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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

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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

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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.

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In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England

coast and carried off an infant Indian in his talons.

With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over

the wide waters.  They resolved to follow in the same direction.

Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they

discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--

the poor little Indian's skeleton.



What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take

to the sea for a livelihood!  They first caught crabs and quahogs

in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel;

more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod;

and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this

watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it;

peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans

declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that

has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous!

That Himmalehan, salt-sea, Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness

of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded

than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

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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,

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of the Powers of the Air.  Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire.



Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black

negro-savage, with a lion-like tread--an Ahasuerus to behold.

Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors

called them ringbolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail

halyards to them.  In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped

on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast.

And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket,

and the pagan harbors most frequented by the whalemen; and having

now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships

of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped;

Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe,

moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks.

There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man

standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress.

Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the

Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him.

As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said,

that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand

men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery,

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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.

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Stand by for it, Flask.  Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind.

But, mum; he comes this way."







CHAPTER 32



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.

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But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts

of the whale, in his anatomy--there, at least, we shall

be able to hit the right classification.  Nay; what thing,

for example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more

striking than his baleen?  Yet we have seen that by his baleen

it is impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale.

And if you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans,

why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available

to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated.

What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily,

in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way.

And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted;

and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone

is practicable.  To proceed.



BOOK I. (Folio) CHAPTER IV.  (Hump Back).--This whale is often seen

on the northern American coast.  He has been frequently captured there,

and towed into harbor.  He has a great pack on him like a peddler;

or you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale.  At any rate,

the popular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him,

since the sperm whale also has a hump though a smaller one.

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and the Unicorn whale.  He is certainly a curious example of the

Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature.

From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same

sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote

against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices.

It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies the same

way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn.

Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity.

Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that

voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from

a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames;

"when Sir Martin returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter,

"on bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn

of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the castle

at Windsor."  An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester,

on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn,

pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature.



The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a

milk-white ground color, dotted with round and oblong spots of black.

His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it,

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pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down

rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,

reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.

But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses,

ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little

Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus,

or the Slave.



It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense

artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck

some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly

and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one,

let those very officers the next moment go down to their

customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway

their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him,

as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous,

sometimes most comical.  Wherefore this difference?  A problem?

Perhaps not.  To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon;

and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,

therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur.

But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides

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Take a tonic, follow me!  (Sings, and all follow)

           Our captain stood upon the deck,

             A spy-glass in his hand,

           A viewing of those gallant whales

             That blew at every strand.

           Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,

             And by your braces stand,

           And we'll have one of those fine whales,

             Hand, boys, over hand!

      So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!

      While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!



MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK



Eight bells there, forward!



2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR



Avast the chorus!  Eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy? Strike

the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch.

I've the sort of mouth for that--the hogshead mouth.  So, so,

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cunning, and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was,

that those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick;

such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe

the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils

of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause.

In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab

and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.



And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale,

by chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing

they had every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly

lowered for him, as for any other whale of that species.

But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults--

not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs,

or devouring amputations--but fatal to the last degree of fatality;

those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling

their terrors upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to

shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story

of the White Whale had eventually come.



Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still

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"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller

would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely

wicked is he.  Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his

green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying

with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon

the sunny deck.  But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed.

The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports;

his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features.

A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats;

his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.

Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns

from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be

not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities

of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm

to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one.

In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is,

is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so

many of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind,

except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains.

Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to

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summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused.

Water was then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls

of biscuit were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon

them and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck.

Twice every day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth

morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard,

as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly four men

burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to.

The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps

to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to

surrender at discretion.  Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated

his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific

hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged.

On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into

the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them.

Only three were left.



"'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.



"'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

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and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen.

Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little

off from the ship.



"Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet,

swinging perch overhead; and looking further off from the side,

we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange

to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.



"Both! both!--it is both!"-cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout;

and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand,

and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian.  Drawn into

the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego

was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.



Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished?  Why, diving after

the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made

side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there;

then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards

and upwards, and so hauled out our poor Tash by the head.

He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented;

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It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry

was heard from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the

Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only spout

in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of

uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming.

Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's,

that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it.

And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant

chase of this unnearable brute.  The Virgin crowding all sail,

made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared

far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.



Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.







CHAPTER 82



The Honor and Glory of Whaling

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of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have

been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons

are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other.

"Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of

the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale;

in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself.

Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit

had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land,

instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep.

Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George,

a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.



Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us;

for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman

of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape,

and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint

on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those times,

when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;

and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's

whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach;

and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have

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all Asia.  In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long

islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others,

form a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia,

and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded

oriental archipelagoes.  This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports

for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous among which are

the straits of Sunda and Malacca.  By the straits of Sunda, chiefly,

vessels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.



Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing

midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold

green promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little

correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire:

and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks,

and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands

of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision

of nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of the land,

should at least bear the appearance, however ineffectual,

of being guarded from the all-grasping western world.  The shores

of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering

fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic,

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with their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength

of their respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian

and charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm;

and laying it upon the whale's head, he says--"Hands off! this fish,

my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon this

the poor mariners in their respectful consternation--so truly English--

knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their heads

all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger.

But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard heart

of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone.  At length one

of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,



"Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"



"The Duke."



"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"



"It is his."



"We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense,

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for the pit.



By midnight the works were in full operation.

We were clear from the carcass; sail had been made;

the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense.

But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at

intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated

every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire.

The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned

to some vengeful deed.  So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs

of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors,

with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon

the Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.



The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide

hearth in front of them.  Standing on this were the Tartarean

shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers.

With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into

the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky

flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet.

The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps.  To every pitch of the ship

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hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous

(ever since 1726) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket

and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued the Leviathan,

but only in the North and South Atlantic:  not elsewhere.

Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were the first

among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm Whale;

and that for half a century they were the only people of the whole

globe who so harpooned him.



In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,

and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded

Cape Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat

of any sort in the great South Sea.  The voyage was a skilful

and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her hold full

of the precious sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed

by other ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale

grounds of the Pacific were thrown open.  But not content with this

good deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred itself:

Samuel and all his Sons--how many, their mother only knows--and under

their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense,

the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler

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(reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards;

that is, three hundred and sixty feet.  And Lacepede,

the French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales,

in the very beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale

at one hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet.

And this work was published so late as A.D. 1825.



But will any whaleman believe these stories?  No. The whale

of to-day is as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time.

And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a whaleman (more than he was),

will make bold to tell him so.  Because I cannot understand

how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies that were buried

thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not measure

so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks;

and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the oldest

Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in

which they are drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred,

stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal,

but far exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh's fat kine;

in the face of all this, I will not admit that of all animals

the whale alone should have degenerated.

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at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely

evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good

accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.



"He would have shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very

musket that he pointed at me;--that one with the studded stock;

let me touch it--lift it.  Strange, that I, who have

handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I should shake

so now.  Loaded?  I must see.  Aye, aye; and powder in the pan;--

that's not good.  Best spill it?--wait.  I'll cure myself of this.

I'll hold the musket boldly while I think.--I come to report

a fair wind to him.  But how fair?  Fair for death and doom,--

that's fair for Moby Dick.  It's a fair wind that's only fair for

that accursed fish.--The very tube he pointed at me!--the very one;

this one--I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very

thing I handle now.--Aye and he would fain kill all his crew.

Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any gale?

Has he not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same

perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning

of the error-abounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did he not

swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed

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almost dipping into the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.



The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting

handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved,

so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab

advanced to him.



Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty

or forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard,

when the old Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line,

made bold to speak.



"Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet

have spoiled it."



"'Twill hold, old gentleman.  Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee?

Thou seem'st to hold.  Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it."



"I hold the spool, sir.  But just as my captain says.

With these grey hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing,

'specially with a superior, who'll ne'er confess."

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unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;

but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue,

rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were

the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.



But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades

and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex,

as it were, that distinguished them.



Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this

gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom.

And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--

most seen here at the Equator--denoted the fond, throbbing trust,

the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.



Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles;

haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals,

that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood

forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered

helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.

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hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east.

But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod

since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it

was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians,

and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the sharks--

a matter sometimes well known to affect them,--however it was,

they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others.



"Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side,

and following with his eyes the receding boat--"canst thou

yet ring boldly to that sight?--lowering thy keel among

ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase;

and this the critical third day?--For when three days

flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure

the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third

the evening and the end of that thing--be that end what it may.

Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and leaves me

so deadly calm, yet expectant,--fixed at the top of a shudder!

Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons;

all the past is somehow grown dim.  Mary, girl; thou fadest

in pale glories behind me; boy!  I seem to see but thy eyes

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the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time,

he lay quiescent.



"I turn my body from the sun.  What ho, Tashtego!  Let me

hear thy hammer.  Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine;

thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck,

and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death--glorious ship! must

ye then perish, and without me?  Am I cut off from the last fond pride

of meanest shipwrecked captains?  Oh, lonely death on lonely life!

Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief.

Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows

of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death!

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale;

to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee;

for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.  Sink all coffins

and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine,

let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied

to thee, thou damned whale!  Thus, I give up the spear!"



The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward;

with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul.

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  "The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in

so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid

to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,

and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to

terrify and prevent their too near approach."

  --UNO VON TROIL'S LETTERS ON BANKS'S AND SOLANDER'S

VOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.



  "The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce

animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen."

  --THOMAS JEFFERSON'S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH MINISTER IN 1778.



  "And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?"

  --EDMUND BURKE'S REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.



  "Spain--a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe."

  --EDMUND BURKE. (SOMEWHERE.)



  "A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be

grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the

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entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among

the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late

years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient

opportunities of witnessing their habitudes."

  --THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.



  "The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True

Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon

at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a

disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at

once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being

regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of

the whale tribe."

  --FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, 1840.



  October 13. "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head.

  "Where away?" demanded the captain.

  "Three points off the lee bow, sir."

  "Raise up your wheel. Steady!"

  "Steady, sir."

  "Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?"

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  Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the

assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at

length rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved

by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable."

  --MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF TYERMAN AND BENNETT.



  "Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking and

peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of

eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding

largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most

persevering industry."

  --REPORT OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN THE U. S. SENATE,

ON THE APPLICATION FOR THE ERECTION OF A BREAKWATER AT NANTUCKET. 1828.



  "The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a

moment."

  --"THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS, OR THE WHALEMAN'S

ADVENTURES AND THE WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY, GATHERED ON THE

HOMEWARD CRUISE OF THE COMMODORE PREBLE."

BY REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER.

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the beech tree extended its branches."

  --DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST.



  "'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw

the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the

boat, threatening it with instant destruction;--'Stern all, for your

lives!'"

  --WHARTON THE WHALE KILLER.



    "So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,

    While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!"

  --NANTUCKET SONG.



    "Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale

      In his ocean home will be

    A giant in might, where might is right,

      And King of the boundless sea."

  --WHALE SONG.