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 glasses!
.. <p 2 >
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,
.. <p 3 >
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
.. <p 4 >
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
.. <p 5 >
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
.. <p 6 >
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.
.. <p 6 >
.. < chapter ii 24 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
.. <p 7 >
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
.. <p 8 >
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
.. <p 9 >
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
.. <p 10 >
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.
.. <p 10 >
.. < chapter iii 14 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
.. <p 11 >
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
.. <p 12 >
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.
.. <p 13 >
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.
.. <p 14 >
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
.. <p 15 >
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
.. <p 16 >
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.
.. <p 17 >
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
.. <p 18 >
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
.. <p 19 >
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
.. <p 20 >
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,
.. <p 21 >
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.
.. <p 22 >
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
.. <p 23 >
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
.. <p 24 >
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.
.. <p 25 >
.. < chapter iv 2 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
.. <p 26 >
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 --
.. <p 27 >
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
.. <p 28 >
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.
.. <p 29 >
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.
.. <p 29 >
.. < chapter v 5 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
.. <p 30 >
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
.. <p 31 >
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.
.. <p 31 >
.. < chapter vi 11 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.
.. <p 32 >
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
.. <p 33 >
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 26 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,
.. <p 34 >
sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket
of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors'
wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the
shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart
from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The
chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women
sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned
into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the
following, but I do not pretend to quote: -- Sacred To the Memory of John
Talbot, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of
Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st,
. This Tablet Is erected to his
Memory By his Sister. Sacred To the Memory of Robert Long, Willis Ellery,
Nathan Coleman, Walter Canny, Seth Macy, and Samuel Gleig, Forming one of the
boats' crews of the Ship Eliza, Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On
the Off-shore Ground in the Pacific, December 31st,
. This Marble Is
here placed by their surviving Shipmates.
.. <p 35 >
Sacred To the Memory of The late Captain Ezekiel Hardy, Who in the bows of
his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August 3d,
This Tablet Is erected to his Memory by His Widow. Shaking off the sleet
from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and
turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the
solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity
in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to
notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and,
therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any
of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the
congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the
fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not
the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me
were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak
tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose
dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say
--here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms
like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no
ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and
unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and
refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a
grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it
is that a universal proverb says of them, that
.. <p 36 >
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.
.. <p 37 >
.. < chapter viii 2 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
.. <p 38 >
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
.. <p 39 >
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 23 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,
.. <p 40 >
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
.. <p 41 >
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
.. <p 42 >
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
.. <p 43 >
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
.. <p 44 >
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
.. <p 45 >
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
.. <p 46 >
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
.. <p 47 >
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
.. <p 48 >
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.
.. <p 48 >
.. < chapter X 24 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
.. <p 49 >
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
.. <p 50 >
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
.. <p 51 >
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
.. <p 52 >
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.
.. <p 52 >
.. < chapter xi 24 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
.. <p 53 >
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
.. <p 54 >
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.
.. <p 54 >
.. < chapter xii 21 BIOGRAPHICAL >
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an
island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true
places never are. When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native
woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a
green sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong
desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two.
His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the
maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.
There was excellent blood in his veins --royal stuff; though
.. <p 55 >
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.
.. <p 56 >
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.
.. <p 57 >
.. < chapter xiii 2 WHEELBARROW >
wheelbarrow next morning, Monday, after disposing of
the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade's
bill; using, however, my comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as
the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had
sprung up between me and Queequeg -- especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull
stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person
whom I now companied with. We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our
things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and
hammock, away we went down to the Moss, the little Nantucket packet
schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not
at Queequeg so much --for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their
streets, -- but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we
heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now
and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why
he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling
ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied,
that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection
for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a
mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In short, like
many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with
their own scythes --though in no wise obliged to furnished them -- even so,
Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon. Shifting
the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first
wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship,
it seems, had lent him one,
.. <p 58 >
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
.. <p 59 >
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
.. <p 60 >
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
.. <p 61 >
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.
.. <p 61 >
.. < chapter xiv 23 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
.. <p 62 >
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
.. <p 63 >
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.
.. <p 63 >
.. < chapter xv 27 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
.. <p 64 >
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.
.. <p 65 >
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
.. <p 66 >
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.
.. <p 67 >
.. < chapter xvi 2 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
.. <p 68 >
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
.. <p 69 >
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
.. <p 70 >
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?
.. <p 71 >
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
.. <p 72 >
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,
.. <p 73 >
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
.. <p 74 >
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
.. <p 75 >
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.
.. <p 76 >
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?
.. <p 77 >
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.
.. <p 78 >
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.
.. <p 79 >
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?
.. <p 80 >
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.
.. <p 81 >
.. < chapter xvii 2 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
.. <p 82 >
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
.. <p 83 >
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
.. <p 84 >
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--
.. <p 85 >
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.
.. <p 86 >
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.
.. <p 87 >
.. < chapter xviii 2 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.
.. <p 88 >
I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeeting, said I,
all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is. Young man,
said Bildad sternly, thou art skylarking with me --explain thyself, thou
young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me. Finding myself thus
hard pushed, I replied. I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to
which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us,
and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting
First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that;
only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief;
in that we all join hands. Splice, thou mean'st splice hands, cried
Peleg, drawing nearer. Young man, you'd better ship for a missionary,
instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon
Deuteronomy --why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he's reckoned
something. Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say,
tell Quohog there --what's that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By
the great anchor, what a harpoon he's got there! looks like good stuff that;
and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did
you ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the
bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the
side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in
some such way as this: -- Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere?
You see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den! and taking sharp
aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across
the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight. Now,
said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, spos-ee him whale-e eye; why,
dad whale dead. Quick, Bildad, said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the
.. <p 89 >
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,
.. <p 90 >
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.
.. <p 91 >
.. < chapter xix 2 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.
.. <p 92 >
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.
.. <p 93 >
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
.. <p 94 >
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.
.. <p 94 >
.. < chapter xx 15 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
.. <p 95 >
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
.. <p 96 >
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.
.. <p 97 >
.. < chapter xxi 2 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,
.. <p 98 >
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
.. <p 99 >
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?
.. <p 100 >
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we heard a
noise on deck. Halloa! Starbuck's astir, said the rigger. He's a lively
chief mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn
to. And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was now clear
sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes; the riggers
bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and several of the
shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile
Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin.
.. <p 100 >
.. < chapter xxii 12 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,
.. <p 101 >
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
.. <p 102 >
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
.. <p 103 >
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,
.. <p 104 >
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.
.. <p 104 >
.. < chapter xxiii 28 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
.. <p 105 >
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!
.. <p 106 >
.. < chapter xxiv 2 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
.. <p 107 >
idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's
profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to
a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast
tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the
comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and
wonders of God! But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration!
for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe,
burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory! But look at this matter in
other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and
have been. Why did the Dutch in DeWitt's time have admirals of their whaling
fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out
whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two
of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the
years
and
pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of 1,000,000
pounds? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber
all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of
seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 00824,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, 20,000,000
dollars; and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of 00847,000,000 dollars. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in
whaling? But this is not the half; look again. I freely assert, that the
cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful
influence, which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially
upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty
business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so
remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential
issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore
offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless
task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many
.. <p 108 >
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
.. <p 109 >
from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping
an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the
same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way
for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive
missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan,
is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit
will be due; for already she is on the threshold. But if, in the face of all
this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations
connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there,
and unhorse you with a split helmet every time. The whale has no famous
author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say. The whale no
famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first
account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed the first
narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the
Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the
Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy
in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke! True enough, but then whalemen
themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins. No good
blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there.
The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel" afterwards, by marriage,
Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a
long line of Folgers and harpooneers --all kith and kin to noble Benjamin
--this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.
Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory
law, the whale is declared a royal fish.
.. <p 110 >
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.
.. <p 109n. >
See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
.. <p 110n. >
See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
.. <p 110 >
.. < chapter xxv 27 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
.. <p 111 >
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!
.. <p 111 >
.. < chapter xxvi 26 KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES >
The chief mate of the Pequod was
Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long,
earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure
hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to
the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled
.. <p 112 >
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.
.. <p 113 >
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,
.. <p 114 >
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!
.. <p 115 >
.. < chapter xxvii 2 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.
.. <p 116 >
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
.. <p 117 >
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
.. <p 118 >
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
.. <p 119 >
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!
.. <p 119 >
.. < chapter xxviii 11 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
.. <p 120 >
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
.. <p 121 >
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
.. <p 122 >
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.
.. <p 123 >
.. < chapter xxix 2 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,
.. <p 124 >
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.
.. <p 125 >
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
.. <p 126 >
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.
.. <p 126 >
.. < chapter xxx 4 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.
.. <p 127 >
.. < chapter xxxi 2 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
.. <p 128 >
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
.. <p 129 >
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.
.. <p 129 >
.. < chapter xxxii 6 CETOLOGY >
Already we are boldly launched upon the
deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless immensities. Ere
that come to pass; ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the
barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a
matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the
more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to
follow. It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down. No branch of
Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology, says Captain
Scoresby, A. D.
. It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter
into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups
and families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal
(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A. D.
. Unfitness to pursue our
research in the unfathomable waters. Impenetrable veil covering our
knowledge of the cetacea. A field strewn with thorns. All these
incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists. Thus speak of
the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of
zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little,
yet of books there are
.. <p 130 >
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;
.. < chapter c 2 LEG AND ARM THE PEQUOD, OF NANTUCKET, MEETS THE SAMUEL >
ENDERBY, OF LONDON Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale? So cried Ahab,
once more hailing a ship showing English colors, bearing down under the
stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted
quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who
was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned,
burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in
a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth;
and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of
a huzzar's surcoat. Hast seen the White Whale? See you this? and
withdrawing it from the fold that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of
sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet. Man my boat!
cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near him -- Stand by to
lower! In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and
his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger.
But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the
moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once
stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by
an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod,
and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's
warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody --except those who are
almost hourly used to it, like whalemen --to clamber up a ship's side from a
boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards
.. <p 434 >
the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson.
so, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether
unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced
to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height
he could hardly hope to attain. It has before been hinted, perhaps, that
every little untoward circumstance that befel him, and which indirectly
sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated
Ahab. And in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of
the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the
perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair
of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink
them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea
bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange
captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, I see, I see!
--avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle. As
good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved
blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was
quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary
thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an
anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held
himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by
pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he
was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the
capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other
captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory
arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, Aye, aye,
hearty! let us shake bones together! --an arm and a leg! --an arm that never
can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where did'st thou see
the White Whale? --how long ago? The White Whale, said the Englishman,
pointing his ivory
.. <p 435 >
arm towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a
telescope; There I saw him, on the Line, last season. And he took that
arm off, did he? asked Ahab, now sliding down from the capstan, and resting
on the Englishman's shoulder, as he did so. Aye, he was the cause of it, at
least; and that leg, too? Spin me the yarn, said Ahab; how was it? It
was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line, began the
Englishman. I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day
we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of
them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling
round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their
sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea
a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and
wrinkles. It was he, it was he! cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his
suspended breath. And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin. Aye,
aye --they were mine -- my irons, cried Ahab, exultingly -- but on! Give me a
chance, then, said the Englishman, good-humoredly. Well, this old
great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod,
and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line. Aye, I see! --wanted to part
it; free the fast-fish --an old trick --I know him. How it was exactly,
continued the one-armed commander, I do not know; but in biting the line, it
got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow; but we didn't know it then; so
that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his
hump! instead of the other whale's that went off to windward, all fluking.
Seeing how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was --the noblest
and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life --I resolved to capture him, spite of
the boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would
get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have
.. <p 436 >
a devil of a boat's crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say,
I jumped into my first mate's boat --Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way, Captain
--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain); --as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's
boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching
the first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look
you, sir --hearts and souls alive, man --the next instant, in a jiff, I was
blind as a bat --both eyes out --all befogged and bedeadened with black foam
--the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air,
like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at
midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say,
after the second iron, to toss it overboard --down comes the tail like a Lima
tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukes
first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips.
We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my
harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking
fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish,
taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb of that
cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here (clapping his hand
just below his shoulder); yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down
to Hell's flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the
good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh --clear along the whole length
of my arm --came out nigh my wrist, and up i floated; --and that gentleman
there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain --Dr. Bunger, ship's
surgeon: Bunger, my lad, -- the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part
of the yarn. The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had
been all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to
denote his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but
sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched
trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a marlingspike
he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other, occasionally casting
a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his
superior's introduction of him to Ahab, he
.. <p 437 >
politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding. It was
a shocking bad wound, began the whale-surgeon; and, taking my advice,
Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy-- Samuel Enderby is the name of
my ship, interrupted the one-armed captain, addressing Ahab; go on, boy.
Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot
weather there on the Line. But it was no use --I did all I could; sat up with
him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet-- Oh, very
severe! chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering his voice,
Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn't see to put on
the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three o'clock in
the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe
in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr.
Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don't ye? You know you're a
precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I'd rather be killed by you
than kept alive by any other man. My captain, you must have ere this
perceived, respected sir --said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger,
slightly bowing to Ahab -- is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many
clever things of that sort. But I may as well say --en passant, as the French
remark --that I myself --that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend
clergy --am a strict total abstinence man; I never drink-- Water! cried the
captain; he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits to him; fresh water
throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on --go on with the arm story. Yes,
I may as well, said the surgeon, coolly. I was about observing, sir, before
Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest
endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it
was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several
inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I
knew what was threatened, and off it came.
.. <p 438 >
But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against all
rule --pointing at it with the marlingspike -- that is the captain's work,
not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there
put to the end, to knock some one's brains out with, I suppose, as he tried
mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this
dent, sir --removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a
bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace,
or any token of ever having been a wound -- Well, the captain there will tell
you how that came here; he knows. No, I don't, said the captain, but
his mother did; he was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you --you Bunger!
was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you
die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future
ages, you rascal. What became of the White Whale? now cried Ahab, who
thus far had been impatiently listening to this bye-play between the two
Englishmen. Oh! cried the one-armed captain, Oh, yes! Well; after he
sounded, we didn't see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted,
I didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till
some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick
--as some call him --and then I knew it was he. Did'st thou cross his wake
again? Twice. But could not fasten? Didn't want to try to: ain't one
limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby
Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows. Well, then, interrupted Bunger,
give him your left arm for bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen
--very gravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession -- Do
you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so
inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for
him to completely digest even a
.. <p 439 >
man's arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White Whale's
malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb;
he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old
juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe
swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest,
and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic,
and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see. No possible way for him to
digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily
system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a
mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to
the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have
another chance at you shortly, that's all. No, thank ye, Bunger, said the
english captain, he's welcome to the arm he has, since I can't help it,
and didn't know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for
me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be
great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of
precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think
so, Captain? --glancing at the ivory leg. He is. But he will still be
hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not
always what least allures. He's all a magnet! How long since thou saw'st him
last? Which way heading? Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's,
cried Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely
snuffing; this man's blood --bring the thermometer; --it's at the boiling
point! --his pulse makes these planks beat! --sir! --taking a lancet from his
pocket, and drawing near to Ahab's arm. Avast! roared Ahab, dashing him
against the bulwarks -- Man the boat! Which way heading? Good God! cried
the English Captain, to whom the question was put. What's the matter? He
was heading east, I think. --Is your Captain crazy? whispering Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks
.. <p 440 >
to take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower. In a moment
he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men were springing to
their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to the
stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till
alongside of the Pequod.
.. <p 440 >
.. < chapter ci 10 THE DECANTER >
Ere the English ship fades from sight, be
it set down here, that she hailed from London, and was named after the late
Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling
house of enderby and sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion,
comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in
point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 0083
, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fish-documents
do not make plain; but in that year (
) it fitted out the first English
ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of
years previous (ever since
) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket
and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the
North and South Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here,
that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized
steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him. In
, a fine ship, the
Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the sole charge of the
vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the
nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South Sea. The
.. <p 441 >
voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her hold
full of the precious sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other
ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the
Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the
indefatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons --how
many, their mother only knows --and under their immediate auspices, and
partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send
the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea.
Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it,
and did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 0084
, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on
a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship --well called the
Syren --made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great
Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this
famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. All honor to
the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the present day;
though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for
the great South Sea of the other world. The ship named after him was worthy
of the honor, being a very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I
boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank
good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all
trumps --every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And
that fine gam I had --long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with
his ivory heel -- it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that
ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose
sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the
rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off
there by Patagonia), and all hands --visitors and all --were called to reef
topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in
bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into
.. <p 442 >
the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning
example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by
and bye we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again,
though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too
much diluted and pickled it to my taste. The beef was fine --tough, but with
body in it. They said it was bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef;
but i do not know, for certain, how that was. they had dumplings too; small,
but substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I
fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were
swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching
out of you like billiard-balls. The bread --but that couldn't be helped;
besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the only
fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very
easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking
her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers,
including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel
Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong;
crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band. But why was it,
think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other English whalers I know of
--not all though --were such famous, hospitable ships; that passed round the
beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary
of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good
cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I
been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders,
and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery;
and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and
drink. For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew;
but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling
good cheer is not normal and natural, but incidental and particular; and,
therefore, must have some special origin,
.. <p 443 >
which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated. During my
researches in the leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch
volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about
whalers. The title was, Dan Coopman, wherefore I concluded that this must
be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every
whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing
that it was the production of one Fitz Swackhammer. But my friend Dr.
Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the
college of Santa Claus and St. Pott's, to whom I handed the work for
translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble -- this same
Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that Dan Coopman did
not mean The Cooper, but The Merchant. In short, this ancient and
learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other
subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in
this chapter it was, headed Smeer, or Fat, that I found a long detailed
list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen;
from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead. I transcribe the following: 0084400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock fish.
550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of butter.
20,000 lbs. of Texel and Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an
inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer. Most
statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present
case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts,
and gills of good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted three days to
the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many
profound
.. <p 444 >
thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental
and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables
of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by
every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale
fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden
cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally
unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their
vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar
Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial
natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil. The quantity of beer, too,
is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those polar fisheries could only be
prosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of
one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the
Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men
to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all;
therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a
twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers
of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might
fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat's
head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat
improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very
far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution;
upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the
harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss
might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford. But no more; enough has been said
to show that the old Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high
livers; and that the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an
example. For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get
nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And
this empties the decanter.
.. <p 445 >
.. < chapter cii 2 A BOWER IN THE ARSACIDES >
Hitherto, in descriptively
treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his
outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural
features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it
behoves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his
hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of
the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that
is to say, in his unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? How is it,
that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the
subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your
capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the
windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael.
Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook
dishes a roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,
Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the
privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole,
sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of leviathan; and
belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his
bowels. I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed with
an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small
cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to
make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the lances.
Think you I let that chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and
jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young
cub?
.. <p 446 >
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their gigantic,
full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my late
royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at
Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was
invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at
his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from
what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital. Among many other fine
qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all
matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare
things the more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of
