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

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



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

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

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

the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice

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

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

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

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

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

while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty

of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun,

shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.

Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events,

as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.

The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish,

it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance

in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command.

Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start;

and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt,

as he strained at his oar.  After a stiff pull, their harpooneer

got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow.

He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat.  And now his

bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back.

Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding

foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat

struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the

standing mate.  That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back,

the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney

was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale.

He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen

through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye

of Moby Dick.  But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom;

seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him,

plunged headlong again, and went down.



"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman

had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool;

calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts.  But a sudden, terrific,

downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line.

He cut it; and the whale was free.  But, at some distance,

Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red

woollen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him.

All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them,

and finally wholly disappeared.



"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port--a savage, solitary place--

where no civilized creature resided.  There, headed by the Lakeman,

all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among

the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double

war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.



"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called

upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving

down the ship to stop the leak.  But to such unresting vigilance over

their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated,

both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent,

that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such

a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them

in so heavy a vessel.  After taking counsel with his officers,

he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran

out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop;

and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril,

took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat,

steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant,

to procure a reinforcement to his crew.



"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried,

which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals.

He steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him;

and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to,

or he would run him under water.  The captain presented a pistol.

With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman

laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much

as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.



"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.



"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?'

demanded Steelkilt; 'no lies.'



"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'



"'Very good.  Let me board you a moment--I come in peace.'

With that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat;

and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the captain.



"'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head.  Now, repeat after me.

As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat

on yonder island, and remain there six days.  If I do not,

may lightning strike me!'



"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman.  'Adios, Senor!'

and leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.



"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots

of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived

at Tahiti, his own place of destination.  There, luck befriended him;

two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially

in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed.

They embarked, and so for ever got the start of their former captain,

had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.



"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,

and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more

civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea.

Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel;

and finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.



"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island

of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses

to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale

that destroyed him.



"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.



"'I am, Don.'



"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,

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however transient, in the important chief officer of his ship.

However it was, his orders were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.







CHAPTER 110



Queequeg in His Coffin







Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold

were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off.

So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper,

disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts;

and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles

into the daylight above.  So deep did they go; and so ancient,

and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons,

that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask

containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards,

vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood.

Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef,

and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out,

till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow

hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs,

and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn.

Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle

in his head.  Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.



Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion,

and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever,

which brought him nigh to his endless end.



Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;

dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain,

the higher you rise the harder you toil.  So with poor Queequeg,

who, as harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the

living whale, but--as we have elsewhere seen--mount his dead back

in a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold,

and bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement,

resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage.

To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.



Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled,

you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down

upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers,

the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness

and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well.

And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan;

where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings,

he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever;

and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock,

close to the very sill of the door of death.  How he wasted

and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there

seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing.

But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper,

his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller;

they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but

deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous

testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die,

or be weakened.  And like circles on the water, which, as they

grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding,

like the rings of Eternity.  An awe that cannot be named would

steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage,

and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who were

bystanders when Zoroaster died.  For whatever is truly wondrous

and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all,

alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author

from the dead could adequately tell.  So that--let us say it again--

no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts

than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face

of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock,

and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest,

and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher

towards his destined heaven.



Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,

what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious

favor he asked.  He called one to him in the grey morning watch,

when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand,

said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little

canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle;

and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died

in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy

of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike

the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior,

stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated

away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe

that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons,

their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens;

and so form the white breakers of the milky way.  He added,

that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock,

according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile

to the death-devouring sharks.  No:  he desired a canoe like those

of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman,

that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel;

though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way

adown the dim ages.



Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft,

the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding,

whatever it might include.  There was some heathenish,

coffin-colored old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage,

had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands,

and from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made.

No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than taking

his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude

of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took

Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking

Queequeg's person as he shifted the rule.



"Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the

Long Island sailor.



Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake

and general reference, now transferringly measured on it

the exact length the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer

permanent by cutting two notches at its extremities.

This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.