MOBY-DICK OR THE WHALE

ETYMOLOGY (SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO A GBAMMAB SCHOOL) THE pale Usher threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain ; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars ; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. ETYMOLOGY ' WHILE you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.' Hakluyt. 1 WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling ; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.' Webster's Dictionary. ' WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. W alien ; A.S. Walw-ian y to roll, to wallow.' Richardson's Dictionary. Hebrew. Greek. Latin, Anglo-Saxon. Danish. Dutch. Swedish. Icelandic. English. in, CETUS, WHCEL, HVALT, WAL, HWAL, WHALE, WHALE, BALEINE, BALLENA, PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, French. Spanish. Feegee. Erromangoan. EXTRACTS (SUPPLIED BY A SUB-SUB-LIBRARIAN) IT will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub -worm of a poor devil of a Sub -Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, pick- ing up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird's-eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own. So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commen- tator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm ; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong ; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too ; and grow convivial upon tears ; and say to them bluntly with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness Give it up, Sub-Subs ! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye forever go thankless ! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye ! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts ; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses! xii EXTRACTS ' And God created great whales.' Genesis. * Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him ; One would think the deep to be hoary.' Job. ' Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.' Jonah. ' There go the ships ; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.' Psalms. ' In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent ; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.' Isaiah. * And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.' HollancFs Plutarch's Morals. ' The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are : among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of land.' Holland's Pliny. ' Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most monstrous size. * * * This came towards us, open- mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.' Tooke's Lucian. The True History. xiii xiv MOBY-DICK ' He visited this country also with a view of catching horse - whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the king. * * * The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.' Other or Octher's verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890. 1 And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea- gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there sleeps.' Montaigne 1 s Apology for Eaimond Sebond. ' Let us fly, let us fly ! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.' Rabelais. ' This whale's liver was two cart-loads.' Stowe's Annals. 1 The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.' Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms. ' Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.' Ibid. History of Life and Death. 1 The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an in- ward bruise.' King Henry. ' Very like a whale.' Hamlet. ' Which to secure, no skill of leach's art Mote him availle, but to returne againe To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart, Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine, Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine.' The Fairie Queen. ' Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.' Sir William Davenant's Preface to Gondibert. EXTRACTS xv ' What spermaceti! is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit.' Sir T. Browne's Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V.E. ' Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. ****** Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears, And on his back a grove of pikes appears.' Waller's Battle of the Summer Islands. ' By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Common- wealth or State (in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.' Opening sentence of Hobbes's Leviathan. 'Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale.' Pilgrim's Progress. * That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.' Paradise Lost. 4 There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deep Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land ; and at his gills Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.' Ibid. ' The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them.' Fuller's Profane and Holy State. ' So close behind some promontory lie The huge Leviathans to attend their prey, And give no chace, but swallow in the fry, Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.' Dry den's Annus Mirabilis. ' While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come ; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.' Thomas Edge's Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas. xvi MOBY-DICK * In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders.' Sir T. Herberts Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll. 4 Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them.' Schouten's Sixth Circumnavigation. * We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * * Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that is a fable. * * * They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * * I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings in his belly. * * * One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.' A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll. ' Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife). Anno 1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale -bone kind came in, which, (as I was informed) besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.' Sibbald's Fife and Kinross. 4 Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.' Richard Strafford's Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668. ' Whales in the sea God's voice obey.' N. E. Primer. 1 We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one ; than we have to the northward of us.' Captain Cowley's Voyage round the Globe, A.D. 1729. EXTRACTS xvii ****** an( j ^e breath of the whale is fre- quently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.' Ulloa's South America. 1 To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust the important charge, the petticoat. Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.' Rape of the Lock. ' If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.' Goldsmith's Nat. Hist. ' If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales.' Goldsmith to Johnson. ' In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing ashore. They seemed to en- deavour to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.' Cook's Voyages. ' The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach.' Uno Von Troil's Letters on Banks' s and Solander's Voyage to Iceland in 1772. ' The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and bold- ness in the fishermen.' Thomas Jefferson's Whale Memorial to the French Minister in 1778. 1 And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it ? ' Edmund Burke's Reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale Fishery. VOL. I. b xviii MOBY-DICK ' Spain a great whale stranded on. the shores of Europe.' Edmund Burke. (Somewhere.} ' A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and pro- tecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the pro- perty of the king.' Blackstone. c Soon to the sport of death the crews repair : Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends.' Falconer's Shipwreck. ' Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, And rockets blew self driven, To hang their momentary fire Around the vault of heaven. ' So fire with water to compare, The ocean serves on high, Up-spouted by a whale in air, To express unwieldy joy.' Cowper, On the Queen's Visit to London. ' Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity.' John Hunter's Account of the Dissection of a Whale. (A small-sized one.) ' The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water- works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's heart.' Paley's Theology. ' The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.' Baron Cuvier. ' In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.' Colnett's Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery. EXTRACTS xix ' In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle, Fishes of every colour, form, and kind ; Which language cannot paint, and mariner Had never seen ; from dread Leviathan To insect millions peopling every wave : Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands, Led by mysterious instincts through that waste And trackless region, though on every side Assaulted by voracious enemies, Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw, With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.' Montgomery' '<$ World before the Flood. ' lo ! Paean ! lo ! sing, To the finny people's king. Not a mightier whale than this In the vast Atlantic is ; Not a fatter fish than he, Flounders round the Polar Sea.' CJiarles Lamb's Triumph of the Whale. ' In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed ; there pointing to the sea is a green pasture where our children's grand-children will go for bread.' Obed Macy's History of Nantucket. ' I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones.' Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. ' She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.' Ibid. ' " No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom ; " I saw his spout ; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He 's a raal oil-butt, that fellow ! " ' Cooper's Pilot. ' The papers were brought in,, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.' Eckermanris Conversations with Goethe. xx MOBY-DICK ' " My God ! Mr. Chace, what is the matter ? " I answered, " We have been stove by a whale." ! Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean. By Owen Chace of Nan- tucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, 1821. ' A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was piping free ; Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale, And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale, As it floundered in the sea.' Elizabeth Oakes Smith. ' The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted alto- gether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles. * * * t Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.' Scoresby. 1 Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over ; he rears his enormous head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at every- thing around him ; he rushes at the boats with his head ; they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and some- times utterly destroyed. * * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a com- mercial point of view, of so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient oppor- tunities of witnessing their habitudes. 5 Thomas Beale's History of the Sperm Whale. 1839. ' The Cachalot ' (Sperm Whale) ' is not only better armed than the True Whale ' (Greenland or Right Whale) ' in possess- ing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively, and in a manner at once so artful, EXTRACTS xxi bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.' Frederick Debell Bennett's Whaling Voyage round the Globe. 1840. ' October 13. " There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head. " Where away ? " demanded the captain. " Three points off the lee bow, sir." " Raise up your wheel. Steady ! " " Steady, sir." " Mast-head ahoy ! Do you see that whale now ? " " Ay, ay, sir ! A shoal of Sperm Whales ! There she blows ! There she breaches ! " " Sing out ! sing out every time ! " " Ay, ay, sir ! There she blows ! there there thar she blows bowes bo-o-o-s ! " " How far off ? " c< Two miles and a half." " Thunder and lightning ! so near ! Call all hands ! " J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 1846. 4 The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of Nantucket.' Narrative of the Globe Mutiny, by Lay and Hussey, Survivors. A.D. 1828. c Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for some time with a lance ; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat ; himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable. 5 Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett. ' Nantucket itself,' said Mr. Webster, ' is a very striking and peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine thousand persons, living here in the sea, adding largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.' Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the U.S. Senate, on the Application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828. xxii . MOBY-DICK ' The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.' The Whale and his Captors, or the Whale- man's Adventures and the Whale's Bio- graphy, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever. ' " If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, " I will send you to hell." ' Life of Samuel Comstock (the Mutineer), by his Brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the Whale-ship Globe Narrative. ' The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they failed of their main object, laid open the haunts of the whale.' McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary. 4 These things are reciprocal ; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward again ; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North -West Passage.' From ' Something ' unpublished. 4 It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean with- out being struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a totally different air from those engaged in a regular voyage.' Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex. 1 Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales.' Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean. ' It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled among the crew.' Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-ship Hobomack. EXTRACTS xxiii ' It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels (American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they departed.' Cruise in a Whale Boat. 1 Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.' Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman. ' The Whale is harpooned to be sure ; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.' A Chapter on WJialing in Ribs and Trucks. ' On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone's throw of the shore ' (Tierra del Fuego), ' over which the beech tree extended its branches.' Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist. ' " Stern all ! " exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat, threatening it with instant destruction ; " Stern all, for your lives ! " Wharton the Whale Killer. ' So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale ! ' Nantucket Song. ' Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale, In his ocean home will be A giant in might, where might is right, And King of the boundless sea.' Whale Song. MOBY-DICK CHAPTER I LOOMINGS CALL me Ishmael. Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth ; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul ; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bring- ing up the rear of every funeral I meet ; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword ; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings toward the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down -town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and VOL. I. A 2 MOBY-DICK cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water -gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath after- noon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see ? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles ; some seated upon the pier-heads ; some looking over Vhe bulwarks of ships from China ; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen ; of week days pent up in lath and plaster tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this ? Are the green fields gone ? What do they here ? But look ! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange ! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land ; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand miles of them leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither ? Once more. Say, you are in the country ; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your LOOMINGS 3 caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation andli water are wedded forever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs ? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within ; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle ; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hillside blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee -deep among tiger-lilies what is the one charm wanting ?- Water there is not a drop of water there ! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it ? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach ? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea ? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first ; told that you and your ship were now out of sight of ' land ? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy ? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove ? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild 4 MOBY-DICK image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life ; and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Be- sides, passengers get sea-sick grow quarrelsome don't sleep of nights do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing ; no, I never go as a passenger ; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honourable respect- able toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind what- soever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook, though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on shipboard yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls ; though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respect- fully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous do tings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, LOOMINGS 5 like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old estab- lished family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Ran- dolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off hi time. What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks ? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament ? Do you think the arch- angel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance ? Who ain/t a slave ? Tell me that. Well, then, however the~old^sea -captains may order me about however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right ; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is ; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder- blades, and be content. Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, what will compare 6 MOBY-DICK with it ? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah ! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition ! Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head-winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the com- modore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first ; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage ; this the invisible police-officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveil- lance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage formed part of the grand programme of Provi- dence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more exten- sive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this : ' Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. ' WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. 1 BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.' Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby LOOMINGS 7 part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces though I cannot tell why this was exactly ; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which, being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a gortentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk ; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale ; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements ; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail for- bidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it would they let me since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome ; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, midmost of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. CHAPTER II THE CARPET-BAG I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday. As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I 5 for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides, though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original the Tyre of this Carthage ; the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the leviathan ? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adven- turous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobble-stones so goes the story to throw at the whales, THE CARPET-BAG 9 in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit ? Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnelsJE had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver. So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom toward the north with the darkness toward the south wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too particular. With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of 'The Crossed Harpoons ' but it looked too expen- sive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the ' Sword-Fish Inn,' there came such fer- vent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement, rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorse- less service the soles of mv boots were in a most miserable V plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go i on, Ishmael, said I at last ; don't you hear ? get away l from before the door ; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns. Such dreary streets ! blocks of blackness, not houses, 10 MOBY-DICK on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I carne to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public ; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha ! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah ? But ' The Cfossed Harpoons ' and 4 The Sword-Fish ' ? this, then, must needs be the sign of ' The Trap. ' However, I picked myself up , and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door. It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer ; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church ; and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weep- ing and wailing and teeth -gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of ' The Trap ' ! Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air ; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath ' The Spouter-Inn : Peter Coffin.' Coffin ? Spouter ? Rather ominous in that particu- lar connection, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might THE CARPET-BAG 11 have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt dis- trict, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea-coffee. It was a queer sort of place a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, never- theless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to anyone indoors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. 4 In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,' says an old writer of whose works I possess the only copy extant ' it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that Cashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.' True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it 's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished ; the cope-stone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon ! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper (he had a redder one afterward) pooh, pooh ! What a fine frosty night ; how Orion glitters ; what northern lights ! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories ; give me 12 MOBY-DICK the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals. But what thinks Lazarus ? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights ? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here ? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator ; yea, ye gods ! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost ? Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice-palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a- whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this ' Spouter ' may be. CHAPTER III THE SPOTTTER-INN ENTERING that gable -ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some con- demned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil- painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbours, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavoured to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft-repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window toward the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hover- ing in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet there was a sort of indefinite, half- attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you in voluntarily, took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. is 14 MOBY-DICK Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. It 's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. It 's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. It 's a blasted heath. It 's a Hyperborean winter scene. It 's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop ; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish ? even the great leviathan himself ? In fact, the artist's design seemed this : a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane ; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible ; and an exasper- ated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws ; others were tufted with knots of human hair ; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long- armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling-lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon so like a corkscrew now was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years after- THE SPOUTER-INN 15 ward slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump. Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low- arched way cut through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fire-places all round you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den the bar a rude attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks ; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without within, the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered down- ward to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny ; to this a penny more ; and so on to the full glass the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light 16 MOBY-DICK divers speiimens of skrimshander. I sought the land- lord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full not a bed unoccupied. ' But avast, 5 he added, tapping his forehead, ' you hain't no objections to sharin* a har- pooneer 's blanket, have ye ? I s'pose you are goin' a- whalin 5 , so you 'd better get used to that sort of thing. 5 I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed ; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why, rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man 5 s blanket. ' I thought so. All right ; take a seat. Supper ? you want supper ? Supper 5 11 be ready directly. 5 I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland no fire at all the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey-jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half- frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings ; good heavens ! dumplings for supper ! One young fellow in a green box-coat addressed himself to these dumplings hi a most direful manner. ' My boy,' said the landlord, ' you '11 have the night- mare to a dead sartainty.' THE SPOUTER-INN 17 'Landlord,' I whispered, w that ain't the harpooneer, is it ? ' 1 Oh, no/ said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, 4 the harpooneer is a dark - complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't he eats nothing but steaks, and likes 'em rare.' ' The devil he does, ' says I. ' Where is that harpooneer ? Is he here ? ' ' He '11 be here afore long,' was the answer. I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this ' dark-complexioned ' harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did. Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker-on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, ' That 's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning ; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys ; now we '11 have the latest news from the Feegees.' A tramping of sea-boots was heard in the entry ; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch-coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all be- darned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth the bar when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he VOL. I. B 18 MOBY-DICK swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather-side of an ice -island. The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously. I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once ; and since the sea- gods had ordained that he should soon become my ship- mate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast ; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unob- served, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of ' Bulkington ! Bulkington ! where 5 s Bulkington ? ' and darted out of the house in pursuit of him. It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began THE SPOUTER-INN 19 to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else ; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor kings do ashore. To be sure, they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin. The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedward. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming ? ' Landlord ! I Ve changed my mind about that harpooneer. I shan't sleep with him. I '11 try the bench here.' ' Just as you please ; I 'm sorry I can't spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it 's a plaguy rough board here ' feeling of the knots and notches. ' But wait a bit, Skrimshander ; I Ve got a carpenter's plane there in the bar wait, I say, and I '11 make ye snug enough.' So saying he procured the plane ; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. 20 MOBY-DICK The shavings flew right and left ; till at last the plane- iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study. I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short ; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night. The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march on him bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent knockings ? It seemed no bad idea ; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down ! Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown THE SPOQTER-INN 21 harpooneer. Thinks I, I '11 wait awhile ; he must be dropping in before long. 1 11 have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all there 's no telling. But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer. 4 Landlord ! ' said I, ' what sort of a chap is he does he always keep such late hours ? ' It was now hard upon twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. ' No,' he answered, ' generally he 5 s an early bird airley to bed and airley to rise yes, he 's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a-peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, maybe, he can't sell his head.' ' Can't sell his head ? What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me ? ' getting into a tower- ing rage. ' Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town ? ' ' That 's precisely it,' said the landlord, ' and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market 's overstocked.' ' With what ? ' shouted I. ' With heads, to be sure ; ain't there too many heads in the world ? ' ' I tell you what it is, landlord,' said I, quite calmly, ' you 'd better stop spinning that yarn to me I 'm not green.' 6 Maybe not, ' taking out a stick and whittling a tooth- pick, ' but I rayther guess you '11 be done brown if that 'ere harpooneer hears you a-slanderin' his head.' 22 MOBY-DICK ' I '11 break it for him/ said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's. ' It 's broke a 'ready,' said he. ' Broke/ said I ' broke, do you mean ? ' ' Sartain, and that 's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess.' ' Landlord/ said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm, 'landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed ; you tell me you can only give me half a one ; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this har- pooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling toward the man whom you design for my bedfellow* a sort of connection, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I 've no idea of sleeping with a madman ; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.' ' Wall/ said the landlord, fetching a long breath, 'that 's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the South Seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he 's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he 's tryin' to sell to-night, cause to- morrow 's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' THE SPOUTER-INN 23 human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.' This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolaters ? ' Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a danger- ous man.' ' He pays reg'lar, 5 was the rejoinder. ' But come, it 's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes it 's a nice bed : Sail and me slept in that 'ere bed the night we were spliced. There 's plenty room for two to kick about in that bed ; it 's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a-dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I '11 give ye a glim in a jiffy ' ; and so saying he lighted a candle and held it toward me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute ; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed, ' I vum it 's Sunday you won't see that harpooneer to-night ; he 's come to anchor some- where come along then ; do come ; won't ye come ? ' I considered the matter a moment, and then upstairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast. ' There,' said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea-chest that did double duty as a wash-stand 24 MOBY-DICK and centre table ; ' there, make yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.' I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared. Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the room ; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fire-board representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner ; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish-hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon stand- ing at the head of the bed. But what is this on the chest ? I took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory con- clusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door-mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door-mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise ? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck. I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced THE SPOUTER-INN 25 thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door-mat. After thinking some time on the bedside, I got up and took off my monkey-jacket, and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a little more in my shirt -sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about the har- pooneer 's not coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven. Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing toward the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door. Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infemal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without looking toward the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag 's mouth . This accomplished, however, he turned round when, good heavens ! what a sight ! Such a face ! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large, blackish- looking squares. Yes, it 's just as I thought, he 's a terrible bedfellow ; he 's been in a fight, got dreadfully 26 MOBY-DICK cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so toward the light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this ; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man a whaleman too who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adven- ture. And what is it, thought I, after all ! It 's only his outside ; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning ; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish-yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas ; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a sealskin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his hat a new beaver hat when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head none to speak of, at least nothing but a small scalp -knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the^stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. THE SPOUTER-INN 27 Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance, js^the parent^QJJear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face ; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares ; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whale- man in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine heavens ! look at that tomahawk ! But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three-days-old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby pre- 28 MOBY-DICK served in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire -board, sets up this little hunchbacked image, like a ten-pin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard toward the half-hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol ; then laying a bit of ship -biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled revail upon Queequeg to take a chair ; but in vain. There he sat ; and all he could do for all my polite arts and blandishments he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in any the slightest way. 106 MOBY-DICK I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan ; do they fast on their hams that way in his native island ? It must be so ; yes, it 's part of his creed, I suppose ; well, then, let him rest ; he '11 get up sooner or later, no doubt. It can't last for ever, thank God, and his Ramadan only comes once a year ; and I don't believe it 's very punctual then. I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it (that is, a short whaling voyage in a schooner or brig, confined to the north of the Line, in the Atlantic Ocean only) ; after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, I went upstairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no ; there he was just where I had left him ; he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow vexed with him ; it seemed so downright sense- less and insane to be sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood on his head. ' For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake your- self ; get up and have some supper. You 11 starve ; you '11 kill yourself, Queequeg.' But not a word did he reply. Despairing of him, therefore, I deter mined to go to bed and to sleep ; and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it promised to be a very cold night ; and he had nothing but his ordinary round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle ; and the mere thought of Queequeg not four feet off sitting there in that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and dark ; this made me really THE RAMADAN 107 wretched. Think of it ; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide-awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan ! But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break of day ; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerful look ; limped toward me where I lay ; pressed his forehead again against mine ; and said his Ramadan was over. Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic ; when it is a positive torment to him ; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncom- fortable inn to lodge in ; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him. And just so I now did with Queequeg. ' Queequeg,' said I, ' get into bed now, and lie and listen to me.' I then went on, beginning with the rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of the present time, during which time I laboured to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense ; bad for the health ; useless for the soul ; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of hygiene and common-sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in ; hence the spirit caves in ; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half -starved. This is the reason why most 108 MOBY-DICK dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively ; hell is an idea first born on an un- digested apple-dumpling ; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Bamadans. I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia ; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in. He said no ; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by his father the King, on the gaming of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening. 4 No more, Queequeg,' said I, shuddering ; 'that will do ' ; for I knew the inferences without his further hint- ing them. I had seen a sailor who had visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of the victor ; and then, one by one, they were placed in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoa- nuts ; and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys. After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered from his own point of view ; and, in the second place, he did not more than one-third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would ; and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such THE RAMADAN 109 a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety. At last we rose and dressed ; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones. CHAPTER XVIII HIS MARK As we were walking down the end of the wharf toward the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers. ' What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg ? ' said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf. ' I mean,' he replied, ' he must show his papers.' ' Yea,' said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from behind Peleg 's, out of the wigwam. ' He must show that he 's converted. Son of darkness/ he added, turning to Queequeg, c art thou at present in communion with any Christian church ? ' ' Why/ said I, ' he 's a member of the First Congrega- tional Church/ Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be converted into the churches. ' First Congregational Church/ cried Bildad, ' what ! that worships in Deacon Deuteronomy Cole man's meeting- house ? ' and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at Queequeg. IIP HIS MARK 111 * How long hath he been a member ? ' he then said, turning to me ; ' not very long, I rather guess, young man.' 4 No/ said Peleg, ' and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face.' ' Do tell, now/ cried Bildad, ' is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting ? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day.' ' I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting/ said I, ' all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is.' ' Young man/ said Bildad sternly, ' thou art skylarking with me explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean ? answer me.' Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied, ' I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong ; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world ; we all belong to that ; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief ; in that we all join hands/ ' Splice, thou mean'st splice hands/ cried Peleg, draw- ing nearer. ' Young man, you 'd better ship for a mis- sionary, instead of a foremast hand ; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he 's reckoned some- thing. Come aboard, come aboard ; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog there what 's that you call him ? tell Quohog to step along. By the great anchor, what a harpoon he 's got there ! looks like good stuff that ; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, 112 MOBY-DICK or whatever your name is, did you ever stand in the head of a whale-boat ? did you ever strike a fish ? ' Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the side ; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in some such way as this : ' Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere ? You see him ? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den ! ' and taking sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight/ ' Now, 5 said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, * spos-ee him whale-e eye ; why, dad whale dead.' ' Quick, Bildad,' said Peleg to his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated toward the cabin gangway. ' Quick, I say, you, Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we '11 give ye the ninetieth lay, and that 's more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.' So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself belonged. When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for signing, he turned to me and said, ' I guess, Quohog there don't know how to write, does he ? I say, Quohog, blast ye ! dost thou sign thy name or make thy mark ? ' But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed ; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm ; HIS MARK 113 so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touch- ing his appellative, it stood something like this : Quohog. his >J< mark. Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and stead- fastly eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled ' The Latter Day Coming ; or No Time to Lose,' placed it in Queequeg 's hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, ' Son of darkness, I must do my duty by thee ; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew ; if thou still clingest to thy pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon ; turn from the wrath to come ; mind thine eye, I say ; oh ! goodness gracious ! steer clear of the fiery pit ! ' Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases. ' Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,' cried Peleg. ' Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers it takes the shark out of 'em ; no harpooneer is worth a straw who ain't pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat- header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard ; he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones.' c Peleg ! Peleg ! ' said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, 'thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time ; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of VOL. I. H 114 MOBY-DICK death ; how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, didst thou not think of Death and the Judgment then ? ' ' Hear him, hear him now, ' cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets, ' hear him, all of ye. Think of that ! When every moment we thought the ship would sink ! Death and the Judgment then ? What ? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side ; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then ? No ! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of ; and how to save all hands how to rig jury-masts how to get into the nearest port ; that was what I was thinking of. } Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some sail-makers who were mending a topsail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, which otherwise might have been wasted. CHAPTER XIX THE PEOPHET ' SHIPMATES, have ye shipped in that ship ? ' Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers ; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up. 4 Have ye shipped in her ? ' he repeated. 4 You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,' said I, trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him. ' Ay, the Pequod that ship there/ he said, drawing back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object. ' Yes,' said I, ' we have just signed the articles.' ' Anything down there about your souls ? ' ' About what ? ' ' Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any,' he said quickly. No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got ly, good luck to 'em ; and they are all the better off for it. A soul 's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.' ' What are you jabbering about, shipmate ? ' said I. 115 ! 116 MOBY-DICK ' He 's got enough, though, to make up for all de- ficiencies of that sort in other chaps,' abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he. ' Queequeg,' said I, ' let 's go ; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere ; he 's talking about something and somebody we don't know.' ' Stop ! ' cried the stranger. ' Ye said true ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, have ye ? ' ' Who 's Old Thunder ? ' said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner. ' Captain Ahab.' ' What ! the captain of our ship, the Pequod ? ' ' Ay, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye ? ' ' No, we hav'n't. He 's sick, they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long.' 4 All right again before long ! ' laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. ' Look ye ; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right ; not before.' i What do you know about him ? ' ' What did they tell you about him ? Say that ! ' ' They didn't tell much of anything about him ; only I 've heard that he 's a good whale -hunter, and a good captain to his crew.' ' That 's true, that 's true yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl ; growl and go that 's the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights ; nothing about that deadly scrim- mage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa ? heard nothing about that, eh ? Nothing about the silver cala- bash he spat into ? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye THE PROPHET 117 hear a word about them matters and something more, eh ? No, I don't think ye did ; how could ye ? Who knows it ? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, may- hap, ye Ve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it ; ay> ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that every one knows a 'most I mean they know he 's only one leg ; and that a parmacetti took the other off.' 4 My friend/ said I, ' what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don't know, and I don't much care ; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg.' ' All about it, eh sure you do ? all ? ' * Pretty sure.' With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled re very ; then starting a little, turned and said, ' Ye Ve shipped, have ye ? Names down on the papers ? Well, well, what 's signed, is signed ; and what 's to be, will be ; and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all. Anyhow, it's all fixed and arranged a 'ready ; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose ; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em ! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning ; the ineffable heavens bless ye ; I 'm sorry I stopped ye.' ' Look here, friend,' said I, 'if you have anything im- portant to tell us, out with it ; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game ; that 's all I have to say.' ' And it 's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way ; you are just the man for him the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning ! Oh ! when ye get there, tell 'em I Ve concluded not to make one of 'em.' ' Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way you 118 MOBY-DICK can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.' ' Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.' ' Morning it is,' said I. ' Come along, Queequeg, let 's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?' ^Elijah/ Elijah ! thought I, and we walked away, both comment- ing, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor ; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and look- ing back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah follow- ing us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did ; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half -apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod ; and Captain Ahab ; and the leg he had lost ; and the Cape Horn fit ; and the silver calabash ; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous ; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig ; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail ; and a hundred other shadowy things. I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us. This relieved me ; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug. CHAPTER XX ALL ASTIR A DAY or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging ; in short, everything betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands : Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores ; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall. On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given at all the inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, how- ever, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder ; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped. Everyone knows what a multitude of things beds, saucepans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut -crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitates a three -years' housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers . And though this also holds true of merchant 120 MOBY-DICK vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbours usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling-vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare captain and duplicate ship. At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod had been almost completed ; com- prising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and small. Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kind- hearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward's pantry ; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate's desk, where he kept his log ; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one's rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in ALL ASTIR 121 which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars. But it was startling to see this excellent-hearted Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling- lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once and a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every day ; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start. CHAPTER XXI GOING ABOARD IT was nearly six o'clock, but only gray imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. ' There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right/ said I to Queequeg, ' it can't be shadows ; she 's off by sunrise, I guess ; come on ! ' ' Avast ! ' cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah. c Going aboard ? ' ' Hands off, will you,' said I. ' Lookee here,' said Queequeg, shaking himself, ' go 'way ! ' ' Ain't going aboard, then ? ' ' Yes, we are,' said I, ' but what business is that of yours ? Do you know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent ? ' ' No, no, no ; I wasn't aware of that,' said Elijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances. ' Elijah,' said I, ' you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained.' c Ye be, be ye ? Coming back afore breakfast ? ' ' He 's cracked, Queequeg,' said I ; ' come on.' 122 GOING ABOARD 123 ' Halloa ! ' cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few paces. ' Never mind him/ said I ; ' Queequeg, come on. 5 But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder, said, ' Did ye see anything looking like men going toward that ship a while ago ? ' Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, ' Yes, I thought I did see four or five men ; but it was too dim to be sure.' ' Very dim, very dim,' said Elijah. ' Morning to ye.' Once more we quitted him ; but once more he came softly after us ; and touching my shoulder again, said, 4 See if you can find 'em now, will ye ? ' ' Find who ? ' * Morning to ye ! morning to ye ! ' he rejoined, again moving off. ' Oh ! I was going to warn ye against but never mind, never mind it 's all one, all in the family too ; sharp frost this morning, ain't it ? Good- bye to ye. Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess ; unless it 's before the Grand Jury.' And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence. At last, stepping on board the Peqiiod, we found every- thing in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within ; the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face downward and enclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him. ' Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to ? ' said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had not at 124 MOBY-DICK all noticed what I now alluded to ; hence I would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down ; and again mark- ing the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body ; telling him to estab- lish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper's rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough ; and then, without more ado, sat quietly down there. ' Gracious ! Queequeg, don't sit there,' said I. c Oh ! perry dood seat,' said Queequeg, ' my country way ; won't hurt him face.' ' Face ! ' said I, ' call that his face ? very benevolent countenance then ; but how hard he breathes, he ? s heaving himself ; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, it 's grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg ! Look, he '11 twitch you off soon. I wonder he don't wake.' Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk-pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans ; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion ; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks ; upon occasion, a chief calling his attend- ant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place. While narrating these things, every time Queequeg GOING ABOARD 125 received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet - side of it over the sleeper's head. ' What 's that for, Queequeg ? ' ' Perry easy, kill-e ; oh ! perry easy ! ' He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapour now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness ; then seemed troubled in the nose ; then revolved over once or twice ; then sat up and rubbed his eyes. 4 Halloa ! ' he breathed at last, ' who be ye smokers ? ' ' Shipped men/ answered I. c When does she sail ? ' ' Ay, ay, ye are going in her, be ye ? She sails to- day. The captain came aboard last night.' ' What captain ? Ahab ? ' ' Who but him indeed ? ' I was going to ask him some further questions concern- ing Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck. ' Halloa ! Starbuck 's astir,' said the rigger. ' He 's a lively chief mate, that ; .good man, and a pious ; but all alive now, I must turn to.' And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes ; the riggers bestirred themselves ; the mates were actively engaged ; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin. CHAPTER XXII MERRY CHRISTMAS AT length, toward noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship's riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift a night- cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward after all this, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said : ' Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right ? Captain Ahab is all ready just spoke to him nothing more to be got from shore, eh ? Well, call all hands, then. Muster 'em aft here blast 'em ! ' ' No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,' said Bildad, ' but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.' How now ! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yet to be seen ; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot's ; and as he was not yet completely recovered so they said therefore, Cap- tain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural 126 MEKRY CHRISTMAS 127 enough ; especially as in the merchant service many captains never show themselves on deck for a consider- able time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good with the pilot. But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad. ' Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,' he cried, as the sailors lingered at the mainmast. ' Mr. Starbuck, drive 'em aft.' ' Strike the tent there ! ' was the next order. As I hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port ; and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor. ' Man the capstan ! Blood and thunder ! jump ! ' was the next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes. Now, in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addi- tion to his other offices, was one of the licensed pilots of the port he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot -fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty goodwill. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in 128 MOBY-DICK getting under weigh ; and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman's berth. Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up ; involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, how- ever, with the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay ; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick. ' Is that the way they heave in the marchant service ? ' he roared. ' Spring, thou sheep-head ; spring, and break thy backbone ! Why don't ye spring, I say, all of ye spring ! Quohag ! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers ; spring there, Scotch-cap ; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out ! ' And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day. At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas ; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armour. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight ; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows. Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever MERRY CHRISTMAS 129 and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard, * Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.' Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store ; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer. At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside. It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet ; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage beyond both stormy Capes ; a ship in which some thousands of his hard-earned dollars were invested ; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain ; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw ; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him, poor old Bildad lingered long ; paced the deck with anxious strides ; ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there ; again came on deck, and looked to windward ; looked toward the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the * r-off unseen Eastern Continents ; looked toward the VOL. I. I 130 MOBY-DICK land ; looked aloft ; looked right and left ; looked every- where and nowhere ; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, * Never- theless, friend Peleg, I can stand it ; yes, I can.' As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher ; but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about him, 4 Captain Bildad come, old ship- mate, we must go. Back the main-yard there ! Boat ahoy ! Stand by to come close alongside, now ! Careful, careful ! come, Bildad, boy say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck luck to ye, Mr. Stubb luck to ye, Mr. Flask good-bye, and good luck to ye all and this day three years I '11 have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away ! ' ' God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men/ murmured old Bildad, almost incoherently. ' I hope ye '11 have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun is all he needs, and ye '11 have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers ; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent, within the year. Don't forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don't waste the spare staves. Oh ! the sail-needles are in the green locker ! Don't whale it too much a Lord's days, men ; but don't miss a fair chance either, that 's rejecting Heaven's good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb ; it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornica- MERRY CHRISTMAS 131 tion. Good-bye, good-bye ! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck ; it '11 spoil. Be careful with the butter twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye, if ' Come, come, Captain Bildad ; stop palavering, away ! ' and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropped into the boat. Ship and boat diverged ; the cold, damp night breeze blew between ; a screaming gull flew overhead ; the two hulls wildly rolled ; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. CHAPTER XXIII THE LEE SHORE SOME chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, new-landed mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn. When on that shivering winter's night the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington ! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid- winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable ; deep memories yield no epitaphs ; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succour ; the port is pitiful ; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that 's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy ; she must fly all hospitality ; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore ; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward ; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again ; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril ; her only friend her bitterest foe ! Know ye, now, Bulkington ? Glimpses do ye seem to 132 THE LEE SHORE 133 see of that mortally intolerable truth ; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea ; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore ? But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety ! For worm-like, then, oh ! who would craven crawl to land ! Terrors of the terrible ! is all this agony so vain ? Take heart, take heart, Bulkington ! Bear thee grimly, demigod ! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing straight up, leaps thy apotheosis ! CHAPTER XXIV THE ADVOCATE As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this busi- ness of whaling ; and as this business of whaling has some- how come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit ; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say ; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre- eminently presuming and ridiculous. Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us whalemen is this : they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business ; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge, have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally 134 THE ADVOCATE 185 unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true ; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battlefields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits ? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession ; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the inter- i linked terrors and wonders of God ! But, though the world scouts at us whale-hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage ; yea, an all-abounding adoration ! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory ! But look at this matter in other lights ; weigh it in all sorts of scales ; see what we whalemen are, and have been. Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling-fleets ? Why did Louis xvi. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling-ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket ? Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upward of 1,000,000 ? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now\ outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen hi the \ world ; sail a navy of upward of seven hundred vessels ; manned by eighteen thousand men ; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars ; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000 ; and every year importing into our harbours a well-reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How 136 MOBY-DICK comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling ? But this is not the half ; look again. I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in them- selves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential f issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian / mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years \ past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If Ameri- can and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbours, let them fire salutes to the honour and the glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of exploring expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusen- sterns ; but I say that scores of anonymous captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathen- ish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the lifetime commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three THE ADVOCATE 137 chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log. Ah, the world ! Oh, the world ! Until the whale-fishery rounded Cape Horn, no com- merce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies ; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts. That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous ; but the whale -ship touched there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale -ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double -bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due ; for already she is on the threshold. But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you jre, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time. 138 MOBY-DICK The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say. The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler ? Who wrote the first account of our levia- than ? Who but mighty Job ! And who composed the first narrative of a whaling voyage ? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale -hunter of those times ! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament ? Who, but Edmund Burke ! True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils ; they have no good blood in their veins. No good blood in their veins ? They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel ; afterward, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket ? and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and har- pooneers all kith and kin to noble Benjamin this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. Good again ; but then all confess that somehow whal- ing is not respectable. Whaling not respectable ? Whaling is imperial ! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared 'a royal fish.' l Oh, that 's only nominal ! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing way. The whale never figured in any grand imposing way ? In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession. 1 Grant it, since you cite it ; but, say what you will, there is no real dignity in whaling. 1 See subsequent chapters for something more on this head. THE ADVOCATE 139 No dignity in whaling ? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the south ! No more ! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg ! No more ! I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man more honourable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns. And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me ; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling ; for a whale -ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. CHAPTER XXV POSTSCRIPT IN behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy ? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a salt-cellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely who knows ? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery ? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality. But the only thing to be considered here, is this what kind of oil is used at coronations ? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils ? Think of that, ye loyal Britons ! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff ! 140 CHAPTER XXVI KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES THE chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen ; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluous- ness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-look- ing ; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit ; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now ; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Look- ing into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly con- fronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy >briety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in 141 142 MOBY-DICK him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well- nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly con- scientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did there- fore strongly incline him to superstition ; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organisations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare- devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. ' I will have no man in my boat/ said Starbuck, ' who is not afraid of a whale.' By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. ' Ay, ay/ said Stubb, the second mate, ' Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you '11 find anywhere in this fishery.' But we shall ere long see what that word ' careful ' precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale-hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils ; in him courage was not a sentiment ; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that hi this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sundown ; nor for persisting in fighting a KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 143 fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs ; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father's ? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother ? With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said ; the courage of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organised, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had ; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it ; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint-stock companies and nations ; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be ; men may have mean and meagre aces ; but man, hi the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel 144 MOBY-DICK within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone, bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valour- ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the per- mitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike ; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God ; Himself ! The great God absolute ! The centre and circumference of all democracy ! His omnipresence, our divine equality ! If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and casta- ways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark ; weave round them tragic graces ; if even the most mourn- ful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts ; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light ; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun ; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind ! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God ! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl ; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes ; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles ; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse ; who didst thunder him higher than a throne ! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons ; bear me out in it, God ! CHAPTER XXVII KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES STUBB was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod ; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky ; neither craven nor valiant ; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air ; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journey- man joiner engaged for the year. Good-humoured, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the com- fortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy-chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question ; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a com- fortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner. What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with VOL. i. K 146 MOBY-DICK the burden of life in a world full of grave peddlers, all bowed to the ground with their packs ; what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humour of his ; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand ; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in suc- cession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter ; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth. I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition ; for everyone knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the number- less mortals who have died exhaling it ; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths ; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb 's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent. The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him ; and therefore it was a sort of point of honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways ; and so dead to anything like an appre- hension of any possible danger from encountering them ; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 147 only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignor- ant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the matter of whales ; he followed these fish for the fun of it ; and a three years' voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails ; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones ; made to clinch tight and last long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod ; because, in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic whalers ; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted into it, served to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those battering seas. Now these three mates Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask were momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequod' & boats as | headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Gap- tain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling-spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers ; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And since in this famous fishery, each mate or heads- man, like a Gothic knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain con- junctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault ; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two a close intimacy and friendliness ; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the Pequod 's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged. First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief 148 MOBY-DICK mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vine- yard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighbouring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring har- pooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego 's long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek-bones, and black rounding eyes for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea ; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tash- tego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal - black negro-savage, with a lion -like tread an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the topsail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbours most frequented by whalemen ; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners un- I KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 149 commonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped ; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him ; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod'B company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale-fishery are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale-fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American canals and railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward-bound Nan- tucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage home- ward, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, ' Isolatoes ' too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolate living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were ! An Anacharsis Clootz deputa- tion from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the 150 MOBY-DICK world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip he never did oh, no ! he went before. Poor Alabama boy ! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine ; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory ; called a coward here, hailed a hero there ! CHAPTER XXVIII AHAB FOB several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship ; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible ; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitingly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness to call it so which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all warranty to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which 151 152 MOBY-DICK my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this and rightly ascribed it to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans ; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbour, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward ; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still gray and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance toward the tanrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran appre- hension ; .Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck. There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his gray hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, AHAB 153 you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit con- sent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego's senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, super- stitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived by what a gray Manxman in- sinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered then, whoever should do that last office for the dead would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. * Ay, he was dismasted off Japan,' said the old Gay-Head Indian 154 MOBY-DICK once ; ' but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of 'em.' I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter-deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an auger-hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole ; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud ; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrender- able wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedi- cation of that glance. Not a word he spoke ; nor did his officers say aught to him ; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face ; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew ; either standing in his pivot -hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had ; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy ; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse ; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air ; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage now ; not regularly cruising ; nearly all whaling preparatives needing super- vision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite AHAB 155 Ahab now ; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon. Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasive- ness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods ; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad- hearted visitants ; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. CHAPTER XXIX TO HIM, STUBB SOME days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns ! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on ; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture. Old age is always wakeful ; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old graybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab ; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. ' It feels like going down into one's tomb,' 156 ENTER AHAB 157 he would mutter to himself, ' for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave- dug berth/ So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below ; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropped it to its place, for fear of disturbing their slumber- ing shipmates ; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle ; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considerating touch of humanity was in him ; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck ; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings ; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from tanrail to mainmast, Stubb, the odd second mate, came up from below, and with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay ; but there might be some way of muffling the noise ; hinting something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah ! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then. ' Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb/ said Ahab, ' that thou wouldst wad me that fashion ? But go thy ways ; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave ; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last. Down, dog, and kennel ! ' 158 MOBY-DICK {Starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment ; then said excitedly, ' I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir ; I do but less than half like it, sir.' ' Avast ! ' gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation. ' No, sir ; not yet,' said Stubb, emboldened. ' I will not tamely be called a dog, sir.' ' Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I 11 clear the world of thee ! ' As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated. ' I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,' muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. ' It 's very queer. Stop, Stubb ; somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go back and strike him, or what 's that ? down here on my knees and pray for him ? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me ; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It 's queer ; very queer ; and he 's queer too ; ay, take him fore and aft, he 's about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me ! his eyes like powder-pans ! is he mad ? Anyway there 's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He ain't in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four ; and he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's ham- mock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it ? A hot old man ! I guess he 's ENTER AHAB 159 got what some folks ashore call a conscience ; it 's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say worse nor a toothache. Well, well ; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He 's full of riddles ; I wonder what he goes into the after-hold for, every night, as Dough -Boy tells me he suspects ; what 's that for, I should like to know ? Who 's made appointments with him in the hold ? Ain't that queer, now ? But there 's no telling, it 's the old game. Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it 's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that 's about the first thing babies do, and that 's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that 's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh, commandment ; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth. "feo here goes again. But how 's that ? didn't he call me a dog ? blazes ! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that \ He might as well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil 's the matter with me ? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though How 1 how ? how ? but the only way 's to stash it ; so here goes to hammock again ; and in the morning, I '11 see how this plaguy juggling thinks over by daylight.' CHAPTER XXX THE PIPE WHEN Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks ; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather- side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolised ? For a khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of leviathans was Ahab. Some moments passed, during which the thick vapour came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. ' How now, ' he soliloquised at last, withdrawing the tube, 'this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe ! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone ! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, ay, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while ; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe ? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapours among mild white hairs, not among torn iron -gray locks like mine. I '11 smoke no more He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves ; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks. 160 CHAPTER XXXI QUEEN MAB NEXT morning Stubb accosted Flask. ' Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it ; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off ! And then, presto ! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask you know how curious all dreams are through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be think- ing to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. " Why," thinks I, " what 's the row ? It 's not a real leg, only a false leg." And there 's a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That 's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself afl the wnile, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, "What 's his leg now, but a cane a whalebone cane. Yes," thinks I, "it was only a playful cudgelling in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me not a base kick. Be- sides," thinks I, " look at it once ; why, the end of it the foot part what a small sort of end it is ; whereas, if a broad-footed farmer kicked me, there 's a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to a point only." VOL. I. L 162 MOBY-DICK But now comes the greatest joke of the dream, Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round. " What are you 'bout ? " says he. Slid ! man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz ! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. " What am I about ? " says I at last. " And what business is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback ? Do you want a kick ? " By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout what do you think I saw ? why, thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of marling-spikes, with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts, " I guess I won't kick you, old fellow." " Wise Stubb," said he, " wise Stubb " ; and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying over his " wise Stubb, wise Stubb," I thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for it, when he roared out, " Stop that kicking ! " " Halloa," says I, " what 's the matter now, old fellow ? " " Look ye here," says he ; " let 's argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he ? " " Yes, he did," says I "right here it was." "Very good," says he " he used his ivory leg, didn't he ? " " Yes, he did," says I. " WeU, then," says he, " wise Stubb, what have you to complain of ? Didn't he kick with right goodwill ? it wasn't a common pitch-pine leg he kicked with, was it ? No, you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It 's an honour ; I consider it an honour. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-knights of ; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, QUEEN MAB 163 and made a wise man of. Remember what I say ; be kicked by him ; account his kicks honours ; and on no account kick back ; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid ? " With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored ; rolled over ; and there I was in my hammock ! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask ? ' 4 1 don't know ; it seems a sort of foolish to me, though.' 4 Maybe ; maybe. But it 's made a wise man of me, Flask. D' ye see Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern ? Well, the best thing you can do, Flask, is to let that old man alone ; never speak to him, whatever he says. Halloa ! What 's that he shouts ? Hark ! ' ' Mast-head, there ! Look sharp, all of ye ! There are whales hereabouts ! If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him ! ' ' What do you think of that now, Flask ? ain't there a small drop of something queer about that, eh ? A white whale did ye mark that, man ? Look ye there 's something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has that that 's bloody on his mind. But, mum ; he comes this way.' CHAPTER XXXII CETOLOGY ALREADY we are boldly launched upon the deep ; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immen- sities. Ere that come to pass ; ere the Pequod'a weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan ; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow. It is some systematised exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down. ' No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology,' says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820. ' It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families. * * * Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal ' (Sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839. ' Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.' ' Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.' ' A field strewn with thorns.' ' All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists.' Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, 164 CETOLOGY 165 yet of books there are a plenty ; and so in some small degree, with Cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and sea- men, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few : The Authors of the Bible ; Aristotle ; Pliny ; Aldrovandi ; Sir Thomas Browne ; Gesner ; Ray ; Linnaeus ; Rondeletius ; Willoughby ; Green ; Artedi ; Sibbald ; Brisson ; Marten ; Lacepede ; Bonne- terre ; Desmarest ; Baron Cuvier ; Frederick Cuvier ; John Hunter ; Owen ; Scoresby ; Beale ; Bennett ; J. Ross Browne ; the Author of Miriam Coffin ; Olmstead ; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate general- ising purpose all these have written, the above-cited extracts will show. Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen ever saw living whales ; and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of the Greenland or Right whale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great Sperm whale, compared with which the Green- land whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown Sperm whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale -ports ; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross ; hear ye ! 166 MOBY-DICK good people all, the Greenland whale is deposed, the great Sperm whale now reigneth ! There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living Sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's ; both in their time surgeons to the English South -Sea whale -ships, and both exact and reliable men. The original matter touching the Sperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small ; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. As yet, however, the Sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life. Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent labourers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavours. I promise nothing complete ; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or in this place at least to much of any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of a systematisation of Cetology. I am the architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task ; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them ; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world ; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan ! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me. ' Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee ? Behold the CETOLOGY 167 hope of him is vain ! ' But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans ; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands ; I am in earnest ; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to settle. First : The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, ' I hereby separate the whales from the fish. 5 But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, ale wives and herring, against Linnaeus 's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the leviathan. The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows : ' On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,' and finally, ' ex lege naturae jure meritoque.' I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient . Charley profanely hinted they were humbug . Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old-fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given you those items. But in brief, they are those : lungs and warm blood ; whereas, all other fish are lung- less and cold-blooded. Next : how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to come ? To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. However con- 168 MOBY-DICK traded, that definition is the result of expanded medita- tion. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal position. By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea- creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best- informed Nantucketers ; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien. 1 Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal-tailed fish must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host. First : According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both small and large. I. The FOLIO WHALE ; II. the OCTAVO WHALE ; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE. As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale ; of the OCTAVO, the Grampus ; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise. FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters : I. the Sperm Whale ; II. the Right Whale ; III. the Fin-lack Whale ; IV. the Hump-backed Whale \ V. the Razor-back Whale ; VI. the Sulphur-bottom Whale. BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale). This 1 I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a nosy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales ; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology. CETOLOGY 169 whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil- headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfisch of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe ; the most formidable of all whales to encounter ; the most majestic in aspect ; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce ; he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically con- sidered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accident- ally obtained from the stranded fish ; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland or Right whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quicken- ing humour of the Greenland whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was still retained by the dealers ; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti was really derived. BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale). In one respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man. It yields the 170 MOBY-DICK article commonly known as whalebone or baleen ; and the oil specially known as ' whale oil,' an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscrimin- ately designated by all the following titles : The Whale ; the Greenland Whale ; the Black Whale ; the Great Whale ; the True Whale ; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios ? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists ; the Greenland Whale of the English whalemen ; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French whalemen ; the Growlands Wal- fisch of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas ; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian Ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor '-West Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising-Grounds. Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the English and the Right whale of the Ameri- cans. But they precisely agree in all their grand features ; nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The Right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to elucidating the Sperm whale. BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-back). Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-back, Tall-spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet -tracks. In the length CETOLOGY 171 he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the Right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is often a con- spicuous object. This fin is some three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp-pointed end. Even if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz- dial the shadow often goes back. The Fin-back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very shy ; always going solitary ; unex- pectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters ; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain ; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man ; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-back is sometimes included with the Right whale, among a theoretic species denomin- ated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen. Of these so-called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed whales and Beaked whales ; Pike -headed whales ; Bunched whales ; Under- jawed whales and Rostrated whales, are the fishermen's names for a few sorts. 172 MOBY-DICK In connection with this appellative of ' Whalebone whales/ it is of great importance to mention, that how- ever such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitat- ing allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth ; not- withstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How then ? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth ; these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other and more essential particulars. Thus, the Sperm whale and the Hump-backed whale, each has a hump ; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same Hump-backed whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen ; but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular combinations ; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation ; as utterly to defy all general methodis- ation formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the whale -naturalists has split. But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale, in his anatomy there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right classification. Nay : what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen ? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematiser as those external ones already enumerated. What then CETOLOGY 173 remains ? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted ; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed. BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER IV. (Hump-back). This whale is often seen on the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and towed into harbour. He has a great pack on him like a peddler ; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the Sperm whale also has a hump, though a smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them. BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. (Razor-back). Of this whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody else. BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI. (Sulphur-bottom). Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen ; at least I have never seen him except in the remoter Southern seas, and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is never chased ; he would run away with rope -walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur-bottom ! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer. Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II, (Octavo). 174 MOBY-DICK OCTAVOS. 1 These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which at present may be numbered : I. the Grampus ; II. the Black Fish ; III. the Narwhale ; IV. the Killer ; V. the Thrasher. BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus). Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recog- nised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corre- sponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds ; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great Sperm whale. BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER II. (Black Fish). I give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for gener- ally they are the best. Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upward, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more profitably employed, 1 Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does. CETOLOGY 175 the Sperm-whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves, burn un- savoury tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you upward of thirty gallons of oil. BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER III. (Narwhale), that is, Nostril Whale. Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard to say. It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish ; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer ; for the Nar- whale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however this one- sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale however that may be it would certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain cloistered 176 MOBY-DICK old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Green- wich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames ; ' when Sir Martin returned from that voyage,' saith Black Letter, ' on bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor.' An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, per- taining to a land-beast of the unicorn nature. The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine ; but there is little of it, and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas. BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER IV. (Killer). Of this whale little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whale by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Excep- tion might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea ; Bonapartes and Sharks included. CETOLOGY 177 BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER V. (Thrasher). This gentleman is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage by flogging him ; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas. Thus ends BOOK II. (Octavo), and begins BOOK III. (Duodecimo). DUODECIMOS. These include the smaller whales: I. the Huzza Porpoise ; II. the Algerine Porpoise ; III. the Mealy-mouthed Porpoise. To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet should be marshalled among WHALES a word which, in the popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down above as Duodecimos are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition of what a whale is i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail. BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER I. (Huzza Porpoise). This is the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal ; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can with- stand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye ; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not VOL. I. M 178 MOBY-DICK in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a por- poise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him ; and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature. BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. (Algerine Por- poise). A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. (Mealy-mouthed Porpoise). The largest kind of porpoise ; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated, ,is that of the fishers Right-whale porpoise, from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth ; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman -like figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called the ' bright waist/ that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colours, black above and white below. The white comprises part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal -bag. CETOLOGY 179 A most mean and mealy aspect ! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise. ******* Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their forecastle appellations ; for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any of the following whales shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated into this system, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude : The Bottle-nose Whale ; the Junk Whale ; the Pudding-headed Whale ; the Cape Whale ; the Leading Whale ; the Cannon Whale ; the Scragg Whale ; the Coppered Whale ; the Elephant Whale ; the Iceberg Whale ; the Quog Whale ; the Blue Whale, etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete ; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of leviathanism, but signifying nothing. Finally : It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave my cetological system standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first archi- tects ; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the cope-stone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience ! CHAPTER XXXIII THE SPECKSYNDER CONCERNING the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on shipboard, arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet. The large importance attached to the harpooneer J s vocation is evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and more ago, the command of a whale -ship was not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means Fat -Cutter ; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel : while over the whale- hunting department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Speck- sioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer ; and as such, is but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the Ameri- can Fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night-watches on a whaling -ground) the command of the ship's deck is also 180 THE SPECKSYNDER 181 his ; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior ; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea is this the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain ; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it. Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work ; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally ; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together ; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy ; nay, extorting almost as much out- ward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth. And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption ; and though the only homage he ever exacted was im- 182 MOBY-DICK plicit, instantaneous obedience ; though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck ; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem, or other- wise ; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unob- servant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea. Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself ; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested ; through those forms that same sultanism /became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrench- ments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that forever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings ; and leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain ; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralisation. Nor will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitable - ness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a THE SPECKS YNDER 183 hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to. But Ahab, my captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess ; and in this episode touching emperors and kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him ; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab ! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air ! CHAPTER XXXIV THE CABIN-TABLE IT is noon ; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master ; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun ; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, 'Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,' disappears into the .cabin. When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, ' Dinner, Mr. Stubb,' and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging a while, and then slightly shaking the main-brace, to see whether it be all right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid * Dinner, Mr. Flask,' follows after his predecessors. But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint ; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes 184 THE CABIN-TABLE 185 into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head ; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizen-top for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough toward their com- mander ; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air toward him, as he sits at the head of the table ; this is marvellous, some- times most comical. Wherefore this difference ? A problem ? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon ; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influ- ence for the time ; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar 's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a shipmaster, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned. 186 MOBY-DICK Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were as little children before Ahab ; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No ! And when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate toward him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms ; and cut it tenderly ; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate ; and chewed it noiselessly ; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence ; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation ; only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary family party. His were the shin-bones of the saline beef ; his would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world ; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. THE CABIN-TABLE 187 Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny com- plexion ; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern ; however it was, Flask, alas ! was a butterless man ! Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask is the first man up. Consider ! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him ; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day ; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal hi him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have forever departed from my stomach. I am an officer ; but, how I wish I could fist a bit of old- fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There 's the fruits of promotion now ; there 's the vanity of glory : there 's the insanity of life ! Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin skylight, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in the Pequod' s cabin. After their 188 MOBY-DICK departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty cabin. In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care -free licence and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords ; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungeiitlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon- wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humour, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this broad-faced steward ; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one continual lip- quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers fur- nished with all things they demanded, he would escape THE CABIN-TABLE 189 from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was over. It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's : cross- wise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines ; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air ; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating an ugly sound enough so much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple -witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons ; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives ; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillise poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas ! Dough-Boy ! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should 190 MOBY-DICK he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart ; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimitars in scabbards. But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived there ; still, being anything but seden- tary in their habits, they were scarcely ever in it except at meal-times, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters. In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale-captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship's cabin belongs to them ; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a house ; turning inward for a moment, only to be turned out the next ; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby ; in the cabin was no companionship ; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the grizzly bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when spring and summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws ; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom ! CHAPTER XXXV THE MAST-HEAD IT was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came round. In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port - r even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising- ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years' voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her say, an empty vial even then her mast-heads are kept manned to the last ; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relin- quish the hope of capturing one whale more. Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians ; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either ; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath ; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers is an assertion based upon the general belief among archseo- 191 192 MOBY-DICK legists, that the first pyramids were founded for astro- nomical purposes : a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices ; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars ; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle ; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander of mast-heads ; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet ; but vali- antly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern standers of mast-heads we have but a lifeless set ; mere stone, iron, and bronze men ; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon ; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air ; care- less, now, who rules the decks below ; whether Louis- Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main- mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square ; and ever when most obscured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there ; for where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washing- ton, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze ; THE MAST-HEAD 193 however it' may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned. It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea ; but that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early times of the whale-fishery, ere ships were regu- larly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, some- thing as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete ; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sunrise to sunset ; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the Tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast- head ; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, ; striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic ; stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls ; the drowsy trade winds ;blow ; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime unevent- Mness invests you ; you hear no news ; read no gazettes ; ;)xtras with startling accounts of commonplaces never VOL. i. N 194 MOBY-DICK delude you into unnecessary excitements ; you hear of no domestic afflictions ; bankrupt securities ; fall of stocks ; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable. In one of those Southern whalemen, on a long three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitive- ness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feel- ing, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry-box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t '-gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t '-gallant-cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat ; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body ; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter) ; so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers i in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watch-coat. Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the THE MAST-HEAD 195 mast-heads of a Southern whale -ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow's- nests, in which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland ; in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honour of himself ; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after our- selves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe ; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a movable side -screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, hi which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head hi this crow's- nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder-flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea-unicorns infesting those waters ; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them 196 MOBY-DICK is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labour of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest ; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the ' local attraction ' of all binnacle magnets ; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew ; I say, that though the captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned ' bin- nacle deviations,' ' azimuth compass observations,' and ' approximate errors,' he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasion- ally toward that well-replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's-nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned captain ; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we Southern whale -fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland men were ; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting hi the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or anyone else off duty whom I might find there ; then ascending a littl THE MAST-HEAD 197 way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the topsail- yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination. Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering alti- tude, how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale -ships' standing orders, ' Keep your weather-eye open, and sing out every time ' ? And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye shipowners of Nantucket ! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye ; given to unseasonable meditativeness ; and who offers to ship with the Phsedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say : your whales must be seen before they can be killed ; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates : 1 Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll ! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.' Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient ' interest ' in the voyage ; half -hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honour- able ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain ; 198 MOBY-DICK those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect ; they are short-sighted ; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve ? They have left their opera- glasses at home. ' Why, thou monkey, ' said a harpooneer to one of these lads, ' we 've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here.' Perhaps they were ; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon ; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious revery is this absent- minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity ; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature ; and every strange, half -seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him ; every dimly discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by con- tinually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came ; becomes diffused through time and space ; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pan- theistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship ; by her, borrowed from the sea ; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch ; slip your hold at all ; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for- ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists ! CHAPTER XXXVI THE QUARTEK-DECK (Enter Ahab : Then all.) IT was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow ; there also, you would see still stranger footprints the footprints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought. But on the occasion hi question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main- mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced ; so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement. ' D' ye mark him, Flask ? ' whispered Stubb ; * the chick that 's in him pecks the shell. 'Twill soon be out.' The hours wore on ; Ahab now shut up within his 199 200 MOBY-DICK cabin ; anon, pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect. It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft. ' Sir ! ' said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on shipboard except in some extraordinary case. ' Send everybody aft,' repeated Ahab. ' Mast-heads, there ! come down ! ' When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from his standpoint ; and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched hat he con- tinued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men ; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried : ' What do ye do when ye see a whale, men ? ' ' Sing out for him ! ' was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices. 4 Good ! ' cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones ; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them. ' And what do ye next, men ? ' ' Lower away, and after him ! ' ' And what tune is it ye pull to, men ? ' ' A dead whale or a stove boat ! ' More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approv- THE QUARTER-DECK 201 ing grew the countenance of the old man at every shout ; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they them- selves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions. But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half- revolving in his pivot -hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus : ' All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white whale. Look ye ! d' ye see this Spanish ounce of gold*? ' holding up a broad bright coin to the sun ' it is a sixteen-dollar piece, men. D' ye see it ? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul/ While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to him- self, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticu- late that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him. Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced toward the mainmast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming : ' Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw ; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys ! ' ' Huzza ! huzza ! ' cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast. ' It 's a white whale, I say,' resumed Ahab, as he threw down the top-maul ; * a white whale. Skin your eyes 202 MOBY-DICK for him, men ; look sharp for white water ; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.' All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some specific recollection. ' Captain Ahab,' said Tashtego, ' that white whale must be the same that some call Moby-Dick.' ' Moby-Dick ? ' shouted Ahab. ' Do ye know the white whale then, Tash ? ' ' Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down ? ' said the Gay-Header deliberately. ' And has he a curious spout, too,' said Daggoo, ' very bushy, even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab ? ' 1 And he have one, two, tree oh ! good many iron in him hide, too, captain,' cried Queequeg disjointedly, 4 all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him him ' faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a bottle ' like him him ' ' Cork-screw ! ' cried Ahab, ' ay, Queequeg, the har- poons lie all twisted and wrenched in him ; ay, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing ; ay, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils ! men, it is Moby-Dick ye have seen Moby-Dick Moby-Dick ! ' ' Captain Ahab,' said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. ' Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby-Dick but it was not Moby-Dick that took off thy leg ? ' ' Who told thee that ? ' cried Ahab ; then pausing, THE QUARTER-DECK 203 ' Ay, Starbuck ; ay, my hearties all round ; it was Moby-Dick that dismasted me ; Moby-Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Ay, ay,' he shouted, with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart -stricken moose ; ' Ay, ay ! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me ; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day ! ' Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out : ' Ay, ay ! and I '11 chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men ! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now ? I think ye do look brave/ * Ay, ay ! ' shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited old man : ' a sharp eye for the White Whale ; a sharp lance for Moby-Dick ! ' ' God bless ye,' he seemed to half sob and half shout. ' God bless ye, men. Steward ! go draw the great measure of grog. But what 's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck ; wilt thou not chase the White Whale ? art not game for Moby-Dick ? ' ' I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow ; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab ? it will not fetch thee much in our Nan- tucket market.' ' Nantucket market ! Hoot ! But come closer, Star- buck ; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money 's to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have com- puted their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch ; then, 204 MOBY-DICK let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here ! ' ' He smites his chest/ whispered Stubb, ' what 's that for ? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.' ' Vengeance on a dumb brute ! ' cried Starbuck, ' that simply smote thee from blindest instinct ! Madness ! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems \ blapkemous.' ' Hark ye yet again, the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event in the living act, the undoubted deed there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask ! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall ? To me, the White Whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there 's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me ; he heaps me ; I see in him out- rageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate ; and be the White Whale agent, or be the White Whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man ; I 'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other ; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who 's over me ? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye ! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare ! So, so ; thou reddenest and palest ; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Star- buck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look ! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The pagan leopards the unrecking THE QUARTER-DECK 205 and un worshipping things, that live ; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel ! The crew, man, the crew ! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale ? See Stubb ! he laughs ! See yonder Chilian ! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Star- buck ! And what is it ? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin ; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more ? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast -hand has clutched a whetstone ? Ah ! constrainings seize thee ; I see ! the billow lifts thee ! Speak, but speak ! Ay, ay ! thy silence, then, that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine ; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion.' 4 God keep me ! keep us all ! ' murmured Starbuck lowly. But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation ; nor yet the low laugh from the hold ; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage ; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life ; the subterranean laugh died away ; the winds blew on ; the sails filled out ; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admoni- tions and warnings ! why stay ye not when ye come ? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows ! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still drive us on. ' The measure ! the measure ! ' cried Ahab. Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the 206 MOBY-DICK harpooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle round the group ; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison ; but, alas ! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian. * Drink and pass ! ' he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman. ' The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round ! Short draughts long swallows, men ; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so ; it goes round excellently. It spiralises in ye ; forks out at the serpent -snapping eye. Well done ; almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me j here 's a hollow ! Men, ye seem the years ; so brimming ! life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill ! ' Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan ; and ye, mates, flank me with your lances ; and ye, harpooneers, stand there with your irons ; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. men, you will yet see that Ha ! boy, come back ? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, wert not thou St. Vitus' imp away, thou ague ! ' Advance, ye mates ! Cross your lances full before me. Well done ! Let me touch the axis.' So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre ; while so doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them ; meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck to Stubb, from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, THE QUARTER-DECK 207 he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him ; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright. ' In vain ! ' cried Ahab ; ' but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances ! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cup-bearers to my three pagan kinsmen there yon three most honourable gentle- men and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task ? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer ? Oh, my sweet cardinals ! your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye ; ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers ! ' Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him. ' Stab me not with that keen steel ! Cant them ; cant them over ! know ye not the goblet end ? Turn up the socket ! So, so ; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons ! take them ; hold them while I fill ! ' Forth- with, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter. ' Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murder- ous chalices ! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha ! Starbuck ! but the deed is done ! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers ! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whale-boat's bow Death to 1 208 MOBY-DICK Moby-Dick ! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby- Dick to his death ! ' The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted ; and to cries and maledictions against the White Whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew ; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed ; and Ahab retired within his cabin. CHAPTER XXXVII SUNSET (The cabin ; by the stern windows ; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.) I LEAVE a white and turbid wake ; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track ; let them ; but first I pass. Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun slow dived from noon, goes down ; my soul mounts up ! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear ? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem ; I, the wearer, see not its far flashings ; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron that I know not gold. 'Tis split, too that I feel ; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal ; ay, steel skull, mine ; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight ! Dry heat upon my brow ? Oh ! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me ; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power ; damned, most subtly ana most malignantly ! damned in the midst , of Paradise ! Good night good night ! (Waving his ' hand, he moves from the window.) 'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stub- VOL. I. O 210 MOBY-DICK born, at the least ; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me ; and I their match. Oh, hard ! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting ! What I Ve dared, I Ve willed ; and what I Ve willed, I '11 do ! They think me mad Starbuck does ; but I 'm demoniac, I am mad- ness maddened ! That wild madness that 's only calm to comprehend itself ! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered ; and Ay ! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. JJow* then, be the prophet and the fulfiUer one. That 's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket -players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes ! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies, Take some one of your own size ; don't pommel me \ No, ye Ve knocked me down, and I am up again ; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags ! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye ; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me ? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves ! man has ye there. Swerve me ? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, where - on" my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush ! Naught J s an obstacle, naught 's an angle to the iron way ! CHAPTER XXXVIII DUSK (By the mainmast ; Starbuck leaning against it.) MY soul is* more than matched ; she 's overmanned ; and by a madman ! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field ! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me ! I think I see his impious end ; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him ; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man ! Who 's over him, he cries ; ay, he would be a democrat \^ to all above ; look, how he lords it over all below ! Oh ! I plainly see my miserable office, to obey, rebelling ; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity ! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting pur- pose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole clock 's run down ; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again. (A burst of revelry from the forecastle.) Oh, God ! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers in them ! Whelped some- where by the sharkish sea. The White Whale is their demigorgon. Hark ! the infernal orgies ! that revelry is forward ! mark the unfaltering silence aft ! Methinks 211 212 MOBY-DICK it pictures life. Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his stern- ward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills me through ! Peace ! ye revellers, and set the watch ! Oh, life ! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, as wild, untutored things are forced to feed Oh, life ! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee ! but 'tis not me ! that horror 's out of me ! and with the soft feeling of ^ejiuman in me, yet ^will I try to fight ye, "ye grim, phantom futures ! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, ye blessed influences ! CHAPTER XXXIX FIRST NIGHT-WATCH FORE-TOP (Stubb solus, and mending a brace.) HA ! ha ! ha ! ha ! hem ! clear my throat ! I Ve been thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha 3 s the final consequence. Why so ? Because a laugh 's the wisest, easiest answer to all that 's queer ; and come what will, one comfort 's always left that unfailing comfort is, it 's all predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck ; but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it ; had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb that 's my title well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb ? Here 's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I '11 go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles ! I feel funny. Fa, la ! lirra, skirra ! What 's my juicy little pear at home doing now ? Crying its eyes out ? Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate's pennant, and so am I fa, la ! lirra, skirra ! Oh We '11 drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while meeting. A brave stave that who calls ? Mr. Starbuck ? Ay, ay, sir (Aside) he 's my superior, he has his too, if I 'm not mistaken. Ay, ay, sir, just through with this job coming. 213 CHAPTER XL MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE HABPOONEERS AND SAILORS (Foresail rises and discovers the match standing, lounging, leaning, and lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.) Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies ! Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain ! Our captain's commanded. 1ST NANTUCKET SAILOE. Oh, boys, don't be sentimental ; it 's bad for the digestion ! Take a tonic, follow me ! (Sings, and all follow.) Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand, A-viewing of those gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, And by your braces stand, And we '11 have one of those fine whales, Hand, boys, over hand ! So, be cheery, my lads ! may your hearts never fail ! While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale ! MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward ! 214 MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE 215 2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus ! Eight bells there !