-chapter 26.knights and squires. the chief mate of the pequod was starbuck,a native of nantucket, and a quaker by descent. he was a long, earnest man, and though bornon an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hardas twice-baked biscuit. transported to the indies, his live bloodwould not spoil like bottled ale. he must have been born in some time ofgeneral drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state isfamous. only some thirty arid summers had he seen;those summers had dried up all his physical
superfluousness. but this, his thinness, so to speak, seemedno more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of anybodily blight. it was merely the condensation of the man. he was by no means ill-looking; quite thecontrary. his pure tight skin was an excellent fit;and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like arevivified egyptian, this starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be itpolar snow or torrid sun, like a patent
chronometer, his interior vitality waswarranted to do well in all climates. looking into his eyes, you seemed to seethere the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmlyconfronted through life. a staid, steadfast man, whose life for themost part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. yet, for all his hardy sobriety andfortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in somecases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, andendued with a deep natural reverence, the
wild watery loneliness of his life didtherefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizationsseems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance.outward portents and inward presentiments were his. and if at times these things bent thewelded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his youngcape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to thoselatent influences which, in some honest-
hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of thefishery. "i will have no man in my boat," saidstarbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." by this, he seemed to mean, not only thatthe most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimationof the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far moredangerous comrade than a coward. "aye, aye," said stubb, the second mate,"starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." but we shall ere long see what that word"careful" precisely means when used by a
man like stubb, or almost any other whalehunter. starbuck was no crusader after perils; inhim courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always athand upon all mortally practical occasions. besides, he thought, perhaps, that in thisbusiness of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like herbeef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. wherefore he had no fancy for lowering forwhales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persistedin fighting him. for, thought starbuck, i am here in thiscritical ocean to kill whales for my
living, and not to be killed by them fortheirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed starbuck well knew. what doom was his own father's?where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother? with memories like these in him, and,moreover, given to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said; thecourage of this starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeedhave been extreme. but it was not in reasonable nature that aman so organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; itwas not in nature that these things should
fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances,would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. and brave as he might be, it was that sortof bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generallyabiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannotwithstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menaceyou from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.
but were the coming narrative to reveal inany instance, the complete abasement of poor starbuck's fortitude, scarce might ihave the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, toexpose the fall of valour in the soul. men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have meanand meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominiousblemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. that immaculate manliness we feel withinourselves, so far within us, that it
remains intact though all the outercharacter seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of avalor-ruined man. nor can piety itself, at such a shamefulsight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. but this august dignity i treat of, is notthe dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robedinvestiture. thou shalt see it shining in the arm thatwields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands,radiates without end from god; himself! the great god absolute!
the centre and circumference of alldemocracy! his omnipresence, our divine equality! if, then, to meanest mariners, andrenegades and castaways, i shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weaveround them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself tothe exalted mounts; if i shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; ifi shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou justspirit of equality, which hast spread one
royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! bear me out in it, thou great democraticgod! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl;thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old cervantes; thou whodidst pick up andrew jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! thou who, in all thy mighty, earthlymarchings, ever cullest thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear meout in it, o god!
chapter 27.knights and squires. stubb was the second mate.he was a native of cape cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called acape-cod-man. a happy-go-lucky; neither craven norvaliant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in themost imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeymanjoiner engaged for the year. good-humored, easy, and careless, hepresided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and hiscrew all invited guests. he was as particular about the comfortablearrangement of his part of the boat, as an
old stage-driver is about the snugness ofhis box. when close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as awhistling tinker his hammer. he would hum over his old rigadig tuneswhile flank and flank with the most exasperated monster.long usage had, for this stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. what he thought of death itself, there isno telling. whether he ever thought of it at all, mightbe a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after acomfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good
sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestirthemselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order,and not sooner. what, perhaps, with other things, madestubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden oflife in a world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about that almost impiousgood-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. for, like his nose, his short, black littlepipe was one of the regular features of his
face. you would almost as soon have expected himto turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. he kept a whole row of pipes there readyloaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, hesmoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be inreadiness anew. for, when stubb dressed, instead of firstputting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.
i say this continual smoking must have beenone cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that thisearthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who havedied exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about with acamphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, stubb's tobacco smoke mighthave operated as a sort of disinfecting agent.the third mate was flask, a native of tisbury, in martha's vineyard.
a short, stout, ruddy young fellow, verypugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathanshad personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honour with him, to destroy themwhenever encountered. so utterly lost was he to all sense ofreverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so deadto anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrouswhale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only alittle circumvention and some small
application of time and trouble in order tokill and boil. this ignorant, unconscious fearlessness ofhis made him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for thefun of it; and a three years' voyage round cape horn was only a jolly joke that lastedthat length of time. as a carpenter's nails are divided intowrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. little flask was one of the wrought ones;made to clinch tight and last long. they called him king-post on board of thepequod; because, in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber knownby that name in arctic whalers; and which
by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the shipagainst the icy concussions of those battering seas.now these three mates--starbuck, stubb, and flask, were momentous men. they it was who by universal prescriptioncommanded three of the pequod's boats as headsmen. in that grand order of battle in whichcaptain ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, thesethree headsmen were as captains of companies.
or, being armed with their long keenwhaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers wereflingers of javelins. and since in this famous fishery, each mateor headsman, like a gothic knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steereror harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, orelbowed in the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two,a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the pequod's harpooneers were,and to what headsman each of them belonged.
first of all was queequeg, whom starbuck,the chief mate, had selected for his squire. but queequeg is already known. next was tashtego, an unmixed indian fromgay head, the most westerly promontory of martha's vineyard, where there still existsthe last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of nantucket with many of her mostdaring harpooneers. in the fishery, they usually go by thegeneric name of gay-headers. tashtego's long, lean, sable hair, his highcheek bones, and black rounding eyes--for
an indian, oriental in their largeness, butantarctic in their glittering expression-- all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of thoseproud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great new england moose, had scoured, bowin hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. but no longer snuffing in the trail of thewild beasts of the woodland, tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales ofthe sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of thesires. to look at the tawny brawn of his lithesnaky limbs, you would almost have credited
the superstitions of some of the earlierpuritans, and half-believed this wild indian to be a son of the prince of thepowers of the air. tashtego was stubb the second mate'ssquire. third among the harpooneers was daggoo, agigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread--an ahasuerus to behold. suspended from his ears were two goldenhoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securingthe top-sail halyards to them. in his youth daggoo had voluntarily shippedon board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast.
and never having been anywhere in the worldbut in africa, nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; andhaving now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of menthey shipped; daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe,moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. there was a corporeal humility in lookingup at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truceof a fortress. curious to tell, this imperial negro,ahasuerus daggoo, was the squire of little
flask, who looked like a chess-man besidehim. as for the residue of the pequod's company,be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before themast employed in the american whale fishery, are americans born, though prettynearly all the officers are. herein it is the same with the americanwhale fishery as with the american army and military and merchant navies, and theengineering forces employed in the construction of the american canals andrailroads. the same, i say, because in all these casesthe native american liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generouslysupplying the muscles.
no small number of these whaling seamenbelong to the azores, where the outward bound nantucket whalers frequently touch toaugment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. in like manner, the greenland whalerssailing out of hull or london, put in at the shetland islands, to receive the fullcomplement of their crew. upon the passage homewards, they drop themthere again. how it is, there is no telling, butislanders seem to make the best whalemen. they were nearly all islanders in thepequod, isolatoes too, i call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men,but each isolato living on a separate
continent of his own. yet now, federated along one keel, what aset these isolatoes were! an anacharsis clootz deputation from allthe isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying old ahab in thepequod to lay the world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of themever come back. black little pip--he never did--oh, no! hewent before. poor alabama boy! on the grim pequod's forecastle, ye shallere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sentfor, to the great quarter-deck on high, he
was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here,hailed a hero there! > -chapter 28.ahab. for several days after leaving nantucket,nothing above hatches was seen of captain ahab. the mates regularly relieved each other atthe watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be theonly commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders
so sudden and peremptory, that after all itwas plain they but commanded vicariously. yes, their supreme lord and dictator wasthere, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the nowsacred retreat of the cabin. every time i ascended to the deck from mywatches below, i instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; formy first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion ofthe sea, became almost a perturbation. this was strangely heightened at times bythe ragged elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtleenergy i could not have before conceived of.
but poorly could i withstand them, much asin other moods i was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of thatoutlandish prophet of the wharves. but whatever it was of apprehensiveness oruneasiness--to call it so--which i felt, yet whenever i came to look about me in theship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such emotions. for though the harpooneers, with the greatbody of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of thetame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still i ascribed this--and rightlyascribed it--to the fierce uniqueness of
the very nature of that wild scandinavianvocation in which i had so abandonedly embarked. but it was especially the aspect of thethree chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculatedto allay these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in everypresentment of the voyage. three better, more likely sea-officers andmen, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were everyone of them americans; a nantucketer, a vineyarder, a cape man. now, it being christmas when the ship shotfrom out her harbor, for a space we had
biting polar weather, though all the timerunning away from it to the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving thatmerciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. it was one of those less lowering, butstill grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind theship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as i mounted to the deck atthe call of the forenoon watch, so soon as i levelled my glance towards the taffrail,foreboding shivers ran over me.
reality outran apprehension; captain ahabstood upon his quarter-deck. there seemed no sign of common bodilyillness about him, nor of the recovery from any. he looked like a man cut away from thestake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consumingthem, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. his whole high, broad form, seemed made ofsolid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like cellini's cast perseus. threading its way out from among his greyhairs, and continuing right down one side
of his tawny scorched face and neck, tillit disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. it resembled that perpendicular seamsometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightningtearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ererunning off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. whether that mark was born with him, orwhether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainlysay.
by some tacit consent, throughout thevoyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. but once tashtego's senior, an old gay-headindian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full fortyyears old did ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elementalstrife at sea. yet, this wild hint seemed inferentiallynegatived, by what a grey manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who,having never before sailed out of nantucket, had never ere this laid eye uponwild ahab.
nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, theimmemorial credulities, popularly invested this old manxman with preternatural powersof discernment. so that no white sailor seriouslycontradicted him when he said that if ever captain ahab should be tranquilly laid out--which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered--then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. so powerfully did the whole grim aspect ofahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few momentsi hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the
barbaric white leg upon which he partlystood. it had previously come to me that thisivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. "aye, he was dismasted off japan," said theold gay-head indian once; "but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mastwithout coming home for it. he has a quiver of 'em." i was struck with the singular posture hemaintained. upon each side of the pequod's quarterdeck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, boredabout half an inch or so, into the plank.
his bone leg steadied in that hole; one armelevated, and holding by a shroud; captain ahab stood erect, looking straight outbeyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. there was an infinity of firmest fortitude,a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forwarddedication of that glance. not a word he spoke; nor did his officerssay aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, theyplainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubledmaster-eye. and not only that, but moody stricken ahabstood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearingdignity of some mighty woe.
ere long, from his first visit in the air,he withdrew into his cabin. but after that morning, he was every dayvisible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stoolhe had; or heavily walking the deck. as the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, beganto grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when theship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had thenkept him so secluded. and, by and by, it came to pass, that hewas almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptiblydid, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast.
but the pequod was only making a passagenow; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervisionthe mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite ahab, now; andthus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piledupon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon. nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warblingpersuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually tocharm him from his mood. for, as when the red-cheeked, dancinggirls, april and may, trip home to the
wintry, misanthropic woods; even thebarest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-heartedvisitants; so ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings ofthat girlish air. more than once did he put forth the faintblossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. chapter 29.enter ahab; to him, stubb. some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs allastern, the pequod now went rolling through the bright quito spring, which, at sea,almost perpetually reigns on the threshold
of the eternal august of the tropic. the warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed,overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of persian sherbet, heapedup--flaked up, with rose-water snow. the starred and stately nights seemedhaughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory oftheir absent conquering earls, the golden helmeted suns! for sleeping man, 'twas hard to choosebetween such winsome days and such seducing nights. but all the witcheries of that unwaningweather did not merely lend new spells and
potencies to the outward world. inward they turned upon the soul,especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals asthe clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. and all these subtle agencies, more andmore they wrought on ahab's texture. old age is always wakeful; as if, thelonger linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. among sea-commanders, the old greybeardswill oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck.
it was so with ahab; only that now, oflate, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits weremore to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. "it feels like going down into one'stomb,"--he would mutter to himself--"for an old captain like me to be descending thisnarrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth." so, almost every twenty-four hours, whenthe watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers ofthe band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors
flung it not rudely down, as by day, butwith some cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing theirslumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman wouldwatch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the ironbanister, to help his crippled way. some considering touch of humanity was inhim; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck;because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberatingcrack and din of that bony step, that their
dreams would have been on the crunchingteeth of sharks. but once, the mood was on him too deep forcommon regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the shipfrom taffrail to mainmast, stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecatinghumorousness, hinted that if captain ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, noone could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and hesitatinglyabout a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory heel.ah! stubb, thou didst not know ahab then.
"am i a cannon-ball, stubb," said ahab,"that thou wouldst wad me that fashion? but go thy ways; i had forgot. below to thy nightly grave; where such asye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.--down, dog, andkennel!" starting at the unforseen concludingexclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, stubb was speechless a moment; thensaid excitedly, "i am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; i do but less than halflike it, sir." "avast! gritted ahab between his set teeth,and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
"no, sir; not yet," said stubb, emboldened,"i will not tamely be called a dog, sir." "then be called ten times a donkey, and amule, and an ass, and begone, or i'll clear the world of thee!" as he said this, ahab advanced upon himwith such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that stubb involuntarily retreated. "i was never served so before withoutgiving a hard blow for it," muttered stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. "it's very queer. stop, stubb; somehow, now, i don't wellknow whether to go back and strike him, or-
-what's that?--down here on my knees andpray for him? yes, that was the thought coming up in me;but it would be the first time i ever did pray. it's queer; very queer; and he's queer too;aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man stubb ever sailed with.how he flashed at me!--his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad? anyway there's something on his mind, assure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. he aint in his bed now, either, more thanthree hours out of the twenty-four; and he
don't sleep then. didn't that dough-boy, the steward, tell methat of a morning he always finds the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled andtumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, asthough a baked brick had been on it? a hot old man! i guess he's got what some folks ashorecall a conscience; it's a kind of tic- dolly-row they say--worse nor a toothache.well, well; i don't know what it is, but the lord keep me from catching it.
he's full of riddles; i wonder what he goesinto the after hold for, every night, as dough-boy tells me he suspects; what's thatfor, i should like to know? who's made appointments with him in thehold? ain't that queer, now?but there's no telling, it's the old game-- here goes for a snooze. damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to beborn into the world, if only to fall right asleep. and now that i think of it, that's aboutthe first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too.damn me, but all things are queer, come to
think of 'em. but that's against my principles.think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth--so heregoes again. but how's that? didn't he call me a dog?blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top ofthat! he might as well have kicked me, and donewith it. maybe he did kick me, and i didn't observeit, i was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. it flashed like a bleached bone.what the devil's the matter with me?
i don't stand right on my legs.coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. by the lord, i must have been dreaming,though--how? how? how?--but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again;and in the morning, i'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight." chapter 30.the pipe. when stubb had departed, ahab stood for awhile leaning over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, callinga sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe.
lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp andplanting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. in old norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. how could one look at ahab then, seated onthat tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? for a khan of the plank, and a king of thesea, and a great lord of leviathans was some moments passed, during which the thickvapour came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again intohis face.
"how now," he soliloquized at last,withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes.oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! here have i been unconsciously toiling, notpleasuring--aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, andwith such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were thestrongest and fullest of trouble. what business have i with this pipe? this thing that is meant for sereneness, tosend up mild white vapours among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks likemine.
i'll smoke no more--" he tossed the still lighted pipe into thesea. the fire hissed in the waves; the sameinstant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. with slouched hat, ahab lurchingly pacedthe planks. chapter 31.queen mab. next morning stubb accosted flask."such a queer dream, king-post, i never had. you know the old man's ivory leg, well idreamed he kicked me with it; and when i
tried to kick back, upon my soul, my littleman, i kicked my leg right off! and then, presto! ahab seemed a pyramid, and i, like ablazing fool, kept kicking at it. but what was still more curious, flask--youknow how curious all dreams are--through all this rage that i was in, i somehowseemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, thatkick from ahab. 'why,' thinks i, 'what's the row?it's not a real leg, only a false leg.' and there's a mighty difference between aliving thump and a dead thump. that's what makes a blow from the hand,flask, fifty times more savage to bear than
a blow from a cane. the living member--that makes the livinginsult, my little man. and thinks i to myself all the while, mind,while i was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid--so confoundedlycontradictory was it all, all the while, i say, i was thinking to myself, 'what's hisleg now, but a cane--a whalebone cane. yes,' thinks i, 'it was only a playfulcudgelling--in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me--not a base kick. besides,' thinks i, 'look at it once; why,the end of it--the foot part--what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broadfooted farmer kicked me, there's a devilish
broad insult. but this insult is whittled down to a pointonly.' but now comes the greatest joke of thedream, flask. while i was battering away at the pyramid,a sort of badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by theshoulders, and slews me round. 'what are you 'bout?' says he. slid! man, but i was frightened.such a phiz! but, somehow, next moment i was over thefright. 'what am i about?' says i at last.
'and what business is that of yours, ishould like to know, mr. humpback? do you want a kick?' by the lord, flask, i had no sooner saidthat, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweedhe had for a clout--what do you think, i saw?--why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the pointsout. says i, on second thoughts, 'i guess iwon't kick you, old fellow.' 'wise stubb,' said he, 'wise stubb;' andkept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag.
seeing he wasn't going to stop saying overhis 'wise stubb, wise stubb,' i thought i might as well fall to kicking the pyramidagain. but i had only just lifted my foot for it,when he roared out, 'stop that kicking!' 'halloa,' says i, 'what's the matter now,old fellow?' 'look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue theinsult. captain ahab kicked ye, didn't he?''yes, he did,' says i--'right here it was.' 'very good,' says he--'he used his ivoryleg, didn't he?' 'yes, he did,' says i.'well then,' says he, 'wise stubb, what have you to complain of?
didn't he kick with right good will? itwasn't a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it?no, you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, stubb. it's an honour; i consider it an honour.listen, wise stubb. in old england the greatest lords think itgreat glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-knights of; but, be your boast,stubb, that ye were kicked by old ahab, and made a wise man of. remember what i say; be kicked by him;account his kicks honours; and on no account kick back; for you can't helpyourself, wise stubb.
don't you see that pyramid?' with that, he all of a sudden seemedsomehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into the air.i snored; rolled over; and there i was in my hammock! now, what do you think of that dream,flask?" "i don't know; it seems a sort of foolishto me, tho.'" "may be; may be. but it's made a wise man of me, flask.d'ye see ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern?
well, the best thing you can do, flask, isto let the old man alone; never speak to him, whatever he says.halloa! what's that he shouts? hark!""mast-head, there! look sharp, all of ye!there are whales hereabouts! "if ye see a white one, split your lungsfor him! "what do you think of that now, flask?ain't there a small drop of something queer about that, eh? a white whale--did ye mark that, man?look ye--there's something special in the
wind.stand by for it, flask. ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. but, mum; he comes this way." -chapter 32.cetology. already we are boldly launched upon thedeep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. ere that come to pass; ere the pequod'sweedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at theoutset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough
appreciative understanding of the morespecial leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow. it is some systematized exhibition of thewhale in his broad genera, that i would now fain put before you.yet is it no easy task. the classification of the constituents of achaos, nothing less is here essayed. listen to what the best and latestauthorities have laid down. "no branch of zoology is so much involvedas that which is entitled cetology," says captain scoresby, a.d. 1820. "it is not my intention, were it in mypower, to enter into the inquiry as to the
true method of dividing the cetacea intogroups and families.... utter confusion exists among the historiansof this animal" (sperm whale), says surgeon beale, a.d. 1839."unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters." "impenetrable veil covering our knowledgeof the cetacea." "a field strewn with thorns.""all these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists." thus speak of the whale, the great cuvier,and john hunter, and lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy.
nevertheless, though of real knowledgethere be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, withcetology, or the science of whales. many are the men, small and great, old andnew, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. run over a few:--the authors of the bible;aristotle; pliny; aldrovandi; sir thomas browne; gesner; ray; linnaeus; rondeletius;willoughby; green; artedi; sibbald; brisson; marten; lacepede; bonneterre; desmarest; baron cuvier; frederick cuvier;john hunter; owen; scoresby; beale; bennett; j. ross browne; the author ofmiriam coffin; olmstead; and the rev. t.
cheever. but to what ultimate generalizing purposeall these have written, the above cited extracts will show. of the names in this list of whale authors,only those following owen ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a realprofessional harpooneer and whaleman. i mean captain scoresby. on the separate subject of the greenland orright-whale, he is the best existing authority. but scoresby knew nothing and says nothingof the great sperm whale, compared with
which the greenland whale is almostunworthy mentioning. and here be it said, that the greenlandwhale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas.he is not even by any means the largest of the whales. yet, owing to the long priority of hisclaims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested thethen fabulous or utterly unknown sperm- whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some fewscientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete.
reference to nearly all the leviathanicallusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the greenland whale,without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. but the time has at last come for a newproclamation. this is charing cross; hear ye! good peopleall,--the greenland whale is deposed,--the great sperm whale now reigneth! there are only two books in being which atall pretend to put the living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in theremotest degree succeed in the attempt. those books are beale's and bennett's; bothin their time surgeons to english south-sea
whale-ships, and both exact and reliablemen. the original matter touching the spermwhale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes,it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. as yet, however, the sperm whale,scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature.far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life. now the various species of whales need somesort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline onefor the present, hereafter to be filled in
all its departments by subsequent laborers. as no better man advances to take thismatter in hand, i hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. i promise nothing complete; because anyhuman thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. i shall not pretend to a minute anatomicaldescription of the various species, or--in this place at least--to much of anydescription. my object here is simply to project thedraught of a systematization of cetology. i am the architect, not the builder.
but it is a ponderous task; no ordinaryletter-sorter in the post-office is equal to it. to grope down into the bottom of the seaafter them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and verypelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. what am i that i should essay to hook thenose of this leviathan! the awful tauntings in job might well appalme. will he the (leviathan) make a covenantwith thee? behold the hope of him is vain!
but i have swam through libraries andsailed through oceans; i have had to do with whales with these visible hands; i amin earnest; and i will try. there are some preliminaries to settle. first: the uncertain, unsettled conditionof this science of cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that insome quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. in his system of nature, a.d. 1776,linnaeus declares, "i hereby separate the whales from the fish." but of my own knowledge, i know that downto the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives
and herring, against linnaeus's expressedict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with theleviathan. the grounds upon which linnaeus would fainhave banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: "on account of theirwarm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," andfinally, "ex lege naturae jure meritoque." i submitted all this to my friends simeonmacey and charley coffin, of nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage,and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogetherinsufficient.
charley profanely hinted they were humbug. be it known that, waiving all argument, itake the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy jonahto back me. this fundamental thing settled, the nextpoint is, in what internal respect does the whale differ from other fish.above, linnaeus has given you those items. but in brief, they are these: lungs andwarm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded. next: how shall we define the whale, by hisobvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to come?to be short, then, a whale is a spouting
fish with a horizontal tail. there you have him.however contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation. a walrus spouts much like a whale, but thewalrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. but the last term of the definition isstill more cogent, as coupled with the first. almost any one must have noticed that allthe fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail.
whereas, among spouting fish the tail,though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal position. by the above definition of what a whale is,i do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creaturehitherto identified with the whale by the best informed nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hithertoauthoritatively regarded as alien.* hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontaltailed fish must be included in this ground-plan of cetology. now, then, come the grand divisions of theentire whale host.
*i am aware that down to the present time,the fish styled lamatins and dugongs (pig- fish and sow-fish of the coffins ofnantucket) are included by many naturalists among the whales. but as these pig-fish are a noisy,contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay,and especially as they do not spout, i deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quitthe kingdom of cetology. first: according to magnitude i divide thewhales into three primary books (subdivisible into chapters), and theseshall comprehend them all, both small and
large. i. the folio whale; ii. the octavo whale;iii. the duodecimo whale. as the type of the folio i present thesperm whale; of the octavo, the grampus; of the duodecimo, the porpoise. folios. among these i here include the followingchapters:--i. the sperm whale; ii. the right whale; iii. the fin-back whale; iv.the hump-backed whale; v. the razor-back whale; vi. the sulphur-bottom whale. book i. (folio), chapter i.(sperm whale). --this whale, among the english of oldvaguely known as the trumpa whale, and the
physeter whale, and the anvil headed whale,is the present cachalot of the french, and the pottsfich of the germans, and themacrocephalus of the long words. he is, without doubt, the largestinhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; themost majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuablesubstance, spermaceti, is obtained. all his peculiarities will, in many otherplaces, be enlarged upon. it is chiefly with his name that i now haveto do. philologically considered, it is absurd.
some centuries ago, when the sperm whalewas almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was onlyaccidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derivedfrom a creature identical with the one then known in england as the greenland or rightwhale. it was the idea also, that this samespermaceti was that quickening humor of the greenland whale which the first syllable ofthe word literally expresses. in those times, also, spermaceti wasexceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment andmedicament.
it was only to be had from the druggists asyou nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. when, as i opine, in the course of time,the true nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was still retained by thedealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of itsscarcity. and so the appellation must at last havecome to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti was really derived. book i. (folio), chapter ii. (right whale).--in one respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one firstregularly hunted by man. it yields the article commonly known aswhalebone or baleen; and the oil specially
known as "whale oil," an inferior articlein commerce. among the fishermen, he is indiscriminatelydesignated by all the following titles: the whale; the greenland whale; the blackwhale; the great whale; the true whale; the right whale. there is a deal of obscurity concerning theidentity of the species thus multitudinously baptised.what then is the whale, which i include in the second species of my folios? it is the great mysticetus of the englishnaturalists; the greenland whale of the english whalemen; the baliene ordinaire ofthe french whalemen; the growlands walfish
of the swedes. it is the whale which for more than twocenturies past has been hunted by the dutch and english in the arctic seas; it is thewhale which the american fishermen have long pursued in the indian ocean, on the brazil banks, on the nor' west coast, andvarious other parts of the world, designated by them right whale cruisinggrounds. some pretend to see a difference betweenthe greenland whale of the english and the right whale of the americans. but they precisely agree in all their grandfeatures; nor has there yet been presented
a single determinate fact upon which toground a radical distinction. it is by endless subdivisions based uponthe most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history becomeso repellingly intricate. the right whale will be elsewhere treatedof at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm whale. book i. (folio), chapter iii. (fin-back). --under this head i reckon a monster which,by the various names of fin-back, tall- spout, and long-john, has been seen almostin every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by
passengers crossing the atlantic, in thenew york packet-tracks. in the length he attains, and in hisbaleen, the fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and alighter colour, approaching to olive. his great lips present a cable-like aspect,formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. his grand distinguishing feature, the fin,from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. this fin is some three or four feet long,growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape, and with avery sharp pointed end.
even if not the slightest other part of thecreature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projectingfrom the surface. when the sea is moderately calm, andslightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and castsshadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial,with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on it.on that ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. the fin-back is not gregarious.he seems a whale-hater, as some men are
man-haters. very shy; always going solitary;unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; hisstraight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power andvelocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathanseems the banished and unconquerable cain of his race, bearing for his mark thatstyle upon his back. from having the baleen in his mouth, thefin-back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic speciesdenominated whalebone whales, that is,
whales with baleen. of these so called whalebone whales, therewould seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little known. broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are thefishermen's names for a few sorts. in connection with this appellative of"whalebone whales," it is of great importance to mention, that however such anomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt aclear classification of the leviathan,
founded upon either his baleen, or hump, orfin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis fora regular system of cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which thewhale, in his kinds, presents. how then? the baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth;these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sortsof whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in otherand more essential particulars. thus, the sperm whale and the humpbackedwhale, each has a hump; but there the
similitude ceases. then, this same humpbacked whale and thegreenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases.and it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned. in various sorts of whales, they form suchirregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregularisolation; as utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis. on this rock every one of the whale-naturalists has split. but it may possibly be conceived that, inthe internal parts of the whale, in his
anatomy--there, at least, we shall be ableto hit the right classification. nay; what thing, for example, is there inthe greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen? yet we have seen that by his baleen it isimpossible correctly to classify the greenland whale. and if you descend into the bowels of thevarious leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part asavailable to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated. what then remains? nothing but to take holdof the whales bodily, in their entire
liberal volume, and boldly sort them thatway. and this is the bibliographical system hereadopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone ispracticable. to proceed. book i. (folio) chapter iv. (hump-back).--this whale is often seen on the northern american coast.he has been frequently captured there, and towed into harbor. he has a great pack on him like a peddler;or you might call him the elephant and castle whale.
at any rate, the popular name for him doesnot sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump though asmaller one. his oil is not very valuable. he has baleen.he is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam andwhite water generally than any other of them. book i. (folio), chapter v. (razor-back).--of this whale little is known but his name.i have seen him at a distance off cape horn.
of a retiring nature, he eludes bothhunters and philosophers. though no coward, he has never yet shownany part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. let him go.i know little more of him, nor does anybody else. book i.(folio),chapter vi.(sulphur-bottom).--another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scrapingalong the tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. he is seldom seen; at least i have neverseen him except in the remoter southern
seas, and then always at too great adistance to study his countenance. he is never chased; he would run away withrope-walks of line. prodigies are told of him.adieu, sulphur bottom! i can say nothing more that is true of ye,nor can the oldest nantucketer. thus ends book i. (folio), and now begins book ii. (octavo). octavoes.*--these embrace the whales ofmiddling magnitude, among which present may be numbered:--i., the grampus; ii., theblack fish; iii., the narwhale; iv., the thrasher; v., the killer.
*why this book of whales is not denominatedthe quarto is very plain. because, while the whales of this order,though smaller than those of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionatelikeness to them in figure, yet the bookbinder's quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not preserve theshape of the folio volume, but the octavo volume does. book ii.(octavo), chapter i.(grampus). --though this fish, whose loud sonorousbreathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known adenizen of the deep, yet is he not
popularly classed among whales. but possessing all the grand distinctivefeatures of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one. he is of moderate octavo size, varying fromfifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round thewaist. he swims in herds; he is never regularlyhunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and pretty good for light. by some fishermen his approach is regardedas premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
book ii.(octavo), chapter ii.(black fish).--i give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are thebest. where any name happens to be vague orinexpressive, i shall say so, and suggest another. i do so now, touching the black fish, so-called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales.so, call him the hyena whale, if you please. his voracity is well known, and from thecircumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he carries aneverlasting mephistophelean grin on his
this whale averages some sixteen oreighteen feet in length. he is found in almost all latitudes. he has a peculiar way of showing his dorsalhooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a roman nose. when not more profitably employed, thesperm whale hunters sometimes capture the hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheapoil for domestic employment--as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves, burnunsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. though their blubber is very thin, some ofthese whales will yield you upwards of
thirty gallons of oil. book ii.(octavo), chapter iii.(narwhale),that is, nostril whale.--another instance of a curiously named whale, so named isuppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. the creature is some sixteen feet inlength, while its horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain tofifteen feet. strictly speaking, this horn is but alengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from thehorizontal. but it is only found on the sinister side,which has an ill effect, giving its owner
something analogous to the aspect of aclumsy left-handed man. what precise purpose this ivory horn orlance answers, it would be hard to say. it does not seem to be used like the bladeof the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the narwhaleemploys it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. charley coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the narwhale, rising to the surface of the polar sea, and finding itsheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. but you cannot prove either of thesesurmises to be correct.
my own opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may really be used by the narwhale--however that may be--it wouldcertainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. the narwhale i have heard called the tuskedwhale, the horned whale, and the unicorn whale. he is certainly a curious example of theunicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. from certain cloistered old authors i havegathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the greatantidote against poison, and as such,
preparations of it brought immense prices. it was also distilled to a volatile saltsfor fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufacturedinto hartshorn. originally it was in itself accounted anobject of great curiosity. black letter tells me that sir martinfrobisher on his return from that voyage, when queen bess did gallantly wave herjewelled hand to him from a window of greenwich palace, as his bold ship sailed down the thames; "when sir martin returnedfrom that voyage," saith black letter, "on bended knees he presented to her highness aprodigious long horn of the narwhale, which
for a long period after hung in the castleat windsor." an irish author avers that the earl ofleicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn,pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature. the narwhale has a very picturesque,leopard-like look, being of a milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblongspots of black. his oil is very superior, clear and fine;but there is little of it, and he is seldom hunted.he is mostly found in the circumpolar seas. book ii.(octavo), chapter iv.(killer).--of this whale little is precisely known
to the nantucketer, and nothing at all tothe professed naturalist. from what i have seen of him at a distance,i should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus.he is very savage--a sort of feegee fish. he sometimes takes the great folio whalesby the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death.the killer is never hunted. i never heard what sort of oil he has. exception might be taken to the namebestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness.for we are all killers, on land and on sea; bonapartes and sharks included.
book ii.(octavo), chapter v.(thrasher).--this gentleman is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing hisfoes. he mounts the folio whale's back, and as heswims, he works his passage by flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in theworld by a similar process. still less is known of the thrasher than ofthe killer. both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.thus ends book ii.(octavo), and begins book iii.(duodecimo).duodecimoes.--these include the smaller whales.i. the huzza porpoise. ii. the algerine porpoise.
iii. the mealy-mouthed porpoise. to those who have not chanced specially tostudy the subject, it may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceedingfour or five feet should be marshalled among whales--a word, which, in the popularsense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. but the creatures set down above asduodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition of what a whale is--i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail. book iii.(duodecimo),chapter 1.(huzza porpoise). --this is the common porpoise found almostall over the globe.
the name is of my own bestowal; for thereare more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish them. i call him thus, because he always swims inhilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like capsin a fourth-of-july crowd. their appearance is generally hailed withdelight by the mariner. full of fine spirits, they invariably comefrom the breezy billows to windward. they are the lads that always live beforethe wind. they are accounted a lucky omen. if you yourself can withstand three cheersat beholding these vivacious fish, then
heaven help ye; the spirit of godlygamesomeness is not in ye. a well-fed, plump huzza porpoise will yieldyou one good gallon of good oil. but the fine and delicate fluid extractedfrom his jaws is exceedingly valuable. it is in request among jewellers andwatchmakers. sailors put it on their hones.porpoise meat is good eating, you know. it may never have occurred to you that aporpoise spouts. indeed, his spout is so small that it isnot very readily discernible. but the next time you have a chance, watchhim; and you will then see the great sperm whale himself in miniature.
book iii.(duodecimo),chapter ii. (algerine porpoise). --a pirate.very savage. he is only found, i think, in the pacific. he is somewhat larger than the huzzaporpoise, but much of the same general make.provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. i have lowered for him many times, butnever yet saw him captured. book iii.(duodecimo),chapter iii.(mealy-mouthed porpoise). --the largest kind of porpoise; and onlyfound in the pacific, so far as it is known.
the only english name, by which he hashitherto been designated, is that of the fishers--right-whale porpoise, from thecircumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that folio. in shape, he differs in some degree fromthe huzza porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite aneat and gentleman-like figure. he has no fins on his back (most otherporpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental indian eyes of a hazel hue.but his mealy-mouth spoils all. though his entire back down to his sidefins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship'shull, called the "bright waist," that line
streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colours, black above and whitebelow. the white comprises part of his head, andthe whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just escaped from afelonious visit to a meal-bag. a most mean and mealy aspect! his oil is much like that of the commonporpoise. beyond the duodecimo, this system does notproceed, inasmuch as the porpoise is the smallest of the whales. above, you have all the leviathans of note.but there are a rabble of uncertain,
fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, asan american whaleman, i know by reputation, but not personally. i shall enumerate them by their fore-castleappellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, whomay complete what i have here but begun. if any of the following whales, shallhereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated into this system,according to his folio, octavo, or duodecimo magnitude:--the bottle-nose whale; the junk whale; the pudding-headedwhale; the cape whale; the leading whale; the cannon whale; the scragg whale; thecoppered whale; the elephant whale; the
iceberg whale; the quog whale; the bluewhale; etc. from icelandic, dutch, and old englishauthorities, there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with allmanner of uncouth names. but i omit them as altogether obsolete; andcan hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of leviathanism, butsignifying nothing. finally: it was stated at the outset, thatthis system would not be here, and at once, perfected.you cannot but plainly see that i have kept my word. but i now leave my cetological systemstanding thus unfinished, even as the great
cathedral of cologne was left, with thecrane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. for small erections may be finished bytheir first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone toposterity. god keep me from ever completing anything. this whole book is but a draught--nay, butthe draught of a draught. oh, time, strength, cash, and patience! -chapter 33.the specksnyder. concerning the officers of the whale-craft,this seems as good a place as any to set
down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine thanthe whale-fleet. the large importance attached to theharpooneer's vocation is evinced by the fact, that originally in the old dutchfishery, two centuries and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now called thecaptain, but was divided between him and an officer called the specksnyder. literally this word means fat-cutter;usage, however, in time made it equivalent
to chief harpooneer. in those days, the captain's authority wasrestricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel; while over thewhale-hunting department and all its concerns, the specksnyder or chiefharpooneer reigned supreme. in the british greenland fishery, under thecorrupted title of specksioneer, this old dutch official is still retained, but hisformer dignity is sadly abridged. at present he ranks simply as seniorharpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns. nevertheless, as upon the good conduct ofthe harpooneers the success of a whaling
voyage largely depends, and since in theamerican fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on awhaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also his; therefore the grandpolitical maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in some waydistinguished as their professional superior; though always, by them,familiarly regarded as their social equal. now, the grand distinction drawn betweenofficer and man at sea, is this--the first lives aft, the last forward.
hence, in whale-ships and merchantmenalike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so, too, in most of theamerican whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship. that is to say, they take their meals inthe captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it. though the long period of a southernwhaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), thepeculiar perils of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for theirprofits, not upon fixed wages, but upon
their common luck, together with theircommon vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorousdiscipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an oldmesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, atleast, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance doneaway. indeed, many are the nantucket ships inwhich you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur notsurpassed in any military navy; nay,
extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not theshabbiest of pilot-cloth. and though of all men the moody captain ofthe pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though theonly homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feetere stepping upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing topeculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether ofcondescension or in terrorem, or otherwise;
yet even captain ahab was by no meansunobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea. nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventuallyperceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes maskedhimself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than theywere legitimately intended to subserve. that certain sultanism of his brain, whichhad otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that samesultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. for be a man's intellectual superioritywhat it will, it can never assume the
practical, available supremacy over othermen, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, inthemselves, more or less paltry and base. this it is, that for ever keeps god's trueprinces of the empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honoursthat this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful ofthe divine inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead levelof the mass. such large virtue lurks in these smallthings when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instanceseven to idiot imbecility they have imparted
potency. but when, as in the case of nicholas theczar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then,the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. nor, will the tragic dramatist who woulddepict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forgeta hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to. but ahab, my captain, still moves before mein all his nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touchingemperors and kings, i must not conceal that
i have only to do with a poor old whale- hunter like him; and, therefore, alloutward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. oh, ahab! what shall be grand in thee, itmust needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured inthe unbodied air! chapter 34.the cabin-table. it is noon; and dough-boy, the steward,thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to hislord and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an
observation of the sun; and is now mutelyreckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for thatdaily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. from his complete inattention to thetidings, you would think that moody ahab had not heard his menial. but presently, catching hold of the mizenshrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying,"dinner, mr. starbuck," disappears into the cabin. when the last echo of his sultan's step hasdied away, and starbuck, the first emir,
has every reason to suppose that he isseated, then starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into thebinnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, "dinner, mr. stubb," anddescends the scuttle. the second emir lounges about the riggingawhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all rightwith that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid "dinner, mr. flask," follows after hispredecessors. but the third emir, now seeing himself allalone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel
relieved from some curious restraint; for,tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp butnoiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the grand turk's head; and then, by adexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remainsvisible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear withmusic. but ere stepping into the cabin doorwaybelow, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent,hilarious little flask enters king ahab's
presence, in the character of abjectus, orthe slave. it is not the least among the strangethings bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open airof the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander;yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customarydinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, ashe sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical.wherefore this difference?
a problem? perhaps not.to have been belshazzar, king of babylon; and to have been belshazzar, not haughtilybut courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. but he who in the rightly regal andintelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests,that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcendsbelshazzar's, for belshazzar was not the greatest.who has but once dined his friends, has
tasted what it is to be caesar. it is a witchery of social czarship whichthere is no withstanding. now, if to this consideration you superaddthe official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive thecause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned. over his ivory-inlaid table, ahab presidedlike a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike butstill deferential cubs. in his own proper turn, each officer waitedto be served. they were as little children before ahab;and yet, in ahab, there seemed not to lurk
the smallest social arrogance. with one mind, their intent eyes allfastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. i do not suppose that for the world theywould have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even upon so neutrala topic as the weather. no! and when reaching out his knife andfork, between which the slice of beef was locked, ahab thereby motioned starbuck'splate towards him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started if,perchance, the knife grazed against the
plate; and chewed it noiselessly; andswallowed it, not without circumspection. for, like the coronation banquet atfrankfort, where the german emperor profoundly dines with the seven imperialelectors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old ahab forbade notconversation; only he himself was dumb. what a relief it was to choking stubb, whena rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. and poor little flask, he was the youngestson, and little boy of this weary family party.his were the shinbones of the saline beef;
his would have been the drumsticks. for flask to have presumed to help himself,this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. had he helped himself at that table,doubtless, never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honestworld; nevertheless, strange to say, ahab never forbade him. and had flask helped himself, the chanceswere ahab had never so much as noticed it. least of all, did flask presume to helphimself to butter. whether he thought the owners of the shipdenied it to him, on account of its
clotting his clear, sunny complexion; orwhether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, asubaltern; however it was, flask, alas! was a butterless man!another thing. flask was the last person down at thedinner, and flask is the first man up. consider!for hereby flask's dinner was badly jammed in point of time. starbuck and stubb both had the start ofhim; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear.
if stubb even, who is but a peg higher thanflask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms ofconcluding his repast, then flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is againstholy usage for stubb to precede flask to the deck. therefore it was that flask once admittedin private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from thatmoment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. for what he ate did not so much relieve hishunger, as keep it immortal in him.
peace and satisfaction, thought flask, havefor ever departed from my stomach. i am an officer; but, how i wish i couldfish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as i used to when i was beforethe mast. there's the fruits of promotion now;there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life! besides, if it were so that any mere sailorof the pequod had a grudge against flask in flask's official capacity, all that sailorhad to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at flask through the cabinsky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered
before awful ahab. now, ahab and his three mates formed whatmay be called the first table in the pequod's cabin. after their departure, taking place ininverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restoredto some hurried order by the pallid steward. and then the three harpooneers were biddento the feast, they being its residuary legatees.they made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty cabin.
in strange contrast to the hardly tolerableconstraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, wasthe entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferiorfellows the harpooneers. while their masters, the mates, seemedafraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their foodwith such a relish that there was a report they dined like lords; they filled theirbellies like indian ships all day loading with spices. such portentous appetites had queequeg andtashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the paledough-boy was fain to bring on a great
baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried outof the solid ox. and if he were not lively about it, if hedid not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then tashtego had an ungentlemanly way ofaccelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. and once daggoo, seized with a suddenhumor, assisted dough-boy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting hishead into a great empty wooden trencher, while tashtego, knife in hand, began layingout the circle preliminary to scalping him. he was naturally a very nervous, shudderingsort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt bakerand a hospital nurse.
and what with the standing spectacle of theblack terrific ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these threesavages, dough-boy's whole life was one continual lip-quiver. commonly, after seeing the harpooneersfurnished with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into hislittle pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door,till all was over. it was a sight to see queequeg seated overagainst tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the indian's: crosswise to them, daggooseated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low
carlines; at every motion of his colossallimbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an african elephant goespassenger in a ship. but for all this, the great negro waswonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. it seemed hardly possible that by suchcomparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad,baronial, and superb a person. but, doubtless, this noble savage fedstrong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilatednostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. not by beef or by bread, are giants made ornourished.
but queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaricsmack of the lip in eating--an ugly sound enough--so much so, that the tremblingdough-boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. and when he would hear tashtego singing outfor him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted stewardall but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fitsof the palsy. nor did the whetstone which the harpooneerscarried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with whichwhetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that
grating sound did not at all tend totranquillize poor dough-boy. how could he forget that in his islanddays, queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous,convivial indiscretions. alas! dough-boy! hard fares the white waiter whowaits upon cannibals. not a napkin should he carry on his arm,but a buckler. in good time, though, to his great delight,the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongeringears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like moorish scimetarsin scabbards.
but, though these barbarians dined in thecabin, and nominally lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in theirhabits, they were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed through itto their own peculiar quarters. in this one matter, ahab seemed noexception to most american whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to theopinion that by rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any time,permitted there. so that, in real truth, the mates andharpooneers of the pequod might more
properly be said to have lived out of thecabin than in it. for when they did enter it, it wassomething as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a moment, only to beturned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabinwas no companionship; socially, ahab was inaccessible.though nominally included in the census of christendom, he was still an alien to it. he lived in the world, as the last of thegrisly bears lived in settled missouri. and as when spring and summer had departed,that wild logan of the woods, burying
himself in the hollow of a tree, lived outthe winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of hisbody, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom! chapter 35.the mast-head. it was during the more pleasant weather,that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came round. in most american whalemen the mast-headsare manned almost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though shemay have fifteen thousand miles, and more,
to sail ere reaching her proper cruisingground. and if, after a three, four, or five years'voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say, an empty vialeven--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, doesshe altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more. now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measureexpatiate here. i take it, that the earliest standers ofmast-heads were the old egyptians; because,
in all my researches, i find none prior tothem. for though their progenitors, the buildersof babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all asia, or africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said tohave gone by the board, in the dread gale of god's wrath; therefore, we cannot givethese babel builders priority over the egyptians. and that the egyptians were a nation ofmast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief amongarchaeologists, that the first pyramids
were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiarstair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigiouslong upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as thelook-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. in saint stylites, the famous christianhermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent thewhole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground
with a tackle; in him we have a remarkableinstance of a dauntless stander-of-mast- heads; who was not to be driven from hisplace by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything outto the last, literally died at his post. of modern standers-of-mast-heads we havebut a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable offacing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing outupon discovering any strange sight. there is napoleon; who, upon the top of thecolumn of vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air;careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether louis philippe, louis blanc, orlouis the devil.
great washington, too, stands high aloft onhis towering main-mast in baltimore, and like one of hercules' pillars, his columnmarks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. admiral nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in trafalgar square; and ever when most obscured by thatlondon smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there issmoke, must be fire. but neither great washington, nor napoleon,nor nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend bytheir counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however it may be
surmised, that their spirits penetratethrough the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must beshunned. it may seem unwarrantable to couple in anyrespect the mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth itis not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which obed macy, the sole historian ofnantucket, stands accountable. the worthy obed tells us, that in the earlytimes of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the game,the people of that island erected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailedcleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a
hen-house. a few years ago this same plan was adoptedby the bay whalemen of new zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to theready-manned boats nigh the beach. but this custom has now become obsolete;turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. the three mast-heads are kept manned fromsun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), andrelieving each other every two hours. in the serene weather of the tropics it isexceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.
there you stand, a hundred feet above thesilent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, whilebeneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the bootsof the famous colossus at old rhodes. there you stand, lost in the infiniteseries of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. the tranced ship indolently rolls; thedrowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. for the most part, in this tropic whalinglife, a sublime uneventfulness invests you;
you hear no news; read no gazettes; extraswith startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domesticafflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thoughtof what you shall have for dinner--for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill offare is immutable. in one of those southern whalesmen, on along three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours youspend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months.
and it is much to be deplored that theplace to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your naturallife, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed acomfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, asentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances inwhich men temporarily isolate themselves. your most usual point of perch is the headof the t' gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almostpeculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant cross-trees.
here, tossed about by the sea, the beginnerfeels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. to be sure, in cold weather you may carryyour house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking thethickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, andcannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great riskof perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as itis a mere envelope, or additional skin
encasing you. you cannot put a shelf or chest of drawersin your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watch-coat. concerning all this, it is much to bedeplored that the mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with thoseenviable little tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the look-outs of a greenland whaler are protected from theinclement weather of the frozen seas. in the fireside narrative of captain sleet,entitled "a voyage among the icebergs, in quest of the greenland whale, andincidentally for the re-discovery of the
lost icelandic colonies of old greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers ofmast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recentlyinvented crow's-nest of the glacier, which was the name of captain sleet's good craft. he called it the sleet's crow's-nest, inhonour of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from allridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers being the originalinventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves anyother apparatus we may beget.
in shape, the sleet's crow's-nest issomething like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it isfurnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hardgale. being fixed on the summit of the mast, youascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. on the after side, or side next the sternof the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas,comforters, and coats. in front is a leather rack, in which tokeep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences.
when captain sleet in person stood hismast-head in this crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle withhim (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrantsea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them fromthe deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is avery different thing. now, it was plainly a labor of love forcaptain sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of hiscrow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a
very scientific account of his experimentsin this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose ofcounteracting the errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribableto the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the glacier'scase, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; i say, that though the captain is verydiscreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned "binnacle deviations," "azimuthcompass observations," and "approximate errors," he knows very well, captain sleet,
that he was not so much immersed in thoseprofound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards thatwell replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow'snest, within easy reach of his hand. though, upon the whole, i greatly admireand even love the brave, the honest, and learned captain; yet i take it very ill ofhim that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while withmittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there inthat bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole.
but if we southern whale-fishers are not sosnugly housed aloft as captain sleet and his greenlandmen were; yet thatdisadvantage is greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we south fishersmostly float. for one, i used to lounge up the riggingvery leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with queequeg, or any one else offduty whom i might find there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard,take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to myultimate destination.
let me make a clean breast of it here, andfrankly admit that i kept but sorry guard. with the problem of the universe revolvingin me, how could i--being left completely to myself at such a thought-engenderingaltitude--how could i but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, "keep your weather eyeopen, and sing out every time." and let me in this place movingly admonishyou, ye ship-owners of nantucket! beware of enlisting in your vigilantfisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness;and who offers to ship with the phaedon instead of bowditch in his head.
beware of such an one, i say; your whalesmust be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young platonist will towyou ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. nor are these monitions at all unneeded. for nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishesan asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted withthe carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. childe harold not unfrequently percheshimself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moodyphrase ejaculates:--
"roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean,roll! ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep overthee in vain." very often do the captains of such shipstake those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feelingsufficient "interest" in the voyage; half- hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honourable ambition, as that in theirsecret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. but all in vain; those young platonistshave a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; whatuse, then, to strain the visual nerve?
they have left their opera-glasses at home. "why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer toone of these lads, "we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast notraised a whale yet. whales are scarce as hen's teeth wheneverthou art up here." perhaps they were; or perhaps there mighthave been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-likelistlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that atlast he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visibleimage of that deep, blue, bottomless soul,
pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautifulthing that eludes him; every dimly- discovered, uprising fin of someundiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continuallyflitting through it. in this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbsaway to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like crammer'ssprinkled pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globeover. there is no life in thee, now, except thatrocking life imparted by a gently rolling
ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by thesea, from the inscrutable tides of god. but while this sleep, this dream is on ye,move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes backin horror. over descartian vortices you hover. and perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairestweather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into thesummer sea, no more to rise for ever. heed it well, ye pantheists! -chapter 36.the quarter-deck. (enter ahab: then, all)it was not a great while after the affair
of the pipe, that one morning shortly afterbreakfast, ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. there most sea-captains usually walk atthat hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, asto and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that theywere all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbedand dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-printsof his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
but on the occasion in question, thosedents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. and, so full of his thought was ahab, thatat every uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast and now at the binnacle, youcould almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely possessing him, indeed, thatit all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement."d'ye mark him, flask?" whispered stubb; "the chick that's in him pecks the shell. 'twill soon be out."the hours wore on;--ahab now shut up within
his cabin; anon, pacing the deck, with thesame intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect. it drew near the close of day. suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks,and inserting his bone leg into the auger- hole there, and with one hand grasping ashroud, he ordered starbuck to send everybody aft. "sir!" said the mate, astonished at anorder seldom or never given on ship-board except in some extraordinary case."send everybody aft," repeated ahab. "mast-heads, there! come down!"
when the entire ship's company wereassembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, forhe looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, andthen darting his eyes among the crew, started from his standpoint; and as thoughnot a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. with bent head and half-slouched hat hecontinued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men; tillstubb cautiously whispered to flask, that ahab must have summoned them there for thepurpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat.
but this did not last long.vehemently pausing, he cried:-- "what do ye do when ye see a whale, men?" "sing out for him!" was the impulsiverejoinder from a score of clubbed voices. "good!" cried ahab, with a wild approval inhis tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had somagnetically thrown them. "and what do ye next, men?" "lower away, and after him!""and what tune is it ye pull to, men?" "a dead whale or a stove boat!" more and more strangely and fiercely gladand approving, grew the countenance of the
old man at every shout; while the marinersbegan to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at suchseemingly purposeless questions. but, they were all eagerness again, asahab, now half-revolving in his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud,and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:-- "all ye mast-headers have before now heardme give orders about a white whale. look ye! d'ye see this spanish ounce ofgold?"--holding up a broad bright coin to the sun--"it is a sixteen dollar piece,men.
d'ye see it? mr. starbuck, hand me yon top-maul." while the mate was getting the hammer,ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of hisjacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself, producing a sound sostrangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheelsof his vitality in him. receiving the top-maul from starbuck, headvanced towards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting thegold with the other, and with a high raised
voice exclaiming: "whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkledbrow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, withthree holes punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have thisgold ounce, my boys!" "huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as withswinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast. "it's a white whale, i say," resumed ahab,as he threw down the topmaul: "a white skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp forwhite water; if ye see but a bubble, sing
out." all this while tashtego, daggoo, andqueequeg had looked on with even more intense interest and surprise than therest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by somespecific recollection. "captain ahab," said tashtego, "that whitewhale must be the same that some call moby dick." "moby dick?" shouted ahab."do ye know the white whale then, tash?" "does he fan-tail a little curious, sir,before he goes down?" said the gay-header
deliberately. "and has he a curious spout, too," saiddaggoo, "very bushy, even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, captain ahab?" "and he have one, two, three--oh! good manyiron in him hide, too, captain," cried queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him--him--" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a bottle--"likehim--him--" "corkscrew!" cried ahab, "aye, queequeg,the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, daggoo, his spout is a bigone, like a whole shock of wheat, and white
as a pile of our nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, tashtego,and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall.death and devils! men, it is moby dick ye have seen--moby dick--moby dick!" "captain ahab," said starbuck, who, withstubb and flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, butat last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. "captain ahab, i have heard of moby dick--but it was not moby dick that took off thy leg?"
"who told thee that?" cried ahab; thenpausing, "aye, starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was moby dick that dismastedme; moby dick that brought me to this dead stump i stand on now. aye, aye," he shouted with a terrific,loud, animal sob, like that of a heart- stricken moose; "aye, aye! it was thataccursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and aday!" then tossing both arms, with measurelessimprecations he shouted out: "aye, aye! and i'll chase him round good hope, and roundthe horn, and round the norway maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before i givehim up.
and this is what ye have shipped for, men!to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till hespouts black blood and rolls fin out. what say ye, men, will ye splice hands onit, now? i think ye do look brave." "aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers andseamen, running closer to the excited old man: "a sharp eye for the white whale; asharp lance for moby dick!" "god bless ye," he seemed to half sob andhalf shout. "god bless ye, men.steward! go draw the great measure of grog. but what's this long face about, mr.starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white
whale? art not game for moby dick?" "i am game for his crooked jaw, and for thejaws of death too, captain ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business wefollow; but i came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. how many barrels will thy vengeance yieldthee even if thou gettest it, captain ahab? it will not fetch thee much in ournantucket market." "nantucket market! hoot!but come closer, starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer.
if money's to be the measurer, man, and theaccountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling itwith guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that myvengeance will fetch a great premium here!" "he smites his chest," whispered stubb,"what's that for? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow." "vengeance on a dumb brute!" criedstarbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!madness! to be enraged with a dumb thing, captainahab, seems blasphemous." "hark ye yet again--the little lower layer.all visible objects, man, are but as
pasteboard masks. but in each event--in the living act, theundoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth themouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. if man will strike, strike through themask! how can the prisoner reach outside exceptby thrusting through the wall? to me, the white whale is that wall, shovednear to me. sometimes i think there's naught beyond.but 'tis enough. he tasks me; he heaps me; i see in himoutrageous strength, with an inscrutable
malice sinewing it. that inscrutable thing is chiefly what ihate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, i will wreakthat hate upon him. talk not to me of blasphemy, man; i'dstrike the sun if it insulted me. for could the sun do that, then could i dothe other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding overall creations. but not my master, man, is even that fairplay. who's over me?truth hath no confines. take off thine eye! more intolerable thanfiends' glarings is a doltish stare!
so, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heathas melted thee to anger-glow. but look ye, starbuck, what is said inheat, that thing unsays itself. there are men from whom warm words aresmall indignity. i meant not to incense thee. let it go.look! see yonder turkish cheeks of spotted tawn--living, breathing pictures painted bythe sun. the pagan leopards--the unrecking andunworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid lifethey feel! the crew, man, the crew!
are they not one and all with ahab, in thismatter of the whale? see stubb! he laughs!see yonder chilian! he snorts to think of it. stand up amid the general hurricane, thyone tost sapling cannot, starbuck! and what is it?reckon it. 'tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrousfeat for starbuck. what is it more? from this one poor hunt, then, the bestlance out of all nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand hasclutched a whetstone?
ah! constrainings seize thee; i see! thebillow lifts thee! speak, but speak!--aye, aye! thy silence,then, that voices thee. (aside) something shot from my dilatednostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now,without rebellion." "god keep me!--keep us all!" murmuredstarbuck, lowly. but in his joy at the enchanted, tacitacquiescence of the mate, ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the lowlaugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails againstthe masts, as for a moment their hearts
sank in. for again starbuck's downcast eyes lightedup with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the windsblew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stayye not when ye come? but rather are ye predictions thanwarnings, ye shadows! yet not so much predictions from without,as verifications of the foregoing things within. for with little external to constrain us,the innermost necessities in our being,
these still drive us on."the measure! the measure!" cried ahab. receiving the brimming pewter, and turningto the harpooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. then ranging them before him near thecapstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at hisside with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchinglyeyeing every man of his crew. but those wild eyes met his, as thebloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes onat their head in the trail of the bison;
but, alas! only to fall into the hiddensnare of the indian. "drink and pass!" he cried, handing theheavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman. "the crew alone now drink. round with it, round!short draughts--long swallows, men; 'tis hot as satan's hoof.so, so; it goes round excellently. it spiralizes in ye; forks out at theserpent-snapping eye. well done; almost drained.that way it went, this way it comes. hand it me--here's a hollow! men, ye seem the years; so brimming life isgulped and gone.
steward, refill!"attend now, my braves. i have mustered ye all round this capstan;and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with yourirons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that i may in some sort revive a noblecustom of my fisherman fathers before me. o men, you will yet see that--ha! boy, comeback? bad pennies come not sooner. hand it me. why, now, this pewter had run brimmingagain, were't not thou st. vitus' imp-- away, thou ague!"advance, ye mates! cross your lances full before me.
well done!let me touch the axis." so saying, with extended arm, he graspedthe three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing, suddenlyand nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from starbuck to stubb;from stubb to flask. it seemed as though, by some nameless,interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotionaccumulated within the leyden jar of his own magnetic life. the three mates quailed before his strong,sustained, and mystic aspect. stubb and flask looked sideways from him;the honest eye of starbuck fell downright.
"in vain!" cried ahab; "but, maybe, 'tiswell. for did ye three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me. perchance, too, it would have dropped yedead. perchance ye need it not.down lances! and now, ye mates, i do appoint ye threecupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there- -yon three most honourable gentlemen andnoblemen, my valiant harpooneers. disdain the task? what, when the great pope washes the feetof beggars, using his tiara for ewer?
oh, my sweet cardinals! your owncondescension, that shall bend ye to it. i do not order ye; ye will it. cut your seizings and draw the poles, yeharpooneers!" silently obeying the order, the threeharpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some threefeet long, held, barbs up, before him. "stab me not with that keen steel! cant them; cant them over! know ye not thegoblet end? turn up the socket!so, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. the irons! take them; hold them while ifill!"
forthwith, slowly going from one officer tothe other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter. "now, three to three, ye stand.commend the murderous chalices! bestow them, ye who are now made parties tothis indissoluble league. ha! starbuck! but the deed is done! yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it.drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow--death to moby dick! god hunt us all, if we do not hunt mobydick to his death!" the long, barbed steel goblets were lifted;and to cries and maledictions against the
white whale, the spirits weresimultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. once more, and finally, the replenishedpewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them,they all dispersed; and ahab retired within his cabin. chapter 37.sunset. the cabin; by the stern windows; ahabsitting alone, and gazing out. i leave a white and turbid wake; palewaters, paler cheeks, where'er i sail. the envious billows sidelong swell to whelmmy track; let them; but first i pass.
yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, thewarm waves blush like wine. the gold brow plumbs the blue. the diver sun--slow dived from noon--goesdown; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill.is, then, the crown too heavy that i wear? this iron crown of lombardy. yet is it bright with many a gem; i thewearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that i wear that, thatdazzlingly confounds. 'tis iron--that i know--not gold. 'tis split, too--that i feel; the jaggededge galls me so, my brain seems to beat
against the solid metal; aye, steel skull,mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight! dry heat upon my brow?oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed.no more. this lovely light, it lights not me; allloveliness is anguish to me, since i can ne'er enjoy. gifted with the high perception, i lack thelow, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midstof paradise! good night--good night!
(waving his hand, he moves from thewindow.) 'twas not so hard a task. i thought to find one stubborn, at theleast; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. or, if you will, like so many ant-hills ofpowder, they all stand before me; and i their match.oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting! what i've dared, i've willed; and what i'vewilled, i'll do! they think me mad--starbuck does; but i'mdemoniac, i am madness maddened!
that wild madness that's only calm tocomprehend itself! the prophecy was that i should bedismembered; and--aye! i lost this leg. i now prophesy that i will dismember mydismemberer. now, then, be the prophet and the fulfillerone. that's more than ye, ye great gods, everwere. i laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players,ye pugilists, ye deaf burkes and blinded bendigoes! i will not say as schoolboys do to bullies--take some one of your own size; don't pommel me!no, ye've knocked me down, and i am up
again; but ye have run and hidden. come forth from behind your cotton bags!i have no long gun to reach ye. come, ahab's compliments to ye; come andsee if ye can swerve me. swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else yeswerve yourselves! man has ye there. swerve me? the path to my fixed purpose is laid withiron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. over unsounded gorges, through the rifledhearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly i rush!naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to
the iron way! chapter 38.dusk. by the mainmast; starbuck leaning againstit. my soul is more than matched; she'sovermanned; and by a madman! insufferable sting, that sanity shouldground arms on such a field! but he drilled deep down, and blasted allmy reason out of me! i think i see his impious end; but feelthat i must help him to it. will i, nill i, the ineffable thing hastied me to him; tows me with a cable i have no knife to cut.
horrible old man!who's over him, he cries;--aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lordsit over all below! oh! i plainly see my miserable office,--toobey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!for in his eyes i read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had i it. yet is there hope.time and tide flow wide. the hated whale has the round watery worldto swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. his heaven-insulting purpose, god may wedgeaside.
i would up heart, were it not like lead. but my whole clock's run down; my heart theall-controlling weight, i have no key to lift again.[a burst of revelry from the forecastle.] oh, god! to sail with such a heathen crewthat have small touch of human mothers in them!whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. the white whale is their demigorgon. hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry isforward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! methinks it pictures life. foremost through the sparkling sea shootson the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but
only to drag dark ahab after it, where hebroods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfishgurglings. the long howl thrills me through!peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beatdown and held to knowledge,--as wild, untutored things are forced to feed--oh,life! 'tis now that i do feel the latent horrorin thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of thehuman in me, yet will i try to fight ye, ye
grim, phantom futures! stand by me, hold me, bind me, o ye blessedinfluences! chapter 39.first night watch. fore-top.(stubb solus, and mending a brace.) ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--i'vebeen thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence. why so? because a laugh's the wisest, easiestanswer to all that's queer; and come what will, one comfort's always left--thatunfailing comfort is, it's all
predestinated. i heard not all his talk with starbuck; butto my poor eye starbuck then looked something as i the other evening felt.be sure the old mogul has fixed him, too. i twigged it, knew it; had had the gift,might readily have prophesied it--for when i clapped my eye upon his skull i saw it.well, stubb, wise stubb--that's my title-- well, stubb, what of it, stubb? here's a carcase.i know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, i'll go to it laughing.such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles!
i feel funny.fa, la! lirra, skirra! what's my juicy little pear at home doingnow? crying its eyes out?--giving a party to thelast arrived harpooneers, i dare say, gay as a frigate's pennant, and so am i--fa,la! lirra, skirra! oh-- we'll drink to-night with hearts as light,to love, as gay and fleeting as bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim, and breakon the lips while meeting. a brave stave that--who calls? mr. starbuck?aye, aye, sir--(aside) he's my superior, he
has his too, if i'm not mistaken.--aye,aye, sir, just through with this job-- coming. chapter 40.midnight, forecastle. harpooneers and sailors.(foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and lying invarious attitudes, all singing in chorus.) farewell and adieu to you, spanish ladies!farewell and adieu to you, ladies of spain! our captain's commanded.-- 1st nantucket sailor.oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the digestion!take a tonic, follow me!
(sings, and all follow) our captain stood upon the deck,a spy-glass in his hand, a viewing of those gallant whalesthat blew at every strand. oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,and by your braces stand, and we'll have one of those fine whales,hand, boys, over hand! so, be cheery, my lads!may your hearts never fail! while the bold harpooneris striking the whale! mate's voice from the quarter-deck.eight bells there, forward! 2nd nantucket sailor.avast the chorus!
eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy? strike the bell eight, thou pip! thoublackling! and let me call the watch. i've the sort of mouth for that--thehogshead mouth. so, so, (thrusts his head down thescuttle,) star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! eight bells there below!tumble up! dutch sailor. grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat nightfor that. i mark this in our old mogul's wine; it'squite as deadening to some as filliping to others.
we sing; they sleep--aye, lie down there,like ground-tier butts. at 'em again!there, take this copper-pump, and hail 'em through it. tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses.tell 'em it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.that's the way--that's it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating amsterdam butter. french sailor.hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in blanket bay.what say ye? there comes the other watch.
stand by all legs!pip! little pip! hurrah with your tambourine!pip. (sulky and sleepy) don't know where it is. french sailor.beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. jig it, men, i say; merry's the word;hurrah! damn me, won't you dance? form, now, indian-file, and gallop into thedouble-shuffle? throw yourselves!legs! legs! iceland sailor.
i don't like your floor, maty; it's toospringy to my taste. i'm used to ice-floors.i'm sorry to throw cold water on the subject; but excuse me. maltese sailor.me too; where's your girls? who but a fool would take his left hand byhis right, and say to himself, how d'ye do? partners! i must have partners!sicilian sailor. aye; girls and a green!--then i'll hop withye; yea, turn grasshopper! long-island sailor.
well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty moreof us. hoe corn when you may, say i.all legs go to harvest soon. ah! here comes the music; now for it! azore sailor.(ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle.)here you are, pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount! now, boys!(the half of them dance to the tambourine; some go below; some sleep or lie among thecoils of rigging. oaths a-plenty.)
azore sailor.(dancing) go it, pip! bang it, bell-boy!rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! make fire-flies; break the jinglers! pip.jinglers, you say?--there goes another, dropped off; i pound it so.china sailor. rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away;make a pagoda of thyself. french sailor.merry-mad! hold up thy hoop, pip, till i jump throughit! split jibs! tear yourselves!tashtego.
(quietly smoking) that's a white man; hecalls that fun: humph! i save my sweat.old manx sailor. i wonder whether those jolly lads bethinkthem of what they are dancing over. i'll dance over your grave, i will--that'sthe bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. o christ! to think of the green navies andthe green-skulled crews! well, well; belike the whole world's aball, as you scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. dance on, lads, you're young; i was once.3d nantucket sailor.
spell oh!--whew! this is worse than pullingafter whales in a calm--give us a whiff, tash. (they cease dancing, and gather inclusters. meantime the sky darkens--the wind rises.)lascar sailor. by brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. the sky-born, high-tide ganges turned towind! thou showest thy black brow, seeva!maltese sailor. (reclining and shaking his cap.) it's the waves--the snow's caps turn to jigit now.
they'll shake their tassels soon. now would all the waves were women, theni'd go drown, and chassee with them evermore! there's naught so sweet on earth--heavenmay not match it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when theover-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes. sicilian sailor.(reclining.) tell me not of it! hark ye, lad--fleet interlacings of thelimbs--lithe swayings--coyings--
flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze:unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. eh, pagan?(nudging.) tahitan sailor.(reclining on a mat.) hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!--the heeva-heeva! ah! low veiled, high palmed tahiti!i still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! i saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! greenthe first day i brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite.ah me!--not thou nor i can bear the change!
how then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? hear i the roaring streams from pirohitee'speak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the villages?--the blast!the blast! up, spine, and meet it! (leaps to his feet.)portuguese sailor. how the sea rolls swashing 'gainst theside! stand by for reefing, hearties! the windsare just crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go lunging presently.danish sailor. crack, crack, old ship! so long as thoucrackest, thou holdest!
well done!the mate there holds ye to it stiffly. he's no more afraid than the isle fort atcattegat, put there to fight the baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes! 4th nantucket sailor. he has his orders, mind ye that.i heard old ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst awaterspout with a pistol--fire your ship right into it! english sailor.blood! but that old man's a grand old cove! we are the lads to hunt him up his whale!all.
aye! aye! old manx sailor.how the three pines shake! pines are the hardest sort of tree to livewhen shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the crew's cursed clay. steady, helmsman! steady.this is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls splitat sea. our captain has his birthmark; look yonder,boys, there's another in the sky--lurid- like, ye see, all else pitch black.daggoo. what of that?
who's afraid of black's afraid of me!i'm quarried out of it! spanish sailor.(aside.) he wants to bully, ah!--the old grudgemakes me touchy (advancing.) aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniabledark side of mankind--devilish dark at that. no offence.daggoo (grimly). none.st. jago's sailor. that spaniard's mad or drunk.but that can't be, or else in his one case
our old mogul's fire-waters are somewhatlong in working. 5th nantucket sailor. what's that i saw--lightning?yes. spanish sailor.no; daggoo showing his teeth. daggoo (springing). swallow thine, mannikin!white skin, white liver! spanish sailor (meeting him).knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit! all.a row! a row! a row!
tashtego (with a whiff).a row a'low, and a row aloft--gods and men- -both brawlers! humph!belfast sailor. a row! arrah a row!the virgin be blessed, a row! plunge in with ye! english sailor.fair play! snatch the spaniard's knife!a ring, a ring! old manx sailor. ready formed.there! the ringed horizon.
in that ring cain struck abel.sweet work, right work! no? why then, god, mad'st thou the ring? mate's voice from the quarter-deck.hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails!stand by to reef topsails! all. the squall! the squall! jump, my jollies!(they scatter.) pip (shrinking under the windlass).jollies? lord help such jollies! crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay!blang-whang!
god!duck lower, pip, here comes the royal yard! it's worse than being in the whirled woods,the last day of the year! who'd go climbing after chestnuts now?but there they go, all cursing, and here i don't. fine prospects to 'em; they're on the roadto heaven. hold on hard!jimmini, what a squall! but those chaps there are worse yet--theyare your white squalls, they. white squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! here have i heard all their chat just now,and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but
spoken of once! and only this evening--itmakes me jingle all over like my tambourine--that anaconda of an old manswore 'em in to hunt him! oh, thou big white god aloft theresomewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preservehim from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!
