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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, 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 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 bakehouses the pyramids.



No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,

plumb down into the fore-castle, 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 a 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 ain't 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 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 fore-castle 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.

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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 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 De Witt'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 1750 and 1788

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 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 Cooke 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 empty-handedness, 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 willingly dared.

All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages,

those things were but the life-time 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 whalemen 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 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.

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of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.



"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep!  You, Daggoo! overboard you go,

and cut me one from his small!"



Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not,

as a general thing, and according to the great military maxim,

make the enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least

before realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then

you find some of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish

for that particular part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb;

comprising the tapering extremity of the body.



About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two

lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti

supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard.

Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night.

Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands

of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted

on its fatness.  The few sleepers below in their bunks were often

startled by the sharp slapping of their tails against the hull,

within a few inches of the sleepers' hearts.  Peering over the side you

could just see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen,

black waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out

huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head.

This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous.

How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge

out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal

problem of all things.  The mark they thus leave on the whale,

may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking

for a screw.



Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight,

sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks,

like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved,

ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though,

while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally

carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded

and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths,

are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat;

and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down,

it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say,

a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though

sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships

crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be

handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave

to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances

might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions,

when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast;

yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them

in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits,

than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea.

If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision

about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of

conciliating the devil.



But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet

that was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded

the smacking of his own epicurean lips.



"Cook, cook!--where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length,

widening his legs still further, as if to form a more secure

base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his fork

into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook!--

sail this way, cook!"



The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously

routed from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour,

came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks,

there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did

not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece,

as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his

step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made

of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered along,

and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop

on the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both hands

folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed

his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways

inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.



"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel

to his mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone?

You've been beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender.

Don't I always say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough?

There are those sharks now over the side, don't you see they

prefer it tough and rare?  What a shindy they are kicking up!

Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help

themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet.

Blast me, if I can hear my own voice.  Away, cook, and deliver

my message.  Here, take this lantern," snatching one from his sideboard;

"now then, go and preach to them!"



Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across

the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand drooping his light

low over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation,

with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning

far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks,

while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.



"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat

dam noise dare.  You hear?  Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips!

Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings,

but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!"



"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap

on the shoulder,--Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way

when you're preaching.  That's no way to convert sinners, Cook!  Who dat?

Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.



No, Cook; go on, go on."



"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"--



"Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it, try that,"

and Fleece continued.



"Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,

fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness--'top dat dam slappin' ob de tail!

How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slapping

and bitin' dare?"



"Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing.

Talk to 'em gentlemanly."



Once more the sermon proceeded.



"Your woraciousness, fellow-critters. I don't blame ye so much for;

dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur,

dat is de pint.  You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de

shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing

more dan de shark well goberned.  Now, look here, bred'ren, just

try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale.

Don't be tearin' de blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say.

Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat whale?  And, by Gor, none on

you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else.

I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders;

but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de

brigness of de mout is not to swallar wid, but to bit off de

blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge

to help demselves."



"Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."



"No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scrougin'

and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word;

no use a-preaching to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em,

till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless;

and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont hear you den;

for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral,

and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."



"Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give

the benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."



Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob,

raised his shrill voice, and cried--



"Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can;

fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust--and den die."



"Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan;

Stand just where you stood before, there, over against me,

and pay particular attention."



"All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs

in the desired position.



"Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile;

"I shall now go back to the subject of this steak.

In the first place, how old are you, cook?"



"What dat do wid de 'teak, " said the old black, testily.



"Silence!  How old are you, cook?"



"'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered.



And have you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred

years, cook, and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak?"

rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last word,

so that that morsel seemed a continuation of the question.

"Where were you born, cook?"



"'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke."



"Born in a ferry-boat! That's queer, too.  But I want to know

what country you were born in, cook!"



"Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply.



"No, you didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook.

You must go home and be born over again; you don't know how to cook

a whale-steak yet."



"Bress my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily,

turning round to depart.



"Come back here, cook;--here, hand me those tongs;--now take that bit of

steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be?

Take it, I say"--holding the tongs towards him--"take it, and taste it."



Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old

negro muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."



"Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong

to the church?"



"Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.



"And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town,

where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his

hearers as his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook!

And yet you come here, and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did

just now, eh?" said Stubb.  "Where do you expect to go to, cook?"



"Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.



"Avast! heave to!  I mean when you die, cook.  It's an awful question.

Now what's your answer?"



"When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly,

changing his whole air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere;

but some bressed angel will come and fetch him."



"Fetch him?  How?  In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah?

And fetch him where?"



"Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head,

and keeping it there very solemnly.



"So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook,

when you are dead?  But don't you know the higher you climb,

the colder it gets?  Main-top, eh?"



"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.



"You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see

where your tongs are pointing.  But, perhaps you expect to get

into heaven by crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no,

no, cook, you don't get there, except you go the regular way,

round by the rigging.  It's a ticklish business, but must be done,

or else it's no go.  But none of us are in heaven yet.

Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders.  Do ye hear?

Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other a'top of your heart,

when I'm giving my orders, cook.  What! that your heart, there?--

that's your gizzard!  Aloft! aloft!--that's it--now you have it.

Hold it there now, and pay attention."



"All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as desired,

vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front

at one and the same time.



"Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,

that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that,

don't you?  Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak

for my private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do

so as not to spoil it by overdoing.  Hold the steak in one hand,

and show a live coal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear?

And now to-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure

you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle.

As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook.  There, now

ye may go."



But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.



"Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D'ye

hear? away you sail then.--Halloa! stop! make a bow before you go.--

Avast heaving again!  Whale-balls for breakfast--don't forget."



"Wish, by gor! whale eat him, 'stead of him eat whale.

I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself,"

muttered the old man, limping away; with which sage ejaculation

he went to his hammock.









CHAPTER 65



The Whale as a Dish









That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds

his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say;

this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little

into the history and philosophy of it.



It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale

was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large

prices there.  Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of

the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce

to be eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species

of whale.  Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating.

The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls,

and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls

or veal balls.  The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them.

They had a great porpoise grant from the crown.



The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would

by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much

of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie

nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.

Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb, nowadays partake

of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious.

We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare old vintages

of prime old train oil.  Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors,

recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly

juicy and nourishing.  And this reminds me that certain Englishmen,

who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel--

that these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy

scraps of whales which had been left ashore after trying

out the blubber.  Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps

are called "fritters"; which, indeed, they greatly resemble,

being brown and crisp, and smelling something like old

Amsterdam housewives' dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh.

They have such an eatable look that the most self-denying

stranger can hardly keep his hands off.



But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish,

is his exceeding richness.  He is the great prize ox of the sea,

too fat to be delicately good.  Look at his hump, which would

be as fine eating as the buffalo's (which is esteemed

a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of fat.

But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is;

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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."



"Wonder if he means me?--complimentary--poor lad!--I could go

hang myself.  Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity.

I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's too

crazy-witty for my sanity.  So, so, I leave him muttering."



"Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all one fire

to unscrew it.  But, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence?

Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught's

nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate.

Ha! ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail ye!  This is a pine tree.

My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found

a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring.

How did it get there?  And so they'll say in the resurrection,

when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it,

with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark.  Oh, the gold! the precious,

precious gold!--the green miser'll hoard ye soon!  Hish! hish!

God goes 'mong the worlds blackberrying.  Cook! ho, cook! and cook us!

Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"







CHAPTER 100



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-deck, 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, goodnatured, 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 folds 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 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 befell 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.

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of the whale, in his own osseous postdiluvian reality, as set down

by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.



"Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters

and Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a

monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore.

The Common People imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed by God

upon the Temple, no Whale can pass it without immediate death.

But the truth of the Matter is, that on either side

of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into

the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em.

They keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle,

which lying upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost,

makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be reached

by a Man upon a Camel's Back.  This Rib (says John Leo)

is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it.

Their Historians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet,

came from this Temple, and some do not stand to assert,

that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base

of the Temple."



In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you

be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.







CHAPTER 105



Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? - Will He Perish?





Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down

upon us from the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be

fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his generations,

he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his sires.



But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales

of the present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil

remains are found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct

geological period prior to man), but of the whales found in

that Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter formations

exceed in size those of its earlier ones.



Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest

is the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that

was less than seventy feet in length in the skeleton.

Whereas, we have already seen, that the tape-measure gives

seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large sized modern whale.

And I have heard, on whalemen's authority, that Sperm Whales have

been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of capture.



But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an

advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods;

may it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?



Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts

of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally.

For Pliny tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk,

and Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length--

Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales!  And even in the days

of Banks and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member

of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales

(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.



But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more

recondite Nantucketers.  Whether owing to the almost omniscient

look-outs at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating

even through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers

and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted

along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan

can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc;

whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters,

and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe,

and then himself evaporate in the final puff.



Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo,

which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies

of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with

their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals,

where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch;

in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished,

to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.



But you must look at this matter in every light.  Though so short

a period ago--not a good lifetime--the census of the buffalo in Illinois

exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present

day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region;

and though the cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear

of man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily

forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan.  Forty men in one

ship hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they

have done extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home

the oil of forty fish.  Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian

and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west

(in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin,

the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of months,

mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain

not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that,

if need were, could be statistically stated.



Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favor