Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.26

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.. < 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 >