down with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious
scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran
close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart
of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But
Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they succeeded in
gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about three or four large
casks in a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves
behind the barricade. "come out of that, ye pirates!" roared the captain,
now menacing them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the
steward. "Come out of that, ye cut-throats!" Steelkilt leaped on the
barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the worst the pistols could
do; but gave the captain to understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's)
death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands.
Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little
desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their
duty. "Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?" demanded their
ringleader.
..
"Turn to! turn to! —I make no promise; —to your duty! Do you want to sink
the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!" and he once more
raised a pistol. "Sink the ship?" cried Steelkilt. "Aye, let her sink. Not
a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us.
What say ye, men?" turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their
response. The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping
his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these: —"It's not
our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was
boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick
the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw;
ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those
handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word;
don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently,

and we're your men; but we won't be flogged." "Turn to! I make no
promises, turn to, I say!" "Look ye, now," cried the Lakeman, flinging out
his arm towards him. "there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who
have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can
claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row;
it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we
won't be flogged." "Turn to!" roared the Captain. Steelkilt glanced round
him a moment, and then said: —"I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather
than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand
against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about not flogging
us, we won't do a hand's turn." "Down into the forecastle then, down with
ye, I'll keep ye there till ye're sick of it. Down ye go." "Shall we?"
cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but at
length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark
den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave. As the Lakeman's bare
head was just level with the planks,
..
the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the
slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly
called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock, belonging to the
companion-way. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered
something down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them —ten in
number —leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained
neutral. All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward
and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which
last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through
the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who
still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and
clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded through the
ship. at sunrise the captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,
summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was
then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed
after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain
returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days this was
repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a
scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly
four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to.
The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some

fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at
discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the
rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling
and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of
the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought
to restrain them. Only three were left. "Better turn to, now?" said the
Captain with a heartless jeer. "Shut us up again, will ye!" cried Steelkilt.
"Oh! certainly," said the Captain and the key clicked. It was at this
point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection
..
of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had
last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as
the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two
Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their
hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen
mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end)

run a muck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of
desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said,
whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in
that den. but the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two;

they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing, for
anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted
upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the rush should come.

But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving that priority for
himself; particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the
other, in the matter; and both of them could not be first, for the ladder
would but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of
these miscreants must come out. Upon hearing the frantic project of their
leader, each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem,
upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out,
in order to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to
surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct
might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead
them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany,
mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell
into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences;
and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked
out for the Captain at midnight. Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in
the dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for

the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand
and foot, the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his
perfidious allies, who at once claimed the
..
honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were
collared, and dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side,
were seized up into the mizen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there
they hung till morning. "Damn ye," cried the Captain, pacing to and fro
before them, "the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!" At sunrise he
summoned all hands; and separating those who had rebelled from those who had
taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that he had a good mind to
flog them all round —thought, upon the whole, he would do so —he ought to
—justice demanded it; but for the present, considering their timely
surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly
administered in the vernacular. "But as for you, ye carrion rogues," turning
to the three men in the rigging —"for you, I mean to mince ye up for the
try-pots;" and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs
of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their
heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn. "My wrist is
sprained with ye!" he cried, at last; "but there is still rope enough left
for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his mouth,

and let us hear what he can say for himself." For a moment the exhausted
mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully
twisting round his head, said in a sort of hiss, "What I say is this —and
mind it well—- if you flog me, I murder you!" "Say ye so? then see how ye
frighten me" —and the Captain drew off with the rope to strike. "Best not,"
hissed the Lakeman. "But I must," —and the rope was once more drawn back for
the stroke. Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the
Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck
rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said,"I
won't do it —let him go—cut him down: d'ye hear?" But as the junior mates
were hurrying to execute the order,
..
a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested them —Radney the chief mate. Ever
since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the
tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole
scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; but
mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the captain
dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.
"You are a coward!" hissed the Lakeman. "So I am, but take that." The mate
was in the very act of striking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm.
He paused: and then pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's
threat, whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down,
all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron
pumps clanged as before. Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired
below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors
running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the
crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their
own instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no
sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that
mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the
strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship
reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end
to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing —namely, not to sing out for
whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite
of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and
her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the
day his craft first struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite
as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to
gag in death the vital jaw of the whale. But though the Lakeman had induced
the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his
own counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and
private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles
..
of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the
infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after the
scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain,

upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two
other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the
boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this
attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable
vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea.
Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm
would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the third day from that in
which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in
braiding something very carefully in his watches below. "What are you making
there?" said a shipmate. "What do you think? what does it look like?"
"Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me." "Yes,
rather oddish," said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before him;
"but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough twine, —have you
any?" But there was none in the forecastle. "Then I must get some from old
Rad;" and he rose to go aft. "You don't mean to go a begging to him!" said
a sailor. "Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help
himself in the end, shipmate?" and going to the mate, he looked at him
quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him
—neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball,
closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket,
as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours
after, his trick at the silent helm —nigh to the man who was apt to doze over
the grave always ready dug to the seaman's hand —that fatal hour was then to
come; and in
..
the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and
stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in. But, gentlemen, a fool
saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete
revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality,
Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the
damning thing he would have done. It was just between daybreak and sunrise of
the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that
a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once
shouted out, "There she rolls! there she rolls!" Jesu, what a whale! It
was Moby Dick. "Moby Dick!" cried Don Sebastian; "St. Dominic! Sir sailor,
but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?" "A very white,
and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don; —but that would be too long
a story." "How? how!" cried all the young Spaniards, crowding. "Nay, Dons,
Dons —nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more into the air,
Sirs." "The chicha! the chicha!" cried Don Pedro; "our vigorous friend
looks faint; —fill up his empty glass!" No need, gentlemen; one moment, and
I proceed. —Now, gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within
fifty yards of the ship —forgetful of the compact among the crew —in the
excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and
involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time
past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now
a phrensy. "The White Whale —the White Whale!" was the cry from captain,
mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumors, were all anxious
to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance,

and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by
a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the
blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of
these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.
The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was
his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood
..
up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word
of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the
start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he
strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and,
spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it
seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's
topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a
blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat
struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing
mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat
righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over
into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the
spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking
to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a
sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up
with him, plunged headlong again, and went down. Meantime, at the first tap
of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop
astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts.
But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his
knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some
distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woollen
shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase
again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared. In good
time, the Town-Ho reached her port —a savage, solitary place —where no
civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or
six of the foremast-men deliberately deserted among the palms; eventually, as
it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting
sail for some other harbor. The ship's company being reduced to but a
handful, the captain called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious

business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting
vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small
..
band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the
hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea,
they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with
them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he
anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two
cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the
Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and
setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for
Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to
have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the
savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to
heave to, or he would run him under water. the captain presented a pistol.
With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him
to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he
would bury him in bubbles and foam. "What do you want of me? cried the
captain. "Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?" demanded
Steelkilt; "no lies." "I am bound to Tahiti for more men." "Very good. Let
me board you a moment —I come in peace." With that he leaped from the canoe,
swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the
captain. "Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after
me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder
island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me!"
"A pretty scholar," laughed the Lakeman."Adios, Senor!" and leaping into the
sea, he swam back to his comrades. Watching the boat till it was fairly
beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail
again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination.
There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and
were providentially in want of precisely that number
..
of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and so for ever got the start
of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal
retribution. Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat
arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native
schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there,
again resumed his cruisings. Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know;
but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea
which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale
that destroyed him. "Are you through?" said Don Sebastian, quietly. "I am,
Don." "Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,

this story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did you
get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press."
"Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebastian's
suit," cried the company, with exceeding interest. "Is there a copy of the
Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?" "Nay," said Don Sebastian;
"but I know a worthy priest near by, who will quickly procure one for me. I
go for it; but are you well advised? this may grow too serious." "Will you
be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?" "Though there are no
Auto-da-Fes in Lima now," said one of the company to another: "I fear our
sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of
the moonlight. I see no need for this." "Excuse me for running after you,
Don Sebastian; but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring
the largest sized Evangelists you can." "This is the priest, he brings you
the Evangelists," said Don Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and
solemn figure. "Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into
the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it."
..
"So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye, gentlemen, is
in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true; it happened on
this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with
Steelkilt since the death of Radney."
..
The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still
used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
..




.. < chapter lv 7 OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES >
I shall ere long
paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like the true form
of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own
absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be
fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to
advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to
set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong. It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever
since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of
temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, cups, and
coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a
helmeted head like St. George's; ever since then has something of the same
sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale,
but in many scientific presentations of him. Now, by all odds, the most
ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found
in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain
that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the
trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages
before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some
sort our noble profession
..
of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred
to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of
Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But
though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail
of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more
like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true
whale's majestic flukes. But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great
Christian painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the
antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda
from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a
strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in
his own Perseus Descending, make out one whit better. The huge corpulence
of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one
inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked
mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors'
Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of the old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depicted
in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said
of these? As for the book-binder's whale winding like a vine-stalk round the
stock of a descending anchor —as stamped and gilded on the backs and
title-pages of many books both old and new —that is a very picturesque but
purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on
antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call
this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old Italian
publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning;
and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period, dolphins
were popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan. In the vignettes
and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at times meet with
very curious touches at the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau,
hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his
..
unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original edition of the
Advancement of Learning you will find some curious whales. But quitting all
these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures of leviathan
purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who know. In old
Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from
a Dutch book of voyages, A. D.
, entitled A Whaling Voyage to
Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland,
master. In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are
represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over their living
backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the
whale with perpendicular flukes. Then again, there is an imposing quarto,
written by one Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled
A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending
the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries. In this book is an outline purporting to be
a Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed
on the coast of Mexico, August,
, and hoisted on deck. I doubt not the
captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines. To
mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied,
according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make
the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant
captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye! Nor are the
most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the benefit of the
young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that
popular work Goldsmith's Animated Nature. In the abridged London edition of
, there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale. I do not wish
to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow;
and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in
this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any
intelligent public of schoolboys. Then, again, in
, Bernard Germain,
Count de Lacepede,
..
a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these are
not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale
(that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man as
touching that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature. But
the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was reserved for
the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron. In
, he
published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a
picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer,
you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word,
Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course,
he never had the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but
whence he derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his
scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his
authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of
lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers
inform us. As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over
the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting on
three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their
deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint. but these manifold
mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very surprising after all.
Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the
stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship,
with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all
its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood for their
full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for
his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is
only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of
him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that
element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist
..
him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and
undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of
contour between a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan;
yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's
deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him,
that his precise expression the devil himself could not catch. But it may be
fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints
may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more
curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea
of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for
candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea
of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading
personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from
any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the
mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and
padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes
it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of
this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in
the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the
human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers,
the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently
lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial
covering. However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us, said
humorous Stubb one day, he can never be truly said to handle us without
mittens. For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world
which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark
much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable
degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what
the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a
tolerable idea of his living contour, is by
..
going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being
eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not
be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
..






.. < chapter lvi 6 OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES, AND THE TRUE >

PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES In connexion with the monstrous pictures of
whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous
stories of them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and
modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I
pass that matter by. i know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm
Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the
previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is far
better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale's
drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of
three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His
frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to
excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and
life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross
Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That
is not his fault though. Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in
Scoresby; but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable
impression. He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad
deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done,
that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen
by his living hunters. But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though
in some details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling
..
scenes to be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent
attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble Sperm
Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath the boat from
the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air upon his back the
terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of the boat is partially
unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monster's spine; and standing
in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time, you behold an
oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in
the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action of the whole thing is
wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened
sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads
of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions
of affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon
the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of this
whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw so
good a one. In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing
alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his
black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian
cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so
abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave
supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small
crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale
sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped
leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds
in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff
caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is
all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the
glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the
powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress,
with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his
spout-hole.
..
Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he was
either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored
by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action.
Go and gaze upon all the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a
gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal
hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the
Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a
charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery,
are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery. The natural aptitude of the French for
seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what
paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one
tenth of England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of
that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the
only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the
whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen
seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such
as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of
effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a
pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us
a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical
engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the
microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a
shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I
mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran),
but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have
procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice
of the Peace. In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are
two other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself h. durand. one of them, though not precisely
..
adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other
accounts. It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French
whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the
loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the
background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is very
fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen
under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is
quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the
very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel
(in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a
boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving
chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for
use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its hole; while from a
sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of the water,
like a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling
whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to
windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems
to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.
..






.. < chapter lvii 23 OF WHALES IN PAINT; IN TEETH; IN WOOD; IN >

SHEET-IRON; IN STONE; IN MOUNTAINS; IN STARS On Tower-hill, as you go down
to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled beggar (or kedger, as the
sailors say) holding a painted board before him, representing the tragic
scene in which he lost his leg. There are three whales and three boats; and
one of the boats (presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original
integrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time
these ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and
exhibited
..
that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification has now
come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping,
at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in
the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a
stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands
ruefully contemplating his own amputation. Throughout the Pacific, and also
in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively
sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on
Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and
other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little
ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in
their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of
dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering
business. But, in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with
that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything
you please, in the way of a mariner's fancy. Long exile from Christendom and
civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed
him, i. e. what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a
savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage; owning no allegiance but to the
King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him. Now,
one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic hours, is
his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-club or
spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as
great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit
of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden
net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady
application. As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage.
With the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth,
of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not
quite as workmanlike, but as close
..
packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield;
and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine
old Dutch savage, Albert Durer. Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out
of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met
with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much
accuracy. At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales
hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is
sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are
seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned
churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks; but
they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes so
labelled with Hands off! you cannot examine them closely enough to decide
upon their merit. In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of
high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the
Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in
a surf of green surges. Then, again, in mountainous countries where the
traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there
from some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles
of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough
whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return
to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting
latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else so chance-like are
such observations of the hills, that your precise, previous stand-point would
require a laborious re-discovery; like the Solomon islands, which still
remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera
chronicled them. Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to
trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them;
as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked
in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round
and round
..
the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to
me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis,
and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of
Hydrus and the Flying Fish. With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and
fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the
topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless
tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!
..






.. < chapter lviii 11 BRIT >
Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we
fell in with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which
the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us,
so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden
wheat. On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure
from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly
swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous
Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated from the water
that escaped at the lip. As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and
seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads;
even so these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and
leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.
..
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they paused
and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more like
lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the great hunting
countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass on the
plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them for
bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for the
first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And even when
recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to
believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all
parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse. Indeed, in
other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with the same
feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old naturalists have
maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in the sea; and
though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very well be; yet
coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish
that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The
accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative
analogy to him. But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants
of the seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so
that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one
superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal
disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds
of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment's
consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and
skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may
augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will
insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can
make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these
..
very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea
which aboriginally belongs to it. The first boat we read of, floated on an
ocean, that with Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole world without
leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean
destroyed the wrecked ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood
is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers. Wherein
differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a miracle upon
the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews, when under the
feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and swallowed them up for
ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in precisely the same manner the
live sea swallows up ships and crews. But not only is the sea such a foe to
man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring;
worse than the Persian host who murdered his own guests; sparing not the
creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in
the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales
against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks
of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting
like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean
overruns the globe. Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded
creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously
hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish
brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty
embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the
universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other,
carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then
turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the
sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in
yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the
soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but
encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
..
God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!
..
That part of the sea known among whalemen as the Brazil Banks does not bear
that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there being shallows
and soundings there, but because of this remarkable meadow-like appearance,
caused by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those latitudes,
where the Right Whale is often chased.
..






.. < chapter lix 4 SQUID >
Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the
Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a
gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three
tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms
on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely,
alluring jet would be seen. But one transparent blue morning, when a
stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with
any stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a
golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secresy; when the slippered
waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the
visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.
In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and
higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our
prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a
moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and silently
gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo.
Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once more, with a
stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled out
— There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead! The White Whale,
the White Whale! Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in
swarming-time the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun,
Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness
to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast
..
his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched
motionless arm of Daggoo. Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and
solitary jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to
connect the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the
particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness
betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly
perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave orders
for lowering. The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and
all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with
oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot where
it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all
thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the
secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in
length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water,
innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like
a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within
reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of
either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an
unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life. As with a low sucking
sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated
waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed — Almost rather had I
seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!
What was it, Sir? said Flask. The great live squid, which they say, few
whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it. But
Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel; the rest
as silently following. Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general
have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse
of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with
portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them
declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few of
them have any but
..
the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and form; notwithstanding,
they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale his only food. For though other
species of whales find their food above water, and may be seen by man in the
act of feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones
below the surface; and only by inference is it that any one can tell of what,
precisely, that food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will
disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some of them
thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They fancy that
the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed
of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied
with teeth in order to attack and tear it. There seems some ground to imagine
that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into
Squid. The manner in which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising
and sinking, with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two
correspond. But much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible
bulk he assigns it. By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the
mysterious creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of
cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to
belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.
..






.. < chapter lx 26 THE LINE >
With reference to the whaling scene shortly to
be described, as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes
elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible
whale-line. The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp,
slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the
..
case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp
more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more
convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary
quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it
must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general
by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may
give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the Manilla rope has in the
American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for
whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far
more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all
things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is
a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired
Circassian to behold. The whale line is only two thirds of an inch in
thickness. At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is.
By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one
hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly
equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures
something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is
spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though,
but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded sheaves,
or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the heart,
or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle
or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm,
leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in
its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this
business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a
block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all
possible wrinkles and twists. In the English boats two tubs are used instead
of one; the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is
some advantage in this; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more
readily into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American
tub, nearly three feet in diameter and
..
of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks
are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like
critical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but
not very much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped
on the american line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a
prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales. Both ends of the line
are exposed; the lower end terminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up
from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge
completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is
necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to
it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale
should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally
attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted
like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the
first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This
arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower end
of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run
the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes
does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be
dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no
town-crier would ever find her again. Before lowering the boat for the chase,
the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the
logger-head there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat,
resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they
alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in
the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size
of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs
in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again;
and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in
the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft,
and is then
..
attached to the short-warp —the rope which is immediately connected with the
harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry
mystifications too tedious to detail. Thus the whale-line folds the whole
boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost
every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so
that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with
the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of
mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen
intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at
any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible
contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus
circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to
quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit —strange thing! what cannot
habit accomplish? —Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter
repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the
half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses;
and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men
composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every
neck, as you may say. Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to
account for those repeated whaling disasters —some few of which are casually
chronicled —of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line,
and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat,
is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine
in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.
It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils,
because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and
the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain
self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you
escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun
himself could never pierce you out. Again: as the profound calm which only
apparently precedes
..
and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and
contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder,
and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it
silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play —
this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of
this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in
whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only
when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the
silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher,
though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of
terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a
harpoon, by your side.
..






.. < chapter lxi 17 STUBB KILLS A WHALE >
If to Starbuck the apparition of
the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different
object. When you see him 'quid, said the savage, honing his harpoon in the
bow of his hoisted boat, then you quick see him 'parm whale. The next day
was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them,
the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a
vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were
voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords
fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious
denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the
in-shore ground off Peru. It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and
with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and
..
fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could
withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul
went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum
will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn. Ere
forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the
main and mizen mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last all three of
us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there
was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded
their indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to
west, and the sun over all. Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my
closed eyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible,
gracious agency preserved me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo!
close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling
in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of
an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily
undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting
his vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a
warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by
some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once
started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of
the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the
accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the sparkling
brine into the air. clear away the boats! luff! cried Ahab. And obeying
his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the
spokes. The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and
ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward,
but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam,
that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders that
not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers. So seated
like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats,
..
we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the
noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the
monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then
sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up. There go flukes! was the cry,
an announcement immediately followed by Stubb's producing his match and
igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the full interval of
his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of
the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb
counted upon the honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale
had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was
therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into
play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the
assault. Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his
jeopardy, he was going head out; that part obliquely projecting from the
mad yeast which he brewed. Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry
yourselves; take plenty of time —but start her; start her like
thunder-claps, that's all, cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he
spoke. start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, tashtego.
Start her, Tash, my boy —start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool—
cucumbers is the word —easy, easy —only start her like grim death and
grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves,
boys —that's all. Start her! Woo-hoo! Wa-hee! screamed the Gay-Header in
reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the
strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading
stroke which the eager Indian gave.
..
But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. Kee-hee!
Kee-hee! yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat,
like a pacing tiger in his cage. Ka-la! Koo-loo! howled Queequeg, as if
smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars
and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the
van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke
from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the
welcome cry was heard — Stand up, Tashtego! —give it to him! The harpoon was
hurled. Stern all! The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something
went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical
line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with
it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings,
a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his
pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just
before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both
of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas
sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding
an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time
striving to wrest it out of your clutch. Wet the line! wet the line! cried
stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat,
dashed the sea-water into it. More turns were taken, so that the line began
holding its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark
all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places — stem for stern —a
staggering business truly in that rocking commotion. From the vibrating line
extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now
being more tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two
keels — one cleaving the water, the other the air —as the boat churned
..
on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the
bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion
from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft
canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man
with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the
foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost
double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and
Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale
somewhat slackened his flight. Haul in —haul in! cried Stubb to the
bowsman! and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the
boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by
his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart
after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat
alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then
ranging up for another fling. The red tide now poured from all sides of the
monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but
in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The
slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its
reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red
men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot
from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth
of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked
lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again,
by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into
the whale. Pull up —pull up! he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning
whale relaxed in his wrath. Pull up! —close to! and the boat ranged along
the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his
long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and
churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the
whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he
could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of
the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting
..
from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his flurry, the monster
horribly wallowed in his blood, over-wrapped himself in impenetrable, mad,
boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had
much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear
air of the day. And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled
out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and
contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At
last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees
of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping
down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst! He's dead,
Mr. Stubb, said Daggoo. Yes; both pipes smoked out! and withdrawing his
own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for
a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.
..
It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire
interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though apparently the
most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him. So that with ease
he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when going at his utmost
speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his
head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by
obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself
from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharp-pointed New York
pilot-boat.
..
Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated,
that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with
water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for
that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
..






.. < chapter lxii 19 THE DART >
A word concerning an incident in the last
chapter. According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat
pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary
steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar,
the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to
strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what is called a long
dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty
feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is
expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is expected
to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only by incredible
rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations; and what it is to
keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while all the other
..
muscles are strained and half started —what that is none know but those who
have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very recklessly
at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state, then, with his
back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry
— Stand up, and give it to him! He now has to drop and secure his oar,
turn round on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and
with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the
whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of
fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so
many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some
of them actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some
sperm whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to
many ship owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer
that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can
you expect to find it there when most wanted! Again, if the dart be
successful, then at the second critical instant, that is, when the whale
starts to run, the boat-header and harpooneer likewise start to running fore
and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and every one else. It is
then they change places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the little
craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat. Now, I care not who
maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and unnecessary. The
headsman should stay in the bows from first to last; he should both dart the
harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be expected of him,
except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would
sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in
various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much
the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer
that has caused them. To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the
harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and
not from out of toil.
..






.. < chapter lxiii 2 THE CROTCH >
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out
of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters. The crotch
alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It is a notched
stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is perpendicularly
inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the purpose of
furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon, whose other
naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is
instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest
as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is customary to have two
harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first and second
irons. But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming drag,
one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of
the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the instantaneous,
violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving the first iron, it