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especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored

old ark rocked so furiously.  On one side stood a long, low,

shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with

dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks.

Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a

dark-looking den--the bar--a rude attempt at a right whale's head.

Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the

whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it.

Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters,

bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction,

like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called

him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money,

dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.



Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison.

Though true cylinders without--within, the villanous green goggling

glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom.

Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround

these footpads' goblets.  Fill to this mark, and your charge is

but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass--

the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.



Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about

a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander.

I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated

with a room, received for answer that his house was full--

not a bed unoccupied.  "But avast," he added, tapping his forehead,

"you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye?

I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that

sort of thing."



I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I

should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be,

and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me,

and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather

than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night,

I would put up with the half of any decent man's blanket.



"I thought so.  All right; take a seat.  Supper?--you want supper?

Supper'll be ready directly."



I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a

bench on the Battery.  At one end a ruminating tar was still

further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over

and diligently working away at the space between his legs.

He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn't

make much headway, I thought.



At last some four or five of us were summoned to our

meal in an adjoining room.  It was cold as Iceland--

no fire at all--the landlord said he couldn't afford it.

Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet.

We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our

lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers.

But the fare was of the most substantial kind--not only meat

and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper!

One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself

to these dumplings in a most direful manner.



"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare

to a dead sartainty."



"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"



"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer

is a dark complexioned chap.  He never eats dumplings, he don't--

he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."



"The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer?

Is he here?"



"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.



I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this

"dark complexioned" harpooneer.  At any rate, I made up my

mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together,

he must undress and get into bed before I did.



Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when,

knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend

the rest of the evening as a looker on.



Presently a rioting noise was heard without.  Starting up,

the landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew.  I seed her reported

in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship.

Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."



A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open,

and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough.  Enveloped in their shaggy

watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,

all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles,

they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador.  They had just

landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered.

No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth--

the bar--when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating,

soon poured them out brimmers all round.  One complained of a bad

cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion

of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all

colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing,

or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side

of an ice-island.



The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally

does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea,

and they began capering about most obstreperously.



I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof,

and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his

shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from

making as much noise as the rest.  This man interested me at once;

and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate

(though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is

concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him.

He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest

like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man.

His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth

dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes

floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy.

His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his

fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers

from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia.  When the revelry of his

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Look to the bucket!"



"Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears."



"Aye, you are the chap, ain't ye, that heard the hum of the old

Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket;

you're the chap."



"Grin away; we'll see what turns up.  Hark ye, Cabaco, there is

somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck;

and I suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too.

I heard Stubb tell Flask, one morning watch, that there was

something of that sort in the wind."



"Tish! the bucket!"







CHAPTER 44



The Chart





Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall

that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification

of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker

in the transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish

sea charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table.

Then seating himself before it, you would have seen him intently

study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye;

and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces

that before were blank.  At intervals, he would refer to piles

of old log-books beside him, wherein were set down the seasons

and places in which, on various former voyages of various ships,

sperm whales had been captured or seen.



While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains

over his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship,

and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon

his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself

was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts,

some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon

the deeply marked chart of his forehead.



But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude

of his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts.

Almost every night they were brought out; almost every night

some pencil marks were effaced, and others were substituted.

For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was

threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more

certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.



Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,

it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one

solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet.

But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all

tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of

the sperm whale's food; and, also calling to mind the regular,

ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes;

could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching

to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this

or that ground in search of his prey.



So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm

whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that,

could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world;

were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated,

then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in

invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows.

On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory

charts of the sperm whale.*





*Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne

out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury,

of the National Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851.

By that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is in course

of completion; and portions of it are presented in the circular.

"This chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees

of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through

each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months;

and horizontally through each of which districts are three lines;

one to show the number of days that have been spent in each month

in every district, and the two others to show the number of days

in which whales, sperm or right, have been seen."





Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another,

the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct--say, rather,

secret intelligence from the Deity--mostly swim in veins, as they

are called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with

such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course,

by any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision.

Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale

be straight as a surveyor's parallel, and though the line

of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable,

straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times

he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width

(more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract);

but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's

mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone.

The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth

and along that path, migrating whales may with great confidence

be looked for.



And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known

separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey;

but in crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds

he could, by his art, so place and time himself on his way,

as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a meeting.



There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed

to entangle his delirious but still methodical scheme.

But not so in the reality, perhaps.  Though the gregarious

sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds,

yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted

such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn

out to be identically the same with those that were found there

the preceding season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable

instances where the contrary of this has proved true.

In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit,

applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured,

aged sperm whales.  So that though Moby Dick had in a former

year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle

ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast;

yet it did not follow that were the Pequod to visit either

of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season,

she would infallibly encounter him there.  So, too, with some

other feeding-grounds, where he had at times revealed himself.

But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and

ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode.

And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object

have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made

to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his,

ere a particular set time or place were attained, when all

possibilities would become probabilities, and, as Ahab

fondly thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty.

That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one

technical phrase--the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then,

for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically

descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun,

in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in any

one sign of the Zodiac.  There it was, too, that most of

the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place;

there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was

that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found

the awful motive to his vengeance.  But in the cautious

comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab

threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not

permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact

above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes;

nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize

his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.



Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning

of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could

enable her commander to make the great passage southwards,

double Cape Horn, and then running down sixty degrees of latitude

arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there.

Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season.

Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps,

been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion

of things.  Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five

days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of

impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt;

if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas

far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up

his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay,

or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race.

So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind

but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious

zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.



But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly,

seems it not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad

boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered,

should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter,

even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares

of Constantinople?  Yes.  For the peculiar snow-white brow of

Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but be unmistakable.

And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself,

as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he would

throw himself back in reveries--tallied him, and shall he escape?

His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear!

And here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race;

till a weariness and faintness of pondering came over him!

and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover

his strength.  Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man

endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire.

He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody

nails in his palms.



Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably

vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts

through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies,

and whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain,

till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish;

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Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from

the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight

of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed--

while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would

have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.

O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make

an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"



"Sail ho!" cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.



"Aye?  Well, now, that's cheering," cried Ahab, suddenly erecting

himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow.

"That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert

a better man.--Where away?"



"Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her

breeze to us!



"Better and better, man.  Would now St. Paul would come

along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze!

O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your

linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter,

but has its cunning duplicate in mind."







CHAPTER 71



The Jeroboam's Story







Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster

than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.



By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned

mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far

to windward, and shooting by, apparently making a passage

to some other ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her.

So the signal was set to see what response would be made.



Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines,

the ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal;

all which signals being collected in a book with the names

of the respective vessels attached, every captain is provided

with it.  Thereby, the whale commanders are enabled to recognise

each other upon the ocean, even at considerable distance,

and with no small facility.



The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's

setting her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam

of Nantucket.  Squaring her yards, she bore down,

ranged abeam under the Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat;

it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being rigged

by Starbuck's order to accommodate the visiting captain,

the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's stern

in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary.

It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board,

and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting

the Pequod's company.  For, though himself and the boat's crew

remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off,

and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between;

yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land,

he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod.



But this did by no means prevent all communications.

Preserving an interval of some few yards between itself and

the ship, the Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars

contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged

through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh), with her

main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by the sudden onset

of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some way ahead;

but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings again.

Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then,

a conversation was sustained between the two parties;

but at intervals not without still another interruption of a

very different sort.



Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular appearance,

even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities make up

all totalities.  He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all

over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair.

A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped

him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists.

A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.



So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed--

"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho's company

told us of!"  Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam,

and a certain man among her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke

the Town-Ho. According to this account and what was subsequently learned,

it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful

ascendency over almost everybody in the Jeroboam.  His story was this:



He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of

Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,

secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way

of a trapdoor, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial,

which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of

containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum.

A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna

for Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness,

he assumed a steady, common sense exterior, and offered himself

as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage.

They engaged him; but straightway upon the ship's getting

out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet.

He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded

the captain to jump overboard.  He published his manifesto,

whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles

of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica.  The unflinching

earnestness with which he declared these things;--the dark,

daring play of his sleepless, excited imagination, and all

the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united to invest

this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew,

with an atmosphere of sacredness.  Moreover, they were afraid of him.

As such a man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship,

especially as he refused to work except when he pleased,

the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of him;

but apprised that that individual's intention was to land him

in the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened

all his seals and vials--devoting the ship and all hands to

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The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View





Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the the

Right Whale's head.



As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared

to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so

broadly rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears

a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe.

Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape

to that of a shoemaker's last.  And in this same last or shoe,

that old woman of the nursery tale with the swarming brood,

might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny.



But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume

different aspects, according to your point of view.

If you stand on its summit and look at these two f-shaped

spout-holes, you would take the whole head for an enormous bass viol,

and these spiracles, the apertures in its soundingboard.

Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested,

comblike incrustation on the top of the mass--this green,

barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the "crown,"

and the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale;

fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for

the trunk of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch.

At any rate, when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on

this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you;

unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term

"crown" also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take

great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually

a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put

together for him in this marvellous manner.  But if this whale

be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem.

Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is

there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty

feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield

you some 500 gallons of oil and more.



A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.

The fissure is about a foot across.  Probably the mother during

an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast,

when earthquakes caused the beach to gape.  Over this lip,

as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth.

Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside

of an Indian wigwam.  Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went?

The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle,

as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed,

arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical,

scimitar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side,

which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone,

form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned.

The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres,

through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose

intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes

through the seas of brit in feeding time.  In the central blinds

of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain

curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen

calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings.

Though the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable,

yet it has the savor of analogical probability.  At any rate,

if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale

than at first glance will seem reasonable.



In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies

concerning these blinds.  One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous

"whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs' bristles";

a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:

"There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his

upper chop, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth."





*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker,

or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white

hairs on the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw.

Sometimes these tufts impart a rather brigandish expression

to his otherwise solemn countenance.





As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles,"

"fins," "whiskers," "blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to

the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances.

But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline.

It was in Queen Anne's time that the bone was in its glory,

the farthingale being then all the fashion.  And as those ancient

dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as you

may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness,

do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection;

the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.



But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,

standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh.

Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about,

would you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ,

and gazing upon its thousand pipes?  For a carpet to the organ

we have a rug of the softest Turkey--the tongue, which is glued,

as it were, to the floor of the mouth.  It is very fat

and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting it on deck.

This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I

should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you

about that amount of oil.



Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with--

that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely

different heads.  To sum up, then:  in the Right Whale's there

is no great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long,

slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor

in the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of bone;

no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue.

Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes,

the Sperm Whale only one.



Look your last now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they

yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea;

the other will not be very long in following.



Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there?

It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles

in the forehead seem now faded away.  I think his broad brow

to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative

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indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws

from the air a certain element, which being subsequently

brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood

its vivifying principle, I do not think I shall err;

though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.

Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could

be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils

and not fetch another for a considerable time.  That is to say,

he would then live without breathing.  Anomalous as it may seem,

this is precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives,

by intervals, his full hour and more (when at the bottom)

without drawing a single breath, or so much as in any way

inhaling a particle of air; for, remember, he has no gills.

How is this?  Between his ribs and on each side of his spine

he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth

of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits

the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood.

So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea,

he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel

crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply

of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs.

The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable;

and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true,

seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise

inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his

spoutings out, as the fishermen phrase it.  This is what I mean.

If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will

continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all

his other unmolested risings.  Say he stays eleven minutes,

and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths;

then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy

breaths over again, to a minute.  Now, if after he fetches a few

breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always

dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air.

And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally

go down to stay out his full term below.  Remark, however,

that in different individuals these rates are different;

but in any one they are alike.  Now, why should the whale

thus insist upon having his spoutings out, unless it be

to replenish his reservoir of air, ere descending for good?

How obvious it is it, too, that this necessity for the whale's

rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase.

For not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught,

when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight.

Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities

that strike the victory to thee!



In man, breathing is incessantly going on--one breath only serving

for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has

to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will.

But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday

of his time.



It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole;

if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water,

then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell

seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all answers

to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged with

two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling.

But owing to the mystery of the spout--whether it be water or whether it

be vapor--no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head.

Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories.

But what does he want of them?  No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water

in the sea.



Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his

spouting canal, and as that long canal--like the grand Erie Canal--

is furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut)

for the downward retention of air or the upward exclusion of water,

therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying,

that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose.

But then again, what has the whale to say?  Seldom have I known

any profound being that had anything to say to this world,

unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.

Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!



Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it

is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,

horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head,

and a little to one side; this curious canal is very much

like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side of a street.

But the question returns whether this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe;

in other words, whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere

vapor of the exhaled breath, or whether that exhaled breath is

mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and discharged through

the spiracle.  It is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates

with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this

is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle.

Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be,

when in feeding he accidentally takes in water.  But the Sperm Whale's

food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout

even if he would.  Besides, if you regard him very closely,

and time him with your watch, you will find that when unmolested,

there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets

and the ordinary periods of respiration.



But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject?

Speak out!  You have seen him spout; then declare what

the spout is; can you not tell water from air?  My dear sir,

in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things.

I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all.

And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it,

and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.



The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist

enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water

falls from it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale

to get a close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion,

the water cascading all around him.  And if at such times

you should think that you really perceived drops of moisture

in the spout, how do you know that they are not merely condensed

from its vapor; or how do you know that they are not those

identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure,

which is countersunk into the summit of the whale's head?

For even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm,

with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in the desert;

even then, the whale always carries a small basin of water on

his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity

in a rock filled up with rain.



Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching

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

"As fearless fire," cried Stubb.



"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab.  Then as the men went forward,

he muttered on:  "The things called omens!  And yesterday I talked

the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat.  Oh! how valiantly

I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in mine!--

The Parsee--the Parsee!--gone, gone? and he was to go before:--

but still was to be seen again ere I could perish--How's that?--

There's a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts

of the whole line of judges:--like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain.

I'll, I'll solve it, though!"



When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.



So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed

nearly as on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers,

and the hum of the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight,

as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and careful

rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons

for the morrow.  Meantime, of the broken keel of Ahab's wrecked

craft the carpenter made him another leg; while still as on

the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle;

his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial;

sat due eastward for the earliest sun.







CHAPTER 135



The Chase - Third Day





The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once

more the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved

by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast

and almost every spar.



"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.



"In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all.

Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going.

What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for

a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its

throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world.

Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks;

he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal

man! to think's audacity.  God only has that right and privilege.

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our

poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm--

frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which

the contents turned to ice, and shiver it.  And still this hair

is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it;

but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere,

between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava.

How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn

shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to.

A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors

and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes

blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.  Out upon it!--it's tainted.

Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world.

I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there.  And yet,

'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it?

In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow.  Run tilting

at it, and you but run through it.  Ha! a coward wind that strikes

stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow.

Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler thing than that.

Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most

exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless,

but only bodiless as objects, not as agents.  There's a

most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference!

And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something

all glorious and gracious in the wind.  These warm Trade Winds,

at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong

and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark,

however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack,

and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about,

uncertain where to go at last.  And by the eternal Poles!

these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on;

these Trades, or something like them--something so unchangeable,

and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along!  To it!  Aloft there!

What d'ye see?"



"Nothing, sir."



"Nothing! and noon at hand!  The doubloon goes a-begging! See

the sun!  Aye, aye, it must be so.  I've over-sailed him.

How, got the start?  Aye, he's chasing me now; not I, him--

that's bad; I might have known it, too.  Fool! the lines--

the harpoons he's towing.  Aye, aye, I have run him by last night.

About! about!  Come down, all of ye, but the regular look outs!

Man the braces!"



Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the

Pequod's quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction,

the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned

the cream in her own white wake.



"Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck

to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail.

"God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from

the inside wet my flesh.  I misdoubt me that I disobey my God

in obeying him!"



"Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket.

"We should meet him soon."



"Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding,

and once more Ahab swung on high.



A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages.

Time itself now held long breaths with keen suspense.

But at last, some three points off the weather bow, Ahab descried

the spout again, and instantly from the three mast-heads

three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it.



"Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick!

On deck there!--brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye.

He's too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck.  The sails shake!

Stand over that helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast,