App-PigLatin

 view release on metacpan or  search on metacpan

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

for the apprehension of a parricide, and containing a description

of his person.  He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill;

while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah,

prepared to lay their hands upon him.  Frighted Jonah trembles.

and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much

the more a coward.  He will not confess himself suspected;

but that itself is strong suspicion.  So he makes the best of it;

and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised,

they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin.



"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making

out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?'  Oh! how that harmless

question mangles Jonah!  For the instant he almost turns to flee again.

But he rallies.  'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish;

how soon sail ye, sir?'  Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up

to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does

he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance.

'We sail with the next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered,

still intently eyeing him.  'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any

honest man that goes a passenger.'  Ha!  Jonah, that's another stab.

But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent.

'I'll sail with ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--

I'll pay now.'  For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it

were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid

the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail.  And taken with the context,

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab,

when we heard a noise on deck.



"Holloa!  Starbuck's astir," said the rigger.  "He's a lively chief

mate that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to."

And so saying he went on deck, and we followed.



It was now clear sunrise.  Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes;

the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged;

and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last

things on board.  Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined

within his cabin.







CHAPTER 22



Merry Christmas

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging

about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters.

Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,

for an additional lashing to our boat.  So still and subdued and yet

somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of revelry

lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his

own invisible self.



I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat.

As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline

between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle,

and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy

oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon

the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn;

I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over

the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting

dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were

the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically

weaving and weaving away at the Fates.  There lay the fixed

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

It was a wondrous sight.  The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen;

the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap;

the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom,

with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils

formed the warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures.

All the trees, with all their laden branches; all the shrubs,

and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these

unceasingly were active.  Through the lacings of the leaves,

the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure.

Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--

whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore

all these ceaseless toilings?  Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--

but one single word with thee!  Nay--the shuttle flies--

the figures float from forth the loom; the fresher-rushing

carpet for ever slides away.  The weaver-god, he weaves;

and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice;

and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened;

and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that

speak through it.  For even so it is in all material factories.

The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles;

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle;

and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing

round her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like

poke or stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud

roar to every stroke of the clenched hands of the crew.

On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were dancing with the

olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles;

while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured aloft between

the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering

fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig.

Meanwhile, others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at

the masonry of the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed.

You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastille,

such wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar

were being hurled into the sea.



Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect

on the ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing

drama was full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his

own individual diversion.

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

"Hast seen the White Whale?"



"Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail;

and with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.



"Hast killed him?"



"The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever will do that,"

answered the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on

the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy

in sewing together.



"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,

Ahab held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this

hand I hold his death!  Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning

are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place

behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"



"Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--

pointing to the hammock--"I bury but one of five stout men,

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

And at last when Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near

as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he leaned

over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about,

and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval.

Glancing upwards he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo,

eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen

were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been

hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing them.

One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped,

he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask,

busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances.

As he saw all this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats;

far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart.

But he rallied.  And now marking that the vane or flag

was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego,

who had just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag,

and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.



Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the

resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore;

or whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him: