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shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way
against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered
congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled
silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm.
Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other,
as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.
The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands
of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets,
with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit.
Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not
pretend to quote:
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
JOHN TALBOT,
Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard
Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
November 1st, 1836.
THIS TABLET
Is erected to his Memory
BY HIS SISTER.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
Forming one of the boats' crews
OF
THE SHIP ELIZA
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
On the Off-shore Ground in the
PACIFIC,
December 31st, 1839.
THIS MARBLE
Is here placed by their surviving
SHIPMATES.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
The late
CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a
Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan,
August 3d, 1833.
THIS TABLET
Is erected to his Memory
BY
HIS WIDOW.
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated
myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see
Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was
a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance.
This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice
my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read,
and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall.
Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names
appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not;
but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery,
and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance
if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure
that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing
hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused
the old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass;
who standing among flowers can say--here, here lies my beloved;
ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these.
What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover
no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions!
What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines
that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections
to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave.
As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales,
though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands! how it is
that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix
so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him,
if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth;
why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals;
in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance,
yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago;
how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we
nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss;
why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but
the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.
All these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from
these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve
of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets,
and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read
the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael,
the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again.
Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion,
it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet.
Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a speechlessly
quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then?
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life
and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth
is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual,
we are too much like oysters observing the sun through
the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being.
In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove
boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul,
Jove himself cannot.
CHAPTER 8
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"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how that harmless
question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.
But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish;
how soon sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up
to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does
he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance.
'We sail with the next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered,
still intently eyeing him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any
honest man that goes a passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab.
But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent.
'I'll sail with ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--
I'll pay now.' For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it
were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid
the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context,
this is full of meaning.
"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel
freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper,
is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares
to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly.
He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented to.
Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same
time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold.
Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still
molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit.
Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage.
'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary;
I need sleep." "Thou look'st like it,' says the Captain,
'there's thy room.' Jonah enters, and would lock the door,
but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there,
the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about
the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked within.
All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth,
and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead.
The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole,
sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding
presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him
in the smallest of his bowels' wards.
"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf
with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all,
though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with
reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself,
it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung.
The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth
his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far
successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.
But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him.
The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.
'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, "straight upward,
so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'
"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed,
still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings
of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags
into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns
in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed;
and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him,
as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound,
and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestling in his berth,
Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.
"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables;
and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish,
all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends,
was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband
was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden.
A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break.
But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her;
when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard;
when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every
plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah's head;
in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep.
He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers,
and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale,
which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him.
Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship--
a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep.
But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear,
'What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy
by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling
to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea.
But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leaping
over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship,
and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft,
till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat.
And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from
the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah
sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat
downward again towards the tormented deep.
"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his
cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known.
The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions
of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring
the whole matter to high Heaven, they all-outward to casting lots,
to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them.
The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they
mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation?
Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now,
my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners
but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only
receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer
to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is
forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord
the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!'
Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then!
Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession;
whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still
are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy,
since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts,--
when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast
him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake this
great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him,
and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain;
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and the crew sprang for the handspikes.
Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied
by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad,
who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other offices,
was one of the licensed pilots of the port--he being suspected
to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket
pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he never
piloted any other craft--Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively
engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor,
and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody,
to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort
of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will.
Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them
that no profane songs would be allowed on board the Pequod,
particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity, his sister,
had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman's berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg
ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner.
I almost thought he would sink the ship before the anchor could
be got up; involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and told
Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran,
in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot.
I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious
Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred
and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear,
and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg
in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity.
That was my first kick.
"Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?" he roared.
"Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don't
ye spring, I say, all of ye--spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with
the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants.
Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!" And so saying,
he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely,
while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody.
Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided.
It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged
into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean,
whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight;
and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving
icicles depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon,
as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering
frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang,
his steady notes were heard,--
"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between."
Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then.
They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night
in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket,
there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store;
and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up
by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were
needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us
began ranging alongside.
It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were
affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath
to depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound
on so long and perilous a voyage--beyond both stormy Capes;
a ship in which some thousands of his hardearned dollars
were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain;
a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter
all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye
to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,--
poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides;
ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there;
again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards
the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen
Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft;
looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere;
and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin,
convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up
a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face,
as much as to say, "Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it;
yes, I can."
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher;
but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye,
when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little
run from the cabin to deck--now a word below, and now a word
with Starbuck, the chief mate.
But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look
about him,--"Captain Bildad--come, old shipmate, we must go.
Back the mainyard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come
close alongside, now! Careful, careful!--come, Bildad, boy--
say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck--luck to ye, Mr. Stubb--
luck to ye, Mr. Flask--good-bye and good luck to ye all--
and this day three years I'll have a hot supper smoking for ye
in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!"
"God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men," murmured old Bildad,
almost incoherently. "I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so that
Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all he needs,
and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful
in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers;
good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent within the year.
Don't forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don't
waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker.
Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't miss a fair
chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts. Have an eye
to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.
If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication.
Good-bye, good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold,
Mr. Starbuck; it'll spoil. Be careful with the butter--twenty cents
the pound it was, and mind ye, if--"
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thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal
man to account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible.
Can we, then, by the citation of some of those instances
wherein this thing of whiteness--though for the time either
wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations
calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless,
is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modified;--
can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us
to the hidden cause we seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,
and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls.
And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions
about to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few
perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore
may not be able to recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but
loosely acquainted with the peculiar character of the day,
does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy
such long, dreary, speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims,
down-cast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or to the unread,
unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States,
why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun,
evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings
(which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower
of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an
untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors--
the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers,
the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods,
comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention
of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full
of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all
latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert
such a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea
lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on
the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets?
Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed
to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe,
does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless
pallor unrestingly glides through the green of the groves--
why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps
of the Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness
of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field
of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop
(like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues
of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;--
it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,
saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil;
and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe.
Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new;
admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over
her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes
its own distortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness
is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror
of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there
aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind
almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited
under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality.
What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively
elucidated by the following examples.
First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands,
if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels
just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under
precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock
to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness--
as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming
round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded
phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost;
in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm
they both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.
Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much
the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness
that so stirred me?"
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of
the snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps,
in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning
at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness
it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same
is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative
indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow,
no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.
Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas;
where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers
of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of
rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems
a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments
and splintered crosses.
But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about
whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul;
thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.
Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful
valley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--
why is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh
buffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see it, but only
smells its wild animal muskiness--why will he start, snort,
and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright?
There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creatures
in his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he smells
cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience
of former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt,
of the black bisons of distant Oregon?
No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute,
the instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world.
Though thousands of miles from Oregon, still when he smells
that savage musk, the rending, goring bison herds are as present
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against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon;
while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a fencer's,
thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any
tendency to trip; Ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar
as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him.
All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion
and then remained fixed, while the boat's five oars were seen
simultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea.
Instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way.
The whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue,
thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement,
though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.
"Every man look out along his oars!" cried Starbuck. "Thou, Queequeg,
stand up!"
Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow,
the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed
off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried.
Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also
triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself
was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking
tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast
blue eye of the sea.
Not very far distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still;
its commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead,
a stout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet
above the level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns
with the whale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a
man's hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched
at the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks.
But little King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little
King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that this logger
head stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.
"I can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let
me onto that."
Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way,
swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty
shoulders for a pedestal.
"Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?"
"That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow;
only I wish you fifty feet taller."
Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of
the boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm
to Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed
head and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one
dexterous fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders.
And here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing
him with a breastband to lean against and steady himself by.
At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with
what wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman
will maintain an erect posture in his boat, even when pitched
about by the most riotously perverse and cross-running seas.
Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon the logger
head itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of little
Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious;
for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of,
barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously
rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask
seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider.
Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask
would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added
heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest.
So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living
magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her
seasons for that.
Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes.
The whales might have made one of their regular soundings,
not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case,
Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace
the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from
his hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather.
He loaded it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end;
but hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sandpaper
of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had been
setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped like light
from his erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a quick phrensy
of hurry, "Down, down all, and give way!--there they are!"
To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been
visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish
white water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it,
and suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from
white rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled,
as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron.
Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath
a thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance
of all the other indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted,
seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders.
All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot
of troubled water and air. But it bade far to outstrip them;
it flew on and on, as a mass of interblending bubbles borne
down a rapid stream from the hills.
"Pull, pull, my good boys," said Starbuck, in the lowest possible
but intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp
fixed glance from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow,
almost seemed as two visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses.
He did not say much to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything
to him. Only the silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly
pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with command,
now soft with entreaty.
How different the loud little King-Post. "Sing out and
say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts!
Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys; only do that for me,
and I'll sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys;
including wife and children, boys. Lay me on--lay me on!
O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad! See! see that
white water!" And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head,
and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it
far off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging
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cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research.
Nor have I been at all sparing of historical whale research,
when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by
the Hollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived
many terms still extant in the fishery; and what is yet more,
their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and drink.
For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew;
but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing
of whaling good cheer is not normal and natural, but incidental
and particular; and, therefore, must have some special origin,
which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated.
During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon
an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it,
I knew must be about whalers. The title was, "Dan Coopman,"
wherefore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs
of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must
carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing
that it was the production of one "Fitz Swackhammer." But my
friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch
and High German in the college of Santa Claus and St. Potts,
to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm
candles for his trouble--this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied
the book, assured me that "Dan Coopman" did not mean "The Cooper,"
but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch
book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects,
contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery.
And in this chapter it was, headed, "Smeer," or "Fat," that I
found a long detailed list of the outfits for the larders
and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list,
as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:
0084400,000 lbs. of beef.
60,000 lbs. Friesland pork.
150,000 lbs. of stock fish.
550,000 lbs. of biscuit.
72,000 lbs. of soft bread.
2,800 firkins of butter.
20,000 lbs. of Texel and Leyden cheese.
144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article).
550 ankers of Geneva.
10,800 barrels of beer.
Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading;
not so in the present case, however, where the reader is flooded
with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin
and good cheer.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all
this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts
were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental
and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary
tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, &c.,
consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland
and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the amount
of butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing.
I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures,
being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation,
and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas,
on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial
natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.
The quantity of the beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels.
Now, as those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short
summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch
whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea,
did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men
to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen
in all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer
per man, for a twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair
proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and
beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might fancy them to have been,
were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat's head, and take
good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat improbable.
Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very far North,
be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution;
upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make
the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat;
and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.
But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch
whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that
the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an example.
For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing
better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
And this empties the decanter.
CHAPTER 102
A Bower in the Arsacides
Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have
chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately
and in detail upon some few interior structural features.
But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him,
it behoves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging
the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose
the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones,
set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say,
in his unconditional skeleton.
But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in
the fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts
of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan,
deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help
of the windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition?
Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a full-grown whale on your
deck for examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely not.
A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael;
but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;
the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams;
the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making
up the frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats,
dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his bowels.
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tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb
dream to speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel;
Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel, but turning from the door,
he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
"He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him,
and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st
what to say."
CHAPTER 124
The Needle
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow
billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's
gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread.
The strong unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air
seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before
the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible
sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place;
where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of
crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything.
The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps
with light and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every
time the teetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit,
he turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced ahead;
and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind,
and saw the sun's rearward place, and how the same yellow rays
were blending with his undeviating wake.
"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of
the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye!
Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!"
But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
"East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.
"Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist.
"Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just
then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else;
but its very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half-way into the binnacle, Ahab caught
one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell;
for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind
him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East,
and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old
man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened before.
Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses--that's all.
Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it."
"Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the
pale mate, gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have
in more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms.
The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is,
as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven;
hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be.
In instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel,
so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon
the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone
virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no
more use than an old wife's knitting needle. But in either case,
the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue
thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected,
the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship;
even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing
the transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp
of his extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun,
and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out
his orders for the ship's course to be changed accordingly.
The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod thrust her
undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair
one had only been juggling her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck
said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders;
while Stubb and Flask--who in some small degree seemed then
to be sharing his feelings--likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced.
As for the men, though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear
of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. But as ever before,
the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed;
or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot
into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries.
But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed
copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed
to the deck.
"Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I
wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me.
So, so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet.
Mr. Starbuck--a lance without the pole; a top-maul, and the smallest
of the sail-maker's needles. Quick!"
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about
to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been
to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill,
in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses.
Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles,
though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by
superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.
"Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate
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