opinion. Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during
a black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any
hospitable shore. The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the
fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden
rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation,
seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the dismal looking wreck,
and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed my
reflections, until day again made its appearance. In another place —p. 45,
—he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack of the animal.
..






.. < chapter xlvi 22 SURMISES >
Though, consumed with the hot fire of his
purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate
capture of Moby Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal
interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by
nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways,
altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least
if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more
influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards
..
the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all
sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he
multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to
be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed
exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not
so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by
no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish his object Ahab must use
tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to
get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency
in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the
complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves
intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but
stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced
will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain;
still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his
captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it,
or even frustrate it. it might be that a long interval would elapse ere the
White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to
fall into open relapses of rebellion against his captain's leadership, unless
some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon
him. Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was
noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and
shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way
be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested
it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the
obscure background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted
meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night
watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than
Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the
announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
capricious and unreliable —they live in the varying outer weather, and they
inhale its fickleness —and when retained
..
for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life
and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary
interests and employment should intervene and hold them healthily suspended
for the final dash. Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of
strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are
evanescent. The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man,
thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the
hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds
a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it
they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common,
daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old
times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for
their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and
gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to
their one final and romantic object —that final and romantic object, too many
would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab,
of all hopes of cash —aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months
go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same
quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon
cashier Ahab. Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more
related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's
voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly
laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect
impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end
competent, could refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently
wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted imputation of
usurpation, and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression
gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself.
That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart
and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating
..
attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his
crew to be subjected to. For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too
analytic to be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still
in a good degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod's
voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force himself
to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his
profession. be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the
three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.
..






.. < chapter xlvii 14 THE MAT-MAKER >
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon;
the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over
into the lead-colored waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving
what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still
and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an
incantation of revery lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed
resolved into his own invisible self. I was the attendant or page of
Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the
filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own
hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid
his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the
water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a
dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only
broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this
were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and
weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed
..
threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging
vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise
interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and
here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own
destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive,
indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or
strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the
concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the
completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes
and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance
—aye, chance, free will, and necessity —no wise incompatible —all
interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be
swerved from its ultimate course —its every alternating vibration, indeed,
only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given
threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of
necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus
prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last
featuring blow at events. Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started
at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the
ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds
whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that
mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand
stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his
cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all
over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's look-outs perched as high in the
air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived
such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's. As he stood hovering
over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the
horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the
shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. There she
blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!
..
Where-away? On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!
Instantly all was commotion. The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the
same undeviating and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish
this fish from other tribes of his genus. There go flukes! was now the cry
from Tashtego; and the whales disappeared. Quick, steward! cried Ahab.
Time! time! Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported
the exact minute to Ahab. The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she
went gently rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone
down heading to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in
advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm
Whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while
concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the
opposite quarter —this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action; for
there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any
way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected
for shipkeepers — that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this time
relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and
mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes
were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the
sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks
their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was
expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war's men
about to throw themselves on board an enemy's ship. But at this critical
instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every eye from the whale.
With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky
phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.
..






.. < chapter xlviii 2 THE FIRST LOWERING >
The phantoms, for so they then
seemed, were flitting on the other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless
celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung
there. This boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats, though
technically called the captain's, on account of its hanging from the
starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart,
with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled
Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black
trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning his ebonness was a
glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round
and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of this figure
were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal
natives of the Manillas; —a race notorious for a certain diabolism of
subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and
secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose
counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere. While yet the wondering ship's
company were gazing upon these strangers, Ahab cried out to the
white-turbaned old man at their head, All ready there, Fedallah? Ready,
was the half-hissed reply. Lower away then; d'ye hear? shouting across the
deck. Lower away there, I say. Such was the thunder of his voice, that
spite of their amazement the men sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled
round in the blocks; with a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea;
while, with a dexterous, off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation,
the sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the tossed
boats below. Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee, when
..
a fourth keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern,
and showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern,
loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, so as
to cover a large expanse of water. but with all their eyes again riveted upon
the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other boats obeyed not
the command. Captain Ahab?— said Starbuck. Spread yourselves, cried Ahab;
give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask, pull out more to leeward! Aye,
aye, sir, cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his great steering
oar. Lay back! addressing his crew. There! —there! —there again! There
she blows right ahead, boys! — lay back! Never heed yonder yellow boys,
Archy. Oh, I don't mind 'em, sir, said Archy; I knew it all before now.
Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What say
ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask. Pull, pull, my fine
hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little ones, drawingly and
soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom still showed signs of
uneasiness. Why don't you break your backbones, my boys? What is it you
stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They are only five more hands
come to help us —never mind from where —the more the merrier. Pull, then, do
pull; never mind the brimstone —devils are good fellows enough. So, so;
there you are now; that's the stroke for a thousand pounds; that's the
stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes!
Three cheers, men —all hearts alive! Easy, easy; don't be in a hurry —don't
be in a hurry. Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something,
you dogs! So, so, so, then; —softly, softly! That's it — that's it! long
and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin
rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull,
will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and
ginger-cakes don't ye pull? —pull and break something! pull, and start your
..
eyes out! Here! whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; every
mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth.
That's it —that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my
steel-bits. Start her —start her, my silver-spoons! Start her,
marling-spikes! Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because
he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially
in inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this
specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions with
his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief peculiarity.
He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a tone so strangely
compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a
spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer invocations without
pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing.
Besides he all the time looked so easy and indolent himself, so loungingly
managed his steering-oar, and so broadly gaped —open-mouthed at times —that
the mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast,
acted like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort
of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put
all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them. In obedience to a
sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across Stubb's bow; and
when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to each other, Stubb
hailed the mate. Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye,
sir, if ye please! Halloa! returned Starbuck, turning round not a single
inch as he spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face
set like a flint from Stubb's. What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!
Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong, boys! )
in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: A sad business,
Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind, Mr. Stubb,
all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what will. (Spring, my
men, spring!)
..
There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for.
(Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the play! This at least is duty; duty and
profit hand in hand! Aye, aye, I thought as much, soliloquized Stubb,
when the boats diverged, as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye,
and that's what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long
suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale's at the bottom of
it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be helped! All right! Give way, men! It
ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way! Now the advent of these outlandish
strangers at such a critical instant as the lowering of the boats from the
deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in
some of the ship's company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some time
previous got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in
some small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge
of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb's confident way of
accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from
superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for all
manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the matter from
the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen
creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the
enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah. Meantime, Ahab, out of
hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still
ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew
was pulling him. those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and
whale-bone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of
strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a
horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was
seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and
displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale,
clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while
at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one
..
arm, like a fencer's, thrown half backward into the air, as if to
counterbalance any tendency to trip: Ahab was seen steadily managing his
steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him.
All at once the out-stretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained
fixed, while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and
crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the rear
paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the
blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, though
from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it. Every man look out along his
oars! cried Starbuck. Thou, Queequeg, stand up! Nimbly springing up on
the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with
intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been
descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also
triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen
coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a
craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea. Not very far
distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still; its commander
recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of post
rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern
platform. it is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its top is not
more spacious than the palm of a man's hand, and standing upon such a base
as that, Flask seemed perched at the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to
all but her trucks. But little King-Post was small and short, and at the
same time little King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that
this loggerhead stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post. I
can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that.
Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way,
swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders
for a pedestal.
..
Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount? That I will, and thank ye
very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty feet taller. Whereupon
planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat, the gigantic
negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to Flask's foot, and then
putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed head and bidding him spring as he
himself should toss, with one dexterous fling landed the little man high and
dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one
lifted arm furnishing him with a breast-band to lean against and steady
himself by. At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what
wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect
posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse
and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon
the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of little
Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining
himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the
noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On
his broad back, flaxen-haired flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked
nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious
little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added
heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen
Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did
not alter her tides and her seasons for that. Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate,
betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one of
their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that
were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to
solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his
hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and
rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his
match across the rough sand-paper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer,
whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly
dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat,
..
crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, Down, down all, and give way! —there
they are! To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have
been visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white
water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and suffusingly
blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling billows.
The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it were, like the air over
intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling,
and partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming.
Seen in advance of all the other indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted,
seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders. All four
boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water and air.
But it bade far to outstrip them; it flew on and on, as a mass of
interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the hills. Pull, pull,
my good boys, said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but intensest
concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance from his eyes
darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two visible needles in two
unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much to his crew, though, nor
did his crew say anything to him. Only the silence of the boat was at
intervals startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with
command, now soft with entreaty. How different the loud little King-Post.
Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts!
Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I'll
sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and
children, boys. Lay me on —lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark,
staring mad: See! see that white water! And so shouting, he pulled his hat
from his head, and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it
far off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's
stern like a crazed colt from the prairie. Look at that chap now,
philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his unlighted short pipe,
mechanically retained between his teeth, at a short distance, followed after
— He's got fits, that
..
Flask has. Fits? yes, give him fits —that's the very word — pitch fits
into 'em. Merrily, merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;
—merry's the word. Pull, babes —pull, sucklings — pull, all. But what the
devil are you hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only
pull, and keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite
your knives in two — that's all. Take it easy —why don't ye take it easy, I
say, and burst all your livers and lungs! But what it was that inscrutable
Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his —these were words best omitted
here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the
infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with
tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after
his prey. Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions
of Flask to that whale, as he called the fictitious monster which he
declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its tail —these
allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause
some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder. But
this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must put out their eyes, and ram
a skewer through their necks; usage pronouncing that they must have no organs
but ears, and no limbs but arms, in these critical moments. It was a sight
full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the omnipotent sea; the
surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like
gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the
boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper
waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound
dip into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to
gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its
other side; —all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and
the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory
Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen
after her screaming brood; —all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit,
marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle;
not the dead man's ghost encountering
..
the first unknown phantom in the other world; —neither of these can feel
stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time
finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm
whale. The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and
more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows flung
upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to
right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats were
pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales running dead to
leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed
along; the boat going with such madness through the water, that the lee oars
could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the
row-locks. Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist;
neither ship nor boat to be seen. Give way, men, whispered Starbuck, drawing
still further aft the sheet of his sail; there is time to kill a fish yet
before the squall comes. There's white water again! —close to! Spring!
Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that the
other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when with a
lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: Stand up! and Queequeg,
harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet. Though not one of the oarsmen was then
facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes
on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew
that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing
sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was
still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like
the erected crests of enraged serpents. That's his hump. There, there,
give it to him! whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the
boat; it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion
came an invisible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on
a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a
..
gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an
earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were
tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall,
whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by
the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed.
Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the
gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea,
the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes
the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the
ocean. The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers
together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a
white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal
in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to
the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in
that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the
shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade
all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers,
performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the
water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the
lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg
as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up
that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then,
he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope
in the midst of despair. Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold,
despairing of ship or boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The
mist still spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom
of the boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his
ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by
the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly
parted by
..
a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at
last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance of not
much more than its length. Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as
for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at
the base of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was
seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were
dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on
board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from
their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us up,
but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our
perishing, —an oar or a lance pole.
..






.. < chapter xlix 15 THE HYENA >
There are certain queer times and occasions
in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe
for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns,
and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts
down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things
visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent
digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties
and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all
these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly
punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That
odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time
of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so
that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now
seems but a part of the general
..
joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy
sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole
voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object. Queequeg, said
I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I was still
shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water; Queequeg, my fine
friend, does this sort of thing often happen? Without much emotion, though
soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand that such things did
often happen. Mr. Stubb, said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up
in his oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; Mr. Stubb,
I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief
mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then,
that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the
height of a whaleman's discretion? Certain. I've lowered for whales from a
leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn. Mr. Flask, said I, turning to
little King-Post, who was standing close by; you are experienced in these
things, and I am not. Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in
this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself
back-foremost into death's jaws? Can't you twist that smaller? said Flask.
Yes, that's the law. I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a
whale face foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint,
mind that! here then, from three impartial witnesses, i had a deliberate
statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and
capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters
of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the
superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life
into the hands of him who steered the boat —oftentimes a fellow who at that
very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft
with his own frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster to
our own particular boat was chiefly to be
..
imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall,
and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great
heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly
prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a devil's chase I was
implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I say, I
thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will.
Queequeg, said I, come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and
legatee. It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at
their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more
fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I
had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present
occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart.
Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that
Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many
months or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself; my death and burial
were locked up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly,
like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug
family vault. now then, thought i, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of
my frock, here goes a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the
devil fetch the hindmost.
..






.. < chapter L 27 AHAB'S BOAT AND CREW. FEDALLAH >
Who would have thought
it, Flask! cried Stubb; if I had but one leg you would not catch me in a
boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe. Oh! he's a
wonderful old man! I don't think it so strange, after all, on that
account, said
..
Flask. If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing.
That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left,
you know. I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.
Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering the
paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right for
a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase.
So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that
invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight.
But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with
two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that
the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties;
that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these
circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the
hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly
thought not. Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think
little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes
of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his
orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to
him as a regular headsman in the hunt —above all for Captain Ahab to be
supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that
such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod.
Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way
hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken private measures
of his own touching all that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery, the
sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little
while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting
the whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then
found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands
for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicitously
cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the
..
line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was
observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of
sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the
pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in
exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called,
the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee against in
darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how often he stood up
in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in
the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel gouged out a little here and
straightened it a little there; all these things, I say, had awakened much
interest and curiosity at the time. But almost everybody supposed that this
particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the
ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his intention to
hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means
involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that
boat. now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned
away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such
unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks
and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the
ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing
about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whale-boats, canoes,
blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up
the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would
not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle. But be all this as
it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found their
place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them,
yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last.
Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort of unaccountable
tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay,
so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but
it might have been even authority over him; all this none knew. But one
cannot sustain
..
an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as civilized,
domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but
dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic
communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent —those
insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern
days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal
generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection,
and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as
real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to
what end; when though, according to genesis, the angels indeed consorted
with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins,
indulged in mundane amours.
..






.. < chapter li 16 THE SPIRIT-SPOUT >
Days, weeks passed, and under easy
sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising-grounds;
that off the Azores; off the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called),
being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an
unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena. It was while gliding
through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all
the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing
seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude: on such a
silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at
the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and
glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For
of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head,
and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day.
And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman
..
in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what
emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such
unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when,
after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights
without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his unearthly
voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining
mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the
rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. There she blows! Had the trump of
judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no
terror; rather pleasure. for though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so
impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul
on board instinctively desired a lowering. Walking the deck with quick,
side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t'gallant sails and royals to be set,
and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must take the helm.
Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the
wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling
the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like
air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic
influences were struggling in her —one to mount direct to heaven, the other
to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab's face
that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were
warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every
stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old
man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye,
like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen
that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time. This
midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days after, lo!
at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was descried by
all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it
had never been. And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it
but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight,
..
or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or
two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be
advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for
ever alluring us on. Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and
in accordance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many
things invested the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore
that whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however
far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one
self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a
sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were
treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn
round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous
potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all
its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days
and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that
all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of
life before our urn-like prow. But, at last, when turning to the eastward,
the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long,
troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to
the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of
silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate
vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before
us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every
morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of
our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they
deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to
desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And
heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast
tides were a conscience; and the great
..
mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had
bred. Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called
of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended
us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings
transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on
everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any
horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of
feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet
would at times be descried. During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab,
though assuming for the time the almost continual command of the drenched and
dangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above
and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await
the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists.
So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand
firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to
windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal
his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward
part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to guard
against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a sort of
bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or
no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in
wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the
demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of
the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
wordless ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed
demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could
Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin
to mark how the
..
barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his
floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which
he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat
and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides
and currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his
tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back
so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that
swung from a beam in the ceiling. Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a
shudder, sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
..






.. < chapter lii 13 THE ALBATROSS >
South-eastward from the Cape, off the
distant Crozetts, a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed
ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty
perch at the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to
a tyro in the far ocean fisheries —a whaler at sea, and long absent from
home. As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance
was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars and her
rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost.
Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded
look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins of
beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years
of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and
swung over a fathomless sea;
..
and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in
the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the
mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking
fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below. Ship
ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale? But as the strange captain, leaning over
the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it
somehow fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he
in vain strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still
increasing the distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of
the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the
first mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a
moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to
board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking
advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing
by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound
home, he loudly hailed — Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the
world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and
this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to——-
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in
accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for
some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what
seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the
stranger's flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must
often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the
veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings. Swim away from me, do ye?
murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the
words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane
old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far
had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish
..
her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice, — Up helm! Keep her off
round the world! Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire
proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only
through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those
that we left behind secure, were all the time before us. Were this world an
endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances,
and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of
King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those
far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that,
some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over
this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us
whelmed.
..
The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the
course of the ship.
..






.. < chapter liii 17 THE GAM >
The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on
board of the whaler we had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened
storms. But even had this not been the case, he would not after all,
perhaps, have boarded her —judging by his subsequent conduct on similar
occasions —if so it had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained
a negative answer to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out,
he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain,
except he could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought.
But all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not something said
here of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each other in
foreign seas, and especially on a common cruising-ground. If two strangers
crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally desolate Salisbury
Plain in England; if
..
casually encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for
the life of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a
moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and
resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine
Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each
other at the ends of the earth —off lone Fanning's Island, or the far away
King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances
these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer,
more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a
matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose
captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each
other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk
about. For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date
a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files.
And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the
latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be
destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this
will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the
cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from home.
for one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and
now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people of the
ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have
an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of
sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a
common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. Nor would
difference of country make any very essential difference; that is, so long as
both parties speak one language, as is the case with Americans and English.
Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings
do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a
sort of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather
..
reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody
but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of
metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean
Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant.
But where this superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it
would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill
more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a
harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer
does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few
foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the
sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable —and they are so. Whereas,
some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will
oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually
cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway;
and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other's
rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go
through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of
ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and
brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are
in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible.
And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's cross-bones, the
first hail is — How many skulls? —the same way that whalers hail— How many
barrels? And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart,
for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch
of each other's villanous likenesses. But look at the godly, honest,
unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the
whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She
has a Gam, a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never
heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only
grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about spouters and blubber-boilers,
and such like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and
also all
..
Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful
feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer.
Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that
profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in
uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a
man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his
superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high
lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to
stand on. but what is a gam? you might wear out your index-finger running
up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr.
Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not hold it.
Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in
constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly it
needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that
view, let me learnedly define it. Gam. Noun —A social meeting of two (or more)
Whale-ships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails,
they exchange visits by boats' crews: the two captains remaining, for the
time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other. There is
another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here. All
professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so has the whale
fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the captain is rowed
anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable,
sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself with a pretty little
milliner's tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat
has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all.
High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors
like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the
whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a
complete boat's crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or
harpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the
occasion, and the captain, having no
..
place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree.
And often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole
visible world resting on him from the sides of the two ships, this standing
captain is all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by
maintaining his legs. nor is this any very easy matter; for in his rear is
the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of
his back, the after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is
thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself
sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch
of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of foundation is
nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two
poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would never do in plain
sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this
straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by
catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire,
buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers'
pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them
there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well
authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly
critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say —to seize hold of the nearest
oarsman's hair, and hold on there like grim death.
..






.. < chapter liv 26 THE TOWN-HO'S STORY >

( As told at the Golden Inn.)

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much
like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more
travellers than in any other part. It was not very long after speaking the
Goney that another
..
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost
wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news
of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly
heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely
to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of
those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men.

This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming
what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never
reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the
story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private
property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it
seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secresy, but
the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it
in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in
the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange
delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept
the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's
main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story
as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now
proceed to put on lasting record. For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the
style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish

friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the
Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian,
were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they
occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time. Some two years
prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you,
gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm
..
Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days'
sail westward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to
the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to
daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than
common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the
captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited
him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and
the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they
could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in
rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners
working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more
days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly
increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all
sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to have
his hull hove out and repaired. Though no small passage was before her, yet,
if the commonest chance favored, he did not at all fear that his ship would
founder by the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being
periodically relieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily
keep the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth,
well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes,

the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port
without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal
overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked
vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo. "Lakeman!
—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?" said Don
Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass. On the eastern shore of our
Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your courtesy—may be, you shall soon hear further
of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships,
well-nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to
far manilla; this lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet
been nurtured by all those agrarian
..
freebooting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their
interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours —Erie, and
Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan, —possess an ocean-like
expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its
rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of
romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored
by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long
maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East,
dotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries,
and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet
thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to
wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams;

for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where
the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies;
those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures
whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved
capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float
alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the
steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts
as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are,
for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a
midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an
inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much
of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may
have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea;

though in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your
contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social
quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn
handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted
traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed,
might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of
human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus
..
treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all
events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and
Steelkilt —but, gentlemen, you shall hear. It was not more than a day or two
at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the
Town-Ho's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or
more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized
ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping
their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the
officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the
probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it,
on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary
and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether
unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even
for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably
accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is
only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters,
some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little
anxious. Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was
found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by
several of her company; especially by radney the mate. He commanded the
upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to
the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as
little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own
person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can
conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude
about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on
account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working that
evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily
going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by
the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen —that
bubbling from
..
the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the
lee scupper-holes. Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this
conventional world of ours —watery or otherwise; that when a person placed
in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his
superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he
conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance
he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little
heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all
events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a
flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's
snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen,
which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's
father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn,
as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it. Espying the
mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the Lakeman
affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings.
"Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of
ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye
what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part
of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began
the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and
file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em are now hard at work
cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If old
Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em. They're
playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple old
soul, — Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is
invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the
model of his nose." "Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?" roared

Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. "Thunder away at it!"

..
"Aye, aye, sir," said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. "Lively, boys, lively,
now!" And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed
their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was
heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's utmost energies. Quitting
the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward all
panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes
bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening
fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in
that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened.
Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom
and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive
matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large. Now, gentlemen,
sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times
but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to
be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such,
gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of
neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first
washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the
prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was
the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking
turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman of them all,
Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs;
consequently he should have been freed from any trivial business not connected

with truly nautical duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention
all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood
between the two men. But there was more than this: the order about the
shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though
Radney had spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will
understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully
comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for a
moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's malignant eye and
..
perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow-match
silently burning along towards them; as he instinctively saw all this, that
strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in
any already ireful being —a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by
really valiant men even when aggrieved —this nameless phantom feeling,
gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt. Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a
little broken by the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him
saying that sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it.
and then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as
the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little
or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most
domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command;
meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's
club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by. Heated and irritated
as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless
feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing
in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him,
without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the
incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously
commanding him to do his bidding. Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating
round the windlass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer,
deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his
forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable
intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man;

but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the
windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that
he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused
on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer: "Mr. Radney, I will not obey
you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself." But the predestinated mate
coming still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the
..
heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of
insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch;
stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance,
steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back,

told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt)
would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter
by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the
lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting
blood like a whale. Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of
the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing
their mast-heads. They were both Canallers. "Canallers!" cried Don Pedro,
"We have seen many whale-ships in our harbors, but never heard of your
Canallers. Pardon: who and what are they?" "Canallers, Don, are the boatmen
belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it." "Nay, Senor;

hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but
little of your vigorous North." "Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your
chicha's very fine; and ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our
Canallers are; for such information may throw side-light upon my story."

For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of
the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving
villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated
fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through
the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers;
through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide
contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of
snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one
continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your
true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them,
next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee
of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your
metropolitan freebooters
..
that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen,
most abound in holiest vicinities. "Is that a friar passing?" said Don
Pedro, looking downwards into the crowded plazza, with humorous concern.
"Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima,"
laughed Don Sebastian. "Proceed, Senor." "A moment! Pardon!" cried another
of the company. "In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to
you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not
substituting present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh!
do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast
— Corrupt as Lima. It but bears out your saying, too; churches more
plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open—and Corrupt as Lima.
So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist,
St. Mark! —St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now,

you pour out again." Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the
Canaller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely
wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed,
flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked
Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all
this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly
sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A
terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his
swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on
his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I
thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the
prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as
stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy
one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is
emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of
its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except
Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at
all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our
..
rural boys and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the
Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a
Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric
seas. "I see! I see! " impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his
chicha upon his silvery ruffles. "No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I
had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and
holy as the hills. —But the story." I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman
shook the back-stay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the
three junior mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck.

But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into
the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle.
Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil
ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and