boat.

“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.” —Miriam Coffin
or the Whale Fisherman.

“The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage
a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of
his tail.” —A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.

“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and
female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone’s
throw of the shore” (Terra Del Fuego), “over which the beech tree
extended its branches.” —Darwin’s Voyage of a
Naturalist.

“‘Stern all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head,
he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat,
threatening it with instant destruction;—‘Stern all, for your
lives!’” —Wharton the Whale Killer.

“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!”
—Nantucket Song.

“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
    In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
    And King of the boundless sea.”
—Whale Song.

CHAPTER I.
LOOMINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II.
THE CARPET-BAG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III.
THE SPOUTER-INN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper?
Supper ’ll be ready directly.”

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

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

“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare
to a dead sartainty.”

“Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer, is
it?”

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

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

“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I
shan’t sleep with him. I’ll try the bench here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“With what?” shouted I.

“With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the
world?”

“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I, quite calmly,
“you’d better stop spinning that yarn to me—I’m not
green.”

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

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

“It’s broke a’ready,” said he.

“Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?”

“Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I
guess.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I.
“Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”

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

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

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

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

“Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe
and sitting up in bed.

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

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

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned
me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say—I
wont touch a leg of ye.

“Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”

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

CHAPTER IV.
THE COUNTERPANE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V.
BREAKFAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI.
THE STREET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII.
THE CHAPEL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PULPIT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX.
THE SERMON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X.
A BOSOM FRIEND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI.
NIGHTGOWN

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII.
BIOGRAPHICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII.
WHEELBARROW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running towards that
officer; “Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIV.
NANTUCKET

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV.
CHOWDER

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

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

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

“Get along with ye,” said she to the man, “or I’ll be
combing ye!”

“Come on, Queequeg,” said I, “all right. There’s Mrs.
Hussey.”

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

“What’s that about Cods, ma’am?” said I, with much
politeness.

“Clam or Cod?” she repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Both,” says I; “and let’s have a couple of smoked
herring by way of variety.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SHIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Supposing it be the Captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of
him?” he demanded.

“I was thinking of shipping.”

“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou are no Nantucketer—ever been in a
stove boat?”

“No, Sir, I never have.”

“Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?”

“Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been
several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that—”

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is Captain Ahab, sir?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sir,” said I, “I thought I told you that I had been four
voyages in the merchant—”

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

“I do, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, what’s the report? said Peleg when I came back; what did ye
see?”

“Not much,” I replied—“nothing but water; considerable
horizon though, and there’s a squall coming up, I think.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He says he’s our man, Bildad,” said Peleg, “he wants
to ship.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye
say, what lay shall we give this young man?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To be sure,” said Peleg. “Fetch him along, and we’ll
look at him.”

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

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

“Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg.”

“Well, bring him along then.”

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

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

“And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It’s all right enough;
thou art shipped.”

“Yes, but I should like to see him.”

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVII.
THE RAMADAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the matter with you, young man?”

“Get the axe! For God’s sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I
pry it open!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Queequeg,” said I, going up to him, “Queequeg, what’s
the matter with you?”

“He hain’t been a sittin’ so all day, has he?” said the
landlady.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVIII.
HIS MARK

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

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

“I mean,” he replied, “he must show his papers.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “I mean, sir, the same
ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and
Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us
belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping
world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets
noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quohog.
his mark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIX.
THE PROPHET

“Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?”

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

“Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated.

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

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

“Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.”

“Anything down there about your souls?”

“About what?”

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

“What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.

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

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

“Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye
hav’n’t seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?”

“Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane
earnestness of his manner.

“Captain Ahab.”

“What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?”

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

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

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

“What do you know about him?”

“What did they tell you about him? Say that!”

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

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

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

“All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?”

“Pretty sure.”

With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger
stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and
said:—“Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers?
Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be;
and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it’s all fixed
and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I
suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em! Morning to ye,
shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped
ye.”

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

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

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

“Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.”

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

“Elijah.”

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

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

CHAPTER XX.
ALL ASTIR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXI.
GOING ABOARD

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

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

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

“Going aboard?”

“Hands off, will you,” said I.

“Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go
’way!”

“Aint going aboard, then?”

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

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

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

“Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?”

“He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.”

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

“Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.”

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

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

“Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “Morning to ye.”

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

“Find who?”

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

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

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

“Gracious! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I.

“Oh! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “my country way;
won’t hurt him face.”

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

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

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

“What’s that for, Queequeg?”

“Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!”

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

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

“Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?”

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

“What Captain?—Ahab?”

“Who but him indeed?”

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXII.
MERRY CHRISTMAS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the
next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LEE SHORE

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ADVOCATE

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

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

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

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

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

Why did the Dutch in 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 £1,000,000? And
lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of
the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred
vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of
dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000; and every year
importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all
this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?

But this is not the half; look again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.

CHAPTER XXV.
POSTSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVI.
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVII.
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVIII.
AHAB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIX.
ENTER AHAB; TO HIM, STUBB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXX.
THE PIPE

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks; and
then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he
sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the
binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat
and smoked.

In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated,
saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then,
seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it
symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of
Leviathans was Ahab.

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick
and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. “How” now,
he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, “this smoking no longer
soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I
been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring,—aye, and ignorantly smoking
to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if,
like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble.
What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness,
to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey
locks like mine. I’ll smoke no more—”

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves;
the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With
slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.

CHAPTER XXXI.
QUEEN MAB

Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

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

“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho’.”

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

“Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts! If
ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!”

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

CHAPTER XXXII.
CETOLOGY

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

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

“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology,” says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 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; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green;
Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacépède; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron
Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross
Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to
what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited
extracts will show.

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

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

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

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

First: the uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the
very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a
moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature,
A.D. 1776, Linnæus 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 Linnæus’s express
edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the
Leviathan.

The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the
waters, he states as follows: “On account of their warm bilocular heart,
their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam
mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex lege naturæ 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, Linnæus 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^[3].
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.

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

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

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

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

FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:—I. The
Sperm Whale; II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin Back Whale;
IV. the Hump-backed Whale; V. the Razor Back Whale; VI. the
Sulphur Bottom Whale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OCTAVOES.^[4] These
embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which at present may be
numbered:—I., the Grampus; II., the Black Fish; III., the
Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer.

[4]
Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because,
while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former order,
nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the
bookbinder’s Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the
shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DUODECIMOES.—These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise. II.
The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE SPECKSNYDER

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 Specksnyder.
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 Specksnyder or
Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the
corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but
his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior
Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain’s more inferior
subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the
success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the American Fishery
he is not only an important officer in the boat, but under certain
circumstances (night watches on a whaling ground) the command of the
ship’s deck is also his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea
demands, that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and
be in some way distinguished as their professional superior; though always, by
them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CABIN-TABLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXV.
THE MAST-HEAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE QUARTER-DECK

(enter Ahab: Then, all.)

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

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

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

“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick
that’s in him pecks the shell. ’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 top-maul; “a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to
the excited old man: “A sharp eye for the White Whale; a sharp lance for
Moby Dick!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured Starbuck, lowly.

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

“The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVII.
SUNSET

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DUSK

By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

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

[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]

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

CHAPTER XXXIX.
FIRST NIGHT-WATCH
FORE-TOP

(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)

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

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

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

CHAPTER XL.
MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE

HARPOONERS AND SAILORS.
(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and
lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.)

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

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for the digestion! Take a
tonic, follow me!

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

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

2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d’ye hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell
eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. I’ve the sort
of mouth for that—the hogshead mouth. So, so, (thrusts his head down
the scuttle,) Star—bo—l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there
below! Tumble up!

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

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

PIP.
(Sulky and sleepy.)
Don’t know where it is.

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

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

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

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

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

AZORE SAILOR.
(Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle.)
Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now,
boys!

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

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

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

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

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

TASHTEGO.
(Quietly smoking.)
That’s a white man; he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALL.
Aye! aye!

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

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

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

DAGGOO (grimly).
None.

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

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
What’s that I saw—lightning? Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR.
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

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

SPANISH SAILOR (meeting him).
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!

ALL.
A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (with a whiff).
A row a’low, and a row aloft—Gods and men—both brawlers!
Humph!

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLI.
MOBY DICK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLII.
THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE

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

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

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

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when
divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in
itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear
of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky
whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness
it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than
terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged
tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or
shark.^[5]

[5]
With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who would
fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness, separately
regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that brute; for,
analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only arises from the
circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands
invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing
together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us
with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true; yet, were
it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified terror.
    As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the same
quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit by the
French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish mass for the dead
begins with “Requiem eternam” (eternal rest), whence Requiem
denominating the mass itself, and any other funereal music. Now, in allusion to
the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness of
his habits, the French call him Requin.

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.^[6]

[6]
I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in
waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended
to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a
regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill
sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to
embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though
bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in supernatural
distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to
secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself;
the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled
waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.
Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the
things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a
sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! I never had heard that
name before; is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to
men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some
seaman’s name for albatross. So that by no possibility could
Coleridge’s wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical
impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither
had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying
this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem
and the poet.
    I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly
lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a
solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have
frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic
fowl.
    But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will tell;
with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea. At last the
Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck,
with the ship’s time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt
not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven, when the
white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking, and adoring cherubim!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLIII.
HARK!

“Hist! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

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

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

“Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d’ye mean?”

“There it is again—under the hatches—don’t you hear
it—a cough—it sounded like a cough.”

“Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.”

“There again—there it is!—it sounds like two or three
sleepers turning over, now!”

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

“Say what ye will, shipmate; I’ve sharp ears.”

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

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

“Tish! the bucket!”

CHAPTER XLIV.
THE CHART

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

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

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

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

So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm
whale’s resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that, could
he be closely observed and studied throughout the world; were the logs for one
voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then the migrations of the
sperm whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the
herring-shoals or the flights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have been
made to construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.^[7]

[7]
Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an official
circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory, Washington,
April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is
in course of completion; and portions of it are presented in the circular. This
chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five
degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts are
twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each of which
districts are three lines; one to show the number of days that have been spent
in each month in every district, and the two others to show the number of days
in which whales, sperm or right, have been seen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLV.
THE AFFIDAVIT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket, was
cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her boats, and
gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of the whales were
wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping from the boats, issued
from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the ship. Dashing his forehead
against her hull, he so stove her in, that in less than “ten
minutes” she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving plank of her has
been seen since. After the severest exposure, part of the crew reached the land
in their boats. Being returned home at last, Captain Pollard once more sailed
for the Pacific in command of another ship, but the gods shipwrecked him again
upon unknown rocks and breakers; for the second time his ship was utterly lost,
and forthwith forswearing the sea, he has never tempted it since. At this day
Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was
chief mate of the Essex at the time of the tragedy; I have read his plain and
faithful narrative; I have conversed with his son; and all this within a few
miles of the scene of the catastrophe.^[8]

[8]
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
manœuvres which he made were necessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such
as indicated resentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal which we had
just before entered, and in which we had struck three of his companions, as if
fired with revenge for their sufferings.” Again: “At all events,
the whole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and
producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating
mischief, on the part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now
recall), induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion.”
    Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a black
night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable shore.
“The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears of being
swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks, with all
the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled
to a moment’s thought; the dismal looking wreck, and the horrid aspect
and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again
made its appearance.”
    In another place—p. 45,—he speaks of “the mysterious
and mortal attack of the animal”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLVI.
SURMISES

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLVII.
THE MAT-MAKER

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

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept
passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of
the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing
sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and
idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every
yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and
all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that
it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle
mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads
of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration,
and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of
other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I,
with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these
unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword,
sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as
the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a
corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this
savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both
warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance,
free will, and necessity—no wise incompatible—all interweavingly
working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its
ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to
that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and
chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and
sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by
both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.

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

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

“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”

“Where-away?”

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

Instantly all was commotion.

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

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

“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”

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

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