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They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates,

and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers,

and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers;

a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn,

shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.



You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.

This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted

pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky;

he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage.

That man next him looks a few shades lighter; you might say

a touch of satin wood is in him.  In the complexion of a third

still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached withal;

he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore.  But who could

show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints,

seemed like the Andes' western slope, to show forth in one array,

contrasting climates, zone by zone.



"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door,

and in we went to breakfast.

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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

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"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 merchant 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 innuendoes, 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.

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cherish some queer crotchets no ways 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,

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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

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fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.

Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so,

and suggest another.  I do so now touching the Black Fish,

so called because blackness is the rule among almost

all whales.  So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please.

His voracity is well known and from the circumstance

that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards,

he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face.

This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length.

He is found in almost all latitudes.  He has a peculiar way

of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks

something like a Roman nose.  When not more profitably employed,

the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale,

to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment--

as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite

alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax.

Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will

yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.



BOOK II.  (Octavo), CHAPTER III.  (Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale.--

Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose

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don't be in a hurry.  Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals?

Bite something, you dogs!  So, so, so, then:--softly, softly!

That's it--that's it! long and strong.  Give way there, give way!

The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep.

Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull.  Pull, will ye? pull,

can't ye? pull, won't ye?  Why in the name of gudgeons and

ginger-cakes don't ye pull?--pull and break something! pull,

and start your eyes out!  Here," whipping out the sharp knife

from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife,

and pull with the blade between his teeth.  That's it--that's it.

Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her--

start her, my silverspoons!  Start her, marling-spikes!"



Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large,

because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general,

and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing.

But you must not suppose from this specimen of his sermonizings

that he ever flew into downright passions with his congregation.

Not at all; and therein consisted his chief peculiarity.

He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a tone

so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed

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"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;--

but that would be too long a story.'



"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.



"'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay!  I cannot rehearse that now.

Let me get more into the air, Sirs.'



"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend

looks faint;--fill up his empty glass!'



"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen,

so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship--

forgetful of the compact among the crew--in the excitement of the moment,

the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice

for the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly

beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.

'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from captain,

mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours,

were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish;

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that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda,

all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man,

were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being.

No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession

of whaling should have been there shadowed forth.  The Hindoo

whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall,

depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan,

learnedly known as the Matse Avatar.  But though this sculpture

is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail

of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong.

It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda,

than the broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes.



But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian

painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better

than the antediluvian Hindoo.  It is Guido's picture of

Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale.

Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that?

Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own

"Perseus Descending," make out one whit better.  The huge

corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface,

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would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long.

Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking

out of that eye!



Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History

for the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same

heinousness of mistake.  Look at that popular work

"Goldsmith's Animated Nature."  In the abridged London edition

of 1807, there are plates of an alleged "whale" and a "narwhale."

I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale

looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale,

one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth

century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon

any intelligent public of schoolboys.



Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede,

a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book,

wherein are several pictures of the different species of

the Leviathan.  All these are not only incorrect, but the picture

of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale (that is to say the Right

whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man as touching

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as the human fingers in an artificial covering.  "However recklessly

the whale may sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day,

"he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens."



For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it,

you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one

creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.

True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another,

but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness.

So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what

the whale really looks like.  And the only mode in which you

can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour,

is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run

no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him.

Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious

in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.







CHAPTER 56

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the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs.

There is some advantage in this; because these twin-tubs

being so small they fit more readily into the boat,

and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub,

nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth,

makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but

one-half inch in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat

is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable

distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one.

When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the american line-tub,

the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious

great wedding-cake to present to the whales.



Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating

in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against

the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely

disengaged from everything.  This arrangement of the lower end

is necessary on two accounts.  First:  In order to facilitate

the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat,

in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten

to carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon.

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The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump,

whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),

they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess,

in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish

among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among

the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to

have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head

from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination.

And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's

head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see.

The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an "Et

tu Brute!" expression.



It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively

unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him

with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way,

from the consideration before mentioned:  i.e. that a man

should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it

too by its own light.  But no doubt the first man that ever

murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung;

and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would

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He was a small and dark, but rather delicate looking man

for a sea-captain, with large whiskers and moustache, however;

and wore a red cotton velvet vest with watch-seals at his side.

To this gentleman, Stubb was now politely introduced by

the Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put on the aspect

of interpreting between them.



"What shall I say to him first?" said he.



"Why," said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals,

"you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish

to me, though I don't pretend to be a judge."



"He says, Monsieur," said the Guernsey-man, in French,

turning to his captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke

a vessel, whose captain and chief-mate, with six sailors,

had all died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they

had brought alongside."



Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.

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with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once

enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and at melodious

even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into

one star-belled tambourine.  So, though in the clear air of day,

suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will

healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond

in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground,

and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases.

Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then the

evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies,

looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell.  But let

us to the story.



It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman

chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed;

and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.



The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;

but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale;

and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb

observing him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his

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when the sun stands in some one of these signs.  I've studied signs,

and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago,

by the old witch in Copenhagen.  Now, in what sign will the sun then be?

The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold.

And what's the horse-shoe sign?  The lion is the horse-shoe sign--

the roaring and devouring lion.  Ship, old ship! my old head shakes

to think of thee."



"There's another rendering now; but still one text.  All sorts of men

in one kind of world, you see.  Dodge again! here comes Queequeg--

all tattooing--looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself.  What says

the Cannibal?  As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;

thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels,

I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country.

And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh--

I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer.  No:  he don't know what to make

of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.

But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled

out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual.

What does he say, with that look of his?  Ah, only makes a sign

to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the coin--

fire worshipper, depend upon it.  Ho! more and more.  This way comes Pip--

poor boy! would he had died, or I; he's half horrible to me.

He too has been watching all of these interpreters myself included--

and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthly idiot face.

Stand away again and hear him.  Hark!"



"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."



"Upon my soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar!  Improving his mind,

poor fellow!  But what's that he says now--hist!"



"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."



"Why, he's getting it by heart--hist! again."



"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."



"Well, that's funny."



"And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats;

and I'm a crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine

tree here.  Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw!  Ain't I a crow?

And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck

into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves

of an old jacket."

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How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man

to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring

over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood.

No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within

the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea,

can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.



But the spine.  For that, the best way we can consider it is,

with a crane, to pile its bones high up on end.  No speedy enterprise.

But now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.



There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton

are not locked together.  They mostly lie like the great knobbed

blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry.

The largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet,

and in depth more than four.  The smallest, where the spine tapers

away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something

like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still

smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins,

the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with.

Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things

tapers off at last into simple child's play.







CHAPTER 104

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and there's a great cry for life-boats. And here's the heron's leg!

long and slim, sure enough!  Now, for most folks one pair of legs

lasts a lifetime, and that must be because they use them mercifully,

as a tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly old coach-horses.

But Ahab; oh he's a hard driver.  Look, driven one leg to death,

and spavined the other for life, and now wears out bone legs by the cord.

Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a hand there with those screws,

and let's finish it before the resurrection fellow comes

a-calling with his horn for all legs, true or false, as brewery

men go round collecting old beer barrels, to fill 'em up again.

What a leg this is!  It looks like a real live leg, filed down

to nothing but the core; he'll be standing on this to-morrow;

he'll be taking altitudes on it.  Halloa!  I almost forgot the little

oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude.

So, so; chisel, file, and sand-paper, now!







CHAPTER 109



Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin

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there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon;

impatient for the order to point the ship's prow for the equator.

In good time the order came.  It was hard upon high noon;

and Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat,

was about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun

to determine his latitude.



Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets

of effulgences.  That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun

seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable

burning-glass. The sky looks lacquered; clouds there are none;

the horizon floats; and this nakedness of unrelieved

radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God's throne.

Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with colored glasses,

through which to take sight of that solar fire.

So, swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship,

and with his astrological-looking instrument placed to his eye,

he remained in that posture for some moments to catch the precise

instant when the sun should gain its precise meridian.

Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee

was kneeling beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face

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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."



"What's that?  There now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's

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"The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab, advancing.

"Hands off from that holiness!  Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?



"Astern there, sir, astern!  Lo! lo!"



"And who art thou, boy?  I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils

of thy eyes.  Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls

to sieve through!  Who art thou, boy?"



"Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding!  Pip!  Pip!  Pip!  One

hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high--looks cowardly--

quickest known by that!  Ding, dong, ding!  Who's seen Pip the coward?"



"There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen

heavens! look down here.  Ye did beget this luckless child,

and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines.  Here, boy;

Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives.

Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords

woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."



"What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand,

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The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal

his object in boarding the Pequod.  He desired that ship to unite

with his own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five

miles apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon,

as it were.



"I will wager something now," whispered Stubb to Flask, "that some one

in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap, his watch--

he's so cursed anxious to get it back.  Who ever heard of two pious

whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height

of the whaling season?  See, Flask, only see how pale he looks--

pale in the very buttons of his eyes--look--it wasn't the coat--

it must have been the-"



"My boy, my own boy is among them.  For God's sake--I beg, I conjure"--

here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far had but

icily received his petition.  "For eight-and-forty hours let me

charter your ship--I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it--

if there be no other way--for eight-and-forty hours only--only that--

you must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing."