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previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been

lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys

stand in awe of you.  The transition is a keen one, I assure you,

from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction

of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.

But even this wears off in time.



What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get

a broom and sweep down the decks?  What does that indignity amount to,

weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament?  Do you think

the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly

and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance?

Who ain't a slave?  Tell me that.  Well, then, however the old

sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch

me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right;

that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--

either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is;

and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub

each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.



Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make

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Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with

the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast

of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have

the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail.

A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is

no intermediate remainder.  Now as this law, under a modified form,

is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects

a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast--and Loose-Fish,

it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous

principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a

separate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty.

In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned

law is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance-that

happened within the last two years.



It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich,

or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded

in killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally

descried afar off from the shore.  Now the Cinque Ports are

partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman

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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