instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat,
Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
..






.. < chapter xxxi 2 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
I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul,
my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a
pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still
more curious, Flask—you know how curious all dreams are— through all this rage
that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it
was not much of an insult, that kick 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 a living 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 living insult, my little man. And thinks I to
myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that
cursed pyramid — so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I
say, I was thinking to myself, "what's his leg now, but a cane —a whalebone
cane. Yes," thinks I,"it was only a playful cudgelling —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 broad footed farmer kicked me, there's a devilish broad insult.
But this insult is whittled down to a point only." But now comes the
greatest joke of the dream, 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 the shoulders, 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
the fright. "What am I about?" says I at last. "And what business is that of
yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do you want a
..
kick?" By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round
his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a
clout —what do you think, I saw? —why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck
full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts,"I
guess I won't kick you, old fellow." "Wise Stubb," said he,"wise Stubb;" and
kept 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 over his "wise Stubb, wise
Stubb," I thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. 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 the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?" "Yes, he
did," says I —"right here it was." "Very good," says he —"he used his ivory
leg, 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? it wasn'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 honor; I consider
it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest lords think it
great 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 honors; and on no
account kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see
that pyramid?" With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, 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 foolish to 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, is to let that 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 lungs for him! What d'ye 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 xxxii 6 CETOLOGY >
Already we are boldly launched upon the
deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless immensities. Ere
that come to pass; ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the
barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a
matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the
more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to
follow. It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down. No branch of
Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology, says Captain
Scoresby, A. D.
. It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter
into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups
and families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal
(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A. D.
. Unfitness to pursue our
research in the unfathomable waters. Impenetrable veil covering our
knowledge of 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 knowledge there be little,
yet of books there are
..
a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of
whales. many are the men, small and great, old and new, 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 of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what
ultimate generalizing purpose all 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 real professional
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of
the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby
knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale, compared with which
the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that
the Greenland whale 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
his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back,
invested the then fabulous and utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which
ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific
retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete.
Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions 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 new
proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all, —the
Greenland whale is deposed, —the great sperm whale now reigneth! There are
only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale
before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree succeed in the
attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in their time surgeons
to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and reliable men. The
..
original matter touching the sperm whale 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 some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy
outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by
subsequent laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand,
I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because
any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly
be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the
various species, or— in this place at least —to much of any description. My
object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology.
I am the architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary
letter-sorter in the Post-office is equal to it. To grope down into the
bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable
foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing.
What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful
tauntings in Job might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant
with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have swam through
libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these
visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. There are some
preliminaries to settle. first: the uncertain, unsettled condition of this
science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in
some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his
System of Nature, A. D.
, Linnaeus declares, I hereby separate the whales
from the fish. But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year
,
sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express edict, were
still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan. The
grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished
..
the whales from the waters, he states as follows: On account of their warm
bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem
intrantem feminam mammis lactantem, and finally, ex lege naturae jure
meritoque. I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey 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 altogether insufficient.
Charley profanely hinted they were humbug. Be it known that, waiving all
argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and
call upon holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled, the next
point 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 and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded.
Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious 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 the walrus is not a fish, because he is
amphibious. but the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as
coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the 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
creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers;
nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively
regarded as alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting,
..
and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology.
Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host. First:
According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS
(subdivisible into Chapters), and these shall 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 the Sperm Whale; of the
OCTAVO, the Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise. FOLIOS. Among these I
here include the following chapters: — 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 old vaguely
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
the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest
inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the
most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce;
he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is
obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon.
It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered,
it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly
unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only
accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it
would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical
with the one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale. It was
the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the
Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses. In
those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for
light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the
druggists as you 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 the dealers; no doubt to
enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And
so the appellation must at last have come 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 first regularly hunted by man. It yields the
article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the oil specially known as
whale oil, an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is
indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the
Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right
whale. there is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species
thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale, which I include in
the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English
naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English Whalemen; the Baliene
Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is
the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch
and English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen
have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West
Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale
Cruising Grounds. Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland
whale of the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely
agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single
determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless
subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some
departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The right
whale will be elsewhere treated of 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 almost in every sea and is
commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers
crossing the Atlantic, in the New York
..
packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back
resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter
color, 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 a
very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest other part of the creature
be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from
the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with
spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows 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; his straight and single lofty jet rising
like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such
wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from
man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race,
bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his
mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a
theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen.
Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would 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 the fishermen's names for a few sorts. In connexion
with this appellative of Whalebone whales , it is of great importance to
mention, that however such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating
allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear
classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or
fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very
..
obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of
Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his
kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are
things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of
whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in
other and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the
humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then,
this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland 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 such irregular
combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular
isolation; 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, in the internal parts of the whale, in his
anatomy —there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right classification.
Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more
striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is
impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend
into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will not find
distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those
external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold
of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them
that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the
only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. 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 does
not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump,
though a smaller 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 and white 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 both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward,
he has never yet shown any 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 scraping along the
Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at
least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then
always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is never chased;
he would run away with rope-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 of middling magnitude, among which at
present may be numbered: —I., the Grampus; II., the Black Fish; III., the
Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER
I. ( Grampus). —Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather
blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of
the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all
the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have
recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen
to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the
waist. He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is
considerable
..
in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is
regarded as 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 the best. Where any name happens
to be vague or inexpressive, 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 the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips
are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his
face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is
found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal
hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not
more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena
whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment —as some
frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves,
burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very
thin, some of these 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 I suppose from his
peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is
some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some
exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is
but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed
from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an
ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy
left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it
would be hard to say. It does not seemed to be used like the blade of the
sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale
employs 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 it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through.
But you cannot prove either of these surmises 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 would certainly be very convenient to him for a
folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked
whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious
example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated
nature. From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same
sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against
poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also
distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the
horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in
itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir
Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did
gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as
his bold ship sailed down the Thames; when Sir Martin returned from that
voyage, saith Black Letter, on bended knees he presented to her highness a
prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in
the castle at Windsor. An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester,
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 color, dotted with round and
oblong spots 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 to the
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 whales by 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 name bestowed 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 his foes. He
mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage by
flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar
process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the 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 to study the subject, it
may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
feet should be marshalled among WHALES —a word, which, in the popular sense,
always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down above as
Duodecimoes 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 I ( Huzza Porpoise). — This is the common porpoise
found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; for there
are more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish
them. I call them thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which
upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a
Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by
the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy
billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the wind. They
are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at
beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly
gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you
one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from
his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and
watchmakers.
..
Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It
may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is
so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have
a chance, watch him; 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 Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make.
Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many
times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER III.
( Mealy-mouthed Porpoise). The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in
the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has
hitherto been designated, is that of the fishers — Right-Whale Porpoise,
from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio.
In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less
rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like
figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises 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 side fins is of a
deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called
the bright waist, that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two
separate colors, black above and white below. The white comprises part of his
head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just
escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect!
His oil is much like that of the common porpoise. Beyond the DUODECIMO, this
system does not proceed, 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, as an American
whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by
their forecastle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any of
the following
..
whales, shall hereafter 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-Headed
Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale;
the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale;
the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities,
there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all
manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can
hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but
signifying nothing. Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this 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 System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane
still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may
be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the
copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This
whole book is but a draught —nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh Time,
Strength, Cash, and Patience!
..
I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by
many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a nosy,
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 quit the kingdom of
Cetology.
..
Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because,
while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former
order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet
the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the
shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
..






.. < chapter xxxiii 24 THE SPECKSYNDER >
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 than the
whale-fleet. The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is
evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale ship was
..
not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided
between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means
Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer.
In those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation and
general management of the vessel: while over the whale-hunting department
and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In
the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer,
this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly
abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is
but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the
good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely
depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important
officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a
whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also his; therefore the
grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart
from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their
social equal. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at
sea, is this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships
and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the
after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the
captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of
all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the
community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low,
depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck,
together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all
these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in
merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian
family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for
all that,
..
the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially
relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships
in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated
grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much
outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of
pilot-cloth. And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the
least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage
he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no
man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck; and
though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with
events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether
of condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was
by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea. Nor,
perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and
usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of
them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to
subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good
degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual
superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available
supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and
entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it
is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's
hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men
who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden
handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over
the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things
when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal
instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as
in the case of Nicholas the Czar, 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 would depict mortal indomitableness in its
fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important
in his art, as the one now alluded to. But Ahab, my Captain, still moves
before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode
touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with
a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee,
it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!
..






.. < chapter xxxiv 15 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 his lord and master; who, sitting in the lee
quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and is now
mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet,
reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his
complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not
heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, 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 has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to
suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a
few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says,
with some touch of pleasantness, Dinner, Mr. Stubb, and descends the
scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging
..
awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it be all
right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with
a rapid Dinner, Mr. Flask, follows after his predecessors. But the third
emir, now seeing himself all alone 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
but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and
then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a
shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from
the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face
altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's
presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is not the least
among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages,
that while in the open air of 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 customary
dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not
to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he 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 haughtily but courteously,
therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who
in the rightly regal and intelligent 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 transcends
Belshazzar'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 which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you
superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you
will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
..
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the
white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In
his own proper turn, each officer waited to 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 all fastened upon the old
man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that
for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest
observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when
reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked,
Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate 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;
and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the Coronation
banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven
Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in
awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he
himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a
sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest
son, 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 honest world;
nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped
himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all,
did flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of
the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny
complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless
waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern;
however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man! Another thing. Flask was
the last person down at the dinner,
..
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 of him; and
yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who
is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and
soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir
himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is
against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was
that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the
dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be
otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve
his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought
Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I
wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to
when I was before the 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 sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official
capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was
to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light,
sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three
mates formed what may be called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After
their departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas
cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid
steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to 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 tolerable constraint
and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire
care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior
fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the
sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with
such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they
filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such
portentous
..
appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by
the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great
baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were
not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then
Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his
back, harpoonwise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted
Dough-Boy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a
great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out
the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous,
shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a
bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of
the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these
three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one continual lip-quiver.
Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they
demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little 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 over against
Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's: crosswise to them,
Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed
head to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the
low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a
ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to
say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small
mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial,
and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank
deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils
snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are
giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of
the lip in eating —an ugly sound enough —so much so, that the trembling
Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own
lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce
himself,
..
that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted Steward all but shattered
the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the
palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets,
for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner,
they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not
at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his
Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some
murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white
waiter who waits 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-mongering
ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish
scimetars in scabbards. But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and
nominally lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits,
they were scarcely ever in it except at meal-times, and just before
sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale captains,
who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion 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 and harpooneers
of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than
in it. For when they did enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a
house; turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as
a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby;
in the cabin was 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 the Grisly 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 out the winter there,
sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul,
shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its
gloom!
..






.. < chapter xxxv 2 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-heads are manned almost simultaneously with
the vessel's leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand
miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. and if,
after a three, four, or five years' voyage she is drawing nigh home with
anything empty in her —say, an empty vial even —then, her mast-heads are kept
manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires
of the port, does she 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 measure expatiate here. I
take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians;
because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their
progenitors, the builders of 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 to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore,
we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the
Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the
general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for
astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar
stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with
prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to
mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a
modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint
Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty
stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of
..
his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in
him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who
was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet;
but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post.
Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone,
iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale,
are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering
any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column 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, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his
towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his
column marks 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 that London smoke, token is
yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is smoke, must be
fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a
single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels
the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however it may be surmised, that
their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what
shoals and what rocks must be shunned. It may seem unwarrantable to couple in
any respect the mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea; but
that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed
Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed
tells us, that in the early times 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
nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years
ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon
descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-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 from sun-rise to sun-set; the
seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other
every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly
pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.
There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the
deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between
your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships
once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you
stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the
waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow;
everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic
whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read
no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you
into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt
securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you
shall have for dinner —for all your meals for three years and more are snugly
stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable. In one of those southern
whalemen, on a long three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of
the various hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire
months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so
considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so
sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted
to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a
hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those
small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your
most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you stand
upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t'
gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about
as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure, in cold weather
you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but
properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the
unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside
..
of its fleshly tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move
out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim
crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house
as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a
shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a
convenient closet of your watch-coat. Concerning all this, it is much to be
deplored that the mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with
those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the
lookouts of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of
the frozen seas. In the fire-side narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled A
Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally
for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland; in
this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a
charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented 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, in honor of himself; he being the original
inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and
holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers
being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate
after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet's
crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above,
however, where it is furnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward
of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you
ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side,
or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker
underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack,
in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow's
nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in
the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping
off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for
you cannot successfully shoot at them from
..
the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is
a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet
to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his
crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he
treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest,
with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the
errors resulting from what is called the local attraction of all binnacle
magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the
ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so
many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain
is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned binnacle
deviations, azimuth compass observations, and approximate errors, he
knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those
profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards
that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of
his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I
greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet
I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle,
seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with
mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there
in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we
Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his
Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the
widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers
mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely,
resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty 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 my ultimate destination. Let me make a clean breast
of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem
of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself
..
at such a thought-engendering altitude, —how could I but lightly hold my
obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, Keep your weather
eye open, and sing out every time. And let me in this place movingly admonish
you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant
fisheries 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 whales must be seen before
they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you 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
furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young
men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar
and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the
mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase
ejaculates: — Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand
blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain. Very often do the captains of such
ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them
with not feeling sufficient interest in the voyage; half-hinting that they
are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret
souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those
young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are
short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left
their opera-glasses at home. Why, thou monkey, said a harpooneer to one of
these lads, we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not
raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up
here. Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in
the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant,
unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of
waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic
..
ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul,
pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding,
beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some
undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that
only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted
mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time
and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a
part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now,
except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed
from the sea; by the sea, 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 back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you
hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one
half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer
sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
..






.. < chapter xxxvi 21 THE QUARTER-DECK >
( enter Ahab: Then, all.) It
was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly
after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the
deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country
gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. Soon his
steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon
planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like
geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze,
too, upon that ribbed
..
and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints —the
foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought. But on the occasion in
question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning
left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every
uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you
could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he
paced; so completely possessing him, indeed, that it 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. T'will soon be out. The hours
wore on; —Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the deck, with the
same 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 a shroud, he ordered Starbuck
to send everybody aft. Sir! said the mate, astonished at an order 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 were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces,
were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is
coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting
his eyes among the crew, started from his standpoint; and as though not a
soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and
half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering
among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have
summoned them there for the purpose 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 impulsive rejoinder from a score
of clubbed voices.
..
Good! cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty
animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically 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 glad and approving, grew the countenance of the old man at every
shout; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, as if
marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such
seemingly purposeless questions. But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab,
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 heard me give orders about a white whale. Look
ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold? —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 his jacket,
as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly
humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate
that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast with
the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with
a high raised voice exclaiming: Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed
whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that
white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke —look
ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold
ounce, my boys! Huzza! huzza! cried the seamen, as with swinging
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 top-maul; a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out. All this while Tashtego,
Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more intense interest and
surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and crooked
jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some specific
recollection. Captain Ahab, said Tashtego, that white whale 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, said Daggoo, very bushy, even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick,
Captain Ahab? And he have one, two, tree —oh! good many iron in him hide,
too, Captain, cried Queequeg disjointedly, all twiske-tee betwisk, like
him—him— faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as
though uncorking a bottle — like him—him— Corkscrew! cried Ahab, aye,
Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his
spout is a big one, 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,
with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing
surprise, but at 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; then pausing,
Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted
me; 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 that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a
poor pegging
..
lubber of me for ever and a day! Then tossing both arms, with measureless
imprecations he shouted out: Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope,
and round the horn, and round the norway maelstrom, and round perdition's
flames before I give him 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 he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye
splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave. Aye, aye! shouted the
harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited old man: A sharp eye
for the White Whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick! God bless ye, he seemed
to half sob and half 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 the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes
in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my
commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even
if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our
Nantucket market. Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou
requirest a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling
it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee,
that my vengeance 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! cried Starbuck, that simply smote thee from
blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab,
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, the undoubted deed —there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts
forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man
will strike, strike through
..
the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the
wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I
think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I
see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent,
or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not
to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the
sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair
play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man,
is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off
thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So,
so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But
look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are
men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee.
Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn — living,
breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards —the unrecking and
unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid
life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab,
in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he
snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost
sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike
a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor
hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back,
when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize
thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak! —Aye, aye! thy
silence, then, that voices thee. ( aside) something shot from my dilated
nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot
oppose me now, without rebellion. God keep me! —keep us all! murmured
Starbuck, lowly. But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the
mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh
from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of
..
the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the
masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast
eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died
away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as
before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But
rather are ye predictions than warnings, 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 turning to the harpooneers, he ordered
them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan,
with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side
with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle round
the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew.
But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves
meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of
the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
Drink and pass! he cried, handing the heavy 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 the serpent-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 is gulped 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 your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may
in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men,
you will yet see that— Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner.