App-PigLatin

 view release on metacpan or  search on metacpan

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

only one leg."



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



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

chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped

a boat!--ah, ah!"



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

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

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



OCTAVOES.* These embrace the whales of middling magnitude,

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

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





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

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

of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness

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

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

but the Octavo volume does.





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

whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing,

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

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

But possessing all the grand distinctive features of

the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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







CHAPTER 39



First Night Watch





(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)

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

Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that?

Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own

"Perseus Descending," make out one whit better.  The huge

corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

as stamped and gilded on the backs and titlepages of many

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

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

on antique vases.  Though universally denominated a dolphin,

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

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

It was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere

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

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

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



In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books

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

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

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

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

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

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

they raised a half mutinous cry.  But dashing the rattling

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

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

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

Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from

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

and Ahab again spoke:--



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

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

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

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

he extinguished the flame.



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

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

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

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

in a terror of dismay.