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of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen,

and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style;

only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest

wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his

continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;--

for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together.

Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.



"Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing to the door

of the tent.



"Supposing it be the Captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want

of him?" he demanded.



"I was thinking of shipping."



"Thou wast, wast thou?  I see thou art no Nantucketer--

ever been in a stove boat?"



"No, Sir, I never have."



"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.



"But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I

think of shipping ye."



"Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is.  I want to see the world."



"Want to see what whaling is, eh?  Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?"



"Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"



"Aye, aye, I thought so.  Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship."



"I am mistaken then.  I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself."



"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to,

young man.  It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted

out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew.

We are part owners and agents.  But as I was going to say, if thou wantest

to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way

of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out.

Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has

only one leg."



"What do you mean, sir?  Was the other one lost by a whale?"



"Lost by a whale!  Young man, come nearer to me:  it was devoured,

chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped

a boat!--ah, ah!"



I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched

at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly

as I could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could

I know there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale,

though indeed I might have inferred as much from the simple fact

of the accident."



"Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see;

thou dost not talk shark a bit.  Sure, ye've been to sea before now;

sure of that?"



"Sir," said I, "I thought I told you that I had been four voyages

in the merchant-"



"Hard down out of that!  Mind what I said about the marchant service--

don't aggravate me--I won't have it.  But let us understand each other.

I have given thee a hint about what whaling is! do ye yet feel

inclined for it?"



"I do, sir."



"Very good.  Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live

whale's throat, and then jump after it?  Answer, quick!"



"I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so;

not to be got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact."



"Good again.  Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling,

to find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want

to go in order to see the world?  Was not that what ye said?

I thought so.  Well then, just step forward there, and take

a peep over the weather bow, and then back to me and tell me

what ye see there."



For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request,

not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest.

But concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg

started me on the errand.



Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived

that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was

now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean.  The prospect

was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding;

not the slightest variety that I could see.



"Well, what's the report?" said Peleg when I came back;

"what did ye see?"



"Not much," I replied--"nothing but water; considerable horizon though,

and there's a squall coming up, I think."

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the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases.

Then this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale,

each of these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases.

And it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned.

In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular combinations;

or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation;

as utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis.

On this rock every one of the whale-naturalists has split.



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.

His oil is not very valuable.  He has baleen.  He is the most gamesome

and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white

water generally than any other of them.



BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. ( Razor Back).--Of this whale

little is known but his name.  I have seen him at a distance

off Cape Horn.  Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters

and philosophers.  Though no coward, he has never yet shown any

part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge.

Let him go.  I know little more of him, nor does anybody else.



BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI.  (Sulphur Bottom).--Another retiring

gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along

the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings.  He is seldom seen;

at least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas,

and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance.

He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line.

Prodigies are told of him.  Adieu, Sulphur Bottom!  I can say nothing

more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.



Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II.  (Octavo).



OCTAVOES.* These embrace the whales of middling magnitude,

among which at present may be numbered:--I., the Grampus; II., the

Black Fish; III., the Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer.





*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.

Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those

of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness

to them in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its

dimensioned form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume,

but the Octavo volume does.





BOOK II.  (Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus).--Though this fish,

whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing,

has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen

of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales.

But possessing all the grand distinctive features of

the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one.

He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five

feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist.

He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his

oil is considerable in quantity, and pretty good for light.

By some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory

of the advance of the great sperm whale.



BOOK II.  (Octavo), CHAPTER II.  (Black Fish).--I give the popular

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

from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose.

The creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages

five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet.

Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing out

from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the horizontal.

But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an ill effect,

giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy

left-handed man.  What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers,

it would be hard to say.  It does not seem to be used like the blade

of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that

the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of

the sea for food.  Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer;

for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding

it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through.

But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct.

My own opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may really

be used by the Narwhale--however that may be--it would certainly

be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.

The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale,

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

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

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

this leg.  I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.

Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one.  That's more than ye,

ye great gods, ever were.  I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players,

ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!  I will not

say as schoolboys do to bullies--Take some one of your own size;

don't pommel me!  No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again;

but ye have run and hidden.  Come forth from behind your cotton bags!

I have no long gun to reach ye.  Come, Ahab's compliments to ye;

come and see if ye can swerve me.  Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me,

else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there.  Swerve me?

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my

soul is grooved to run.  Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled

hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!

Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!







CHAPTER 38



Dusk





By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.





My soul is more than matched; she's over-manned; and by a madman!

Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field!

But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me!

I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it.

Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with

a cable I have no knife to cut.  Horrible old man!  Who's over him,

he cries;--aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords

it over all below!  Oh!  I plainly see my miserable office,--

to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!

For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.

Yet is there hope.  Time and tide flow wide.  The hated whale has

the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its

glassy globe.  His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside.

I would up heart, were it not like lead.  But my whole clock's run down;

my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.





[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]





Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch

of human mothers in them!  Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea.

The white whale is their demigorgon.  Hark! the infernal orgies!

that revelry is forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft!

Methinks it pictures life.  Foremost through the sparkling sea

shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag

dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin,

builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on,

hunted by its wolfish gurglings.  The long howl thrills me through!

Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch!  Oh, life! 'tis in an

hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,--

as wild, untutored things are forced to feed--Oh, life! 'tis

now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me!

that horror's out of me, and with the soft feeling of the human

in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures!

Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!







CHAPTER 39



First Night Watch





(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)







Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--I've been thinking

over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence.

Why so?  Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all

that's queer; and come what will, one comfort's always left--

that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated.

I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye

Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt.

Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too.  I twigged it, knew it;

had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I

clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it.  Well, Stubb, wise Stubb--

that's my title--well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb?  Here's a carcase.

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will,

I'll go to it laughing.  Such a waggish leering as lurks

in all your horribles!  I feel funny.  Fa, la! lirra, skirra!

What's my juicy little pear at home doing now?  Crying its eyes out?--

Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say,

gay as a frigate's pennant, and so am I--fa, la! lirra, skirra!  Oh--



         We'll drink to-night with hearts as light,

           To love, as gay and fleeting

         As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim,

           And break on the lips while meeting.





A brave stave that--who calls?  Mr. Starbuck?  Aye, aye, sir--

(Aside) he's my superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken.--

Aye, aye, sir, just through with this job--coming.







CHAPTER 40



Midnight, Forecastle



HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS





(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning,

and lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.)



          Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!

          Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!

                   Our captain's commanded.--



1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR



Oh, boys, don't be sentimental.  it's bad for the digestion!

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

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

I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since

the death of Radney."







CHAPTER 55



Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales





I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,

something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears

to the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale

is moored alongside the whaleship so that he can be fairly stepped

upon there.  It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert

to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to

the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman.

It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such

pictures of the whale all wrong.



It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will

be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures.

For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble

panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,

medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of

chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's;

ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed,

not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific

presentations of him.



Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways

purporting to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous

cavern-pagoda of Elephants, in India.  The Brahmins maintain

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,

scarcely drawing one inch of water.  It has a sort of howdah on

its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows

are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from

the Thames by water into the Tower.  Then, there are the Prodromus

whales of the old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depicted

in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers.

What shall be said of these?  As for the book-binder's whale

winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--

as stamped and gilded on the backs and titlepages of many

books both old and new--that is a very picturesque but purely

fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures

on antique vases.  Though universally denominated a dolphin,

I nevertheless call this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale;

because it was so intended when the device was first introduced.

It was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere

about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning;

and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period,

dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan.



In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books

you will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale,

where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold,

Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain.

In the title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning"

you will find some curious whales.



But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those

pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,

by those who know.  In old Harris's collection of voyages there

are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages,

A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas

in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master."  In one of those

plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying

among ice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs.

In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing

the whale with perpendicular flukes.



Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett,

a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round

Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending

the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries."  In this book is an outline

purporting to be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale,

drawn by scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793,

and hoisted on deck."  I doubt not the captain had this veracious

picture taken for the benefit of his marines.  To mention but one

thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied,

according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale,

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

that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.



But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business

was reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the

famous Baron.  In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales,

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thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that in

here that still remains indifferent.  Oh, thou clear spirit,

of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire,

I breathe it back to thee."



[Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap lengthwise

to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes his eyes,

his right hand pressed hard upon them.]



"I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so?

Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links.

Thou canst blind; but I can then grope.  Thou canst consume;

but I can then be ashes.  Take the homage of these poor eyes,

and shutter-hands. I would not take it.  The lightning

flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache;

my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some

stunning ground.  Oh, oh!  Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee.

Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness;

but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!

The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?  There burn the flames!

Oh, thou magnanimous! now do I do glory in my genealogy.

But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not.

Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her?  There lies my puzzle;

but thine is greater.  Thou knowest not how came ye,

hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not

thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun.  I know that of me,

which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent.

There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit,

to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical.

Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it.

Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too

hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief.

Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire.  Leap! leap up,

and lick the sky!  I leap with thee; I burn with thee;

would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!"



"The boat! the boat!" cried Starbuck, "look at thy boat, old man!"



Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly

lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond

his whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had

caused the loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen

steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire.

As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent's tongue,

Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--"God, God is against thee,

old man; forbear! 't is an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued;

let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair

wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this."



Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly

ran to the braces--though not a sail was left aloft.

For the moment all the aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs;

they raised a half mutinous cry.  But dashing the rattling

lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon,

Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix

with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end.

Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from

the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay,

and Ahab again spoke:--



"All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine;

and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound.

And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats:  look ye here;

thus I blow out the last fear!"  And with one blast of his breath

he extinguished the flame.



As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood

of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it

so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts;

so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him

in a terror of dismay.







CHAPTER 120



The Deck Toward the End of the First Night Watch



Ahab standing by the helm.  Starbuck approaching him.





We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir.  The band is working

loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?"



"Strike nothing; lash it.  If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway

them up now."



"Sir!--in God's name!--sir?"



"Well."



"The anchors are working, sir.  Shall I get them inboard?"



"Strike nothing, and stir nothing but lash everything.  The wind rises,

but it has not got up to my table-lands yet.  Quick, and see to it.--

By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of some

coasting smack.  Send down my main-top-sail yard!  Ho, gluepots!

Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck

of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that?

Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time.

What a hooroosh aloft there!  I would e'en take it for sublime,

did I not know that the colic is a noisy malady.  Oh, take medicine,

take medicine!"







CHAPTER 121



Midnight - The Forecastle Bulwarks





Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings

over the anchors there hanging.





No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please,

but you will never pound into me what you were just now saying.

And how long ago is it since you said the very contrary?

Didn't you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in,

that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy,

just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes