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#
 ©C1K169280

Dodd Mead
j & Company, Inc .

HE RAISED A GULL-LIKE CRY IN THE AIR. “THERE SHE BLOWS THERE SHE BLOWS! A
HUMP LIKE A SNOWHILL ! IT IS MOBY DICKI

!
> >

Page 499
MOBY OR
DICK
THE WHITE WHALE

HERMAN MEIVILLE
ILLUSTRATED BY
MEAD SCHAEFFER

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY,
MCMXXII
 f

i
 IN TOKEN

OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

TO

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
.
 CONTENTS
chapter page
I Loomings 1
II The Carpet-Bag 6
III The Spouter-Inn 9
IV The Counterpane 22
V Breakfast 26
VI The Street 28
VII The Chapel 30
VIII The Pulpit 33
IX The Sermon 36
X A Bosom Friend 44
XI Nightgown 48
XII Biographical 50
XIII Wheelbarrow 52
XIV Nantucket 56
XV Chowder 58
XVI The Ship 61
XVII The Ramadan 74
XVIII His Mark 79
XIX The Prophet 82
XX All Astir 86
XXI Going Aboard 88
XXII Merry Christmas 91
XXIII The Lee Shore 95
XXIV The Advocate 96
XXV Knights and Squires 100
XXVI Knights and Squires 103
XXVII Ahab 107
XXVIII Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb Ill
XXIX The Pipe 114
XXX Queen Mab 114
XXXI Cetology 116
XXXII The Specksynder 129
XXXIII The Cabin Table 132
XXXIV The Masthead 137
XXXV Tiie Quarter-Deck 143
XXXVI Sunset 151
XXXVII Dusk 152
XXXVIII First Night-Watch 153
XXXIX Midnight. —Forecastle 154
XL Moby Dick 161
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XLI The Whiteness of the Whale 170
XLII Hark! 178
XLIII The Chart 179
XLIV The Affidavit 184
XLY Surmises 192
XLYI The Mat-Maker 195
XLYII The First Lowering 197
XLYIII The Hyena 207
XLIX Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah 209
L The Spirit-Spout 212
LI The Albatross 215
LII The Gam 217
LIII The Town-11 o’s Story 221
LIY Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales . . . 241
LY Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and
the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes 246 . . .

LYI Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in

Sheet-iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars 249
LVII Brit . 251
LYIII Squid 254
LIX The Line 256
LX Stubb Kills a Whale 260
LXI The Dart 265
LXII The Crotch 266
LXIII Stubb’s Supper 268
LXIY The Whale as a Dish 275
LXY. The Shark Massacre 277
LXYI Cutting-in 279
LXYII The Blanket 281
LXYIII The Funeral 284
LXIX The Sphinx 285
LXX The Jeroboam’s Story 287
LXXI The Monkey-Bope 293
LXXII Stubb and Flask Kill a Eight Whale; and then
have a Talk over Him 297
LXX III —
The Sperm Whale’s Head. Contrasted Yiew 303
—
.

LXXIV The Eight Whale’s Head. Contrasted Yiew 307 .

LX XV The Battering-Eam 310

LXXYI The Great Heidelburgh Tun . . . .312
. . .

LXXYII Cistern and Buckets 314

LXXVIII The Prairie 318
LXXIX The Nut 320
LXXX The Pequod Meets the Virgin 323
LXXXI
LXXXII
The Honour and Glory of Whaling
Jonah Historically Eegarded
.... 333
336
LXXXIII Pitchpoling 338
LXXXIY The Fountain 340
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
LXXXV The Tail 346
LXXXYI The Grand Armada 350
LXXXYII Schools and Schoolmasters 362
LXXXYIII Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish 365
LXXXIX Heads or Tails 369
XC The Peqvod Meets the Rosebud 371
XGI Ambergris 37'8
XCII The Castaway 380
XCIII A Squeeze of the Hand 384
XCIY The Cassock 387
XCY The Try-Works 389
XCYI The Lamp 393
XCYII Stowing down and Clearing up 394
XCYIII The Doubloon 396
XCIX —
Leg and Arm. The Peqvod of Nantucket Meets
the Samuel Enderby of London *
402
C The Decanter 409
Cl A Bower in the Arsacides 414
CII Measurement of the Whale’s Skeleton . . . 418
CIII The Fossil Whale 420
CIY Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish? —Will
pie Perish? 424
CY Ahab’s Leg 428
!

CYI The Carpenter 430

CYII Ahab and the Carpenter 433
CYIII Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin 437
CIX Queequeg in his Coffin 439
CX The Pacific 444
CXI The Blacksmith 446
CXII The Forge 448
CXIII The Gilder 451
CXIY The Peqvod Meets the Bachelor 453
CXY The Dying Whale 455
CXYI The Whale Watch 457
CXYII The Quadrant 458
CXYIII The Candles 460
CXIX The Deck Towards the End of the First Night
Watch 467’

CXX —
Midnight. The Forecastle Bulwarks .... 467
CXXI —
Midnight Aloft. Thunder and Lightning . . 469
CXXII The Musket 469
CXXIII The Needle 472
CXXIY The Log and Line 476
CXXY The Lifebuoy 479
CXXYI The Deck 482
CXX VII The Pequod Meets the Rachel 484
CXXVIII The Cabin 488
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
CXXIX The Hat 489
CXXX The Pequod Meets the Delight 493
CXXXI The Symphony 495
CXXXII The Chase —First Day 498
CXXXIII The Chase— Second Day 507
CXXXI Y The Chase—Third Day .516

APPENDIX
Etymology 527
Extracts 528
 s

ILLUSTRATIONS
He raised a gull-like cry in the air. —
“There she blows there she
blows ! A
hump like a snowhill ! It is Moby Dick !” Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
“Come along then; do come; won’t ye come?” 16

I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashed myself full
against the mark 76

Foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehensions; Cap-

tain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck fl08

“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick that’s in him
pecks the shell. ’Twill soon be out.” 144

“Pull, pull, my fine hearts alive; pull, my children; pull, my little

ones 1” 200

Ishmael tells the Town-Ho’s story 222

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed
them aside with his floundering feet 296

The Malays are after us 354

Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt . .382

“There is one God that Lord over the earth, and one Captain that
is

is lord over the Pequod On deck!”— . 438

During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the
Pequod' jawbone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled
to the deck 470
 —

MOBY DICK; OR
THE WHITE WHALE
CHAPTER I

LOOMINGS

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago —never mind how long precisely
having little or no money in my and nothing particular to
purse,
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 damp, drizzly November in my soul;
whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,
and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet and especially when- ;

ever 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 towards 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 washed by waves,
is

and 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 on a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from
Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, north-
1
 ;

2 MOBY DICK; OR
ward. What do you see? —Posted like silent sentinels all around the
town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean rev-

eries. Some leaning against the piles ; some seated upon the pier-heads
some looking over the 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 hound for a dive. Strange Nothing will content them but
!

the extremest limit of the land ;

loiteringunder 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 com-
passes 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 caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor.

Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadi-
est, 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 moun-
tains bathed in their hill-side 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 allwere vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were
fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,
 THE WHITE WHALE 3

when for scores on scores of miles yon wade knee-deep among Tiger-
lilies —what is the one charm wanting? —
Water there is not a drop —
of water there ! Were Niagara bnt 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 pedes-
trian trip to Rockaway Beach ? Why is almost every robust 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 tor-
menting, mild 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
go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and
to
a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, pas-

—
sengers get seasick grow quarrelsome —
don’t sleep of nights do not —
enjoy themselves much, as a general thing; — no, I never go as a passen-
ger; 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 distinc-
tion of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate
all honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
whatsoever. 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 but-
tered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will
speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than
I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon
 !

4 MOBY DICK; OR
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 masthead. True,
they rather order me about, and make me jump from spar to spar, 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 established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers,
or Randolphs, 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 transi-
tion is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and re-
quires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin
and bear But even this wears off in time.
it.

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? Who is not
a slave ? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
order me —however they may thump and punch me about, I have
about
the of knowing
satisfaction that everybody
that it is all right: else is
one way or other served in much the same way— in a physical or either
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 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 moneyed man
enter heaven. Ah how cheerfully we
! consign ourselves to perdition
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome ex-
ercise and pure For as in this world, head
air of the forecastle deck.
winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you
never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the commo-
dore on the quarterdeck gets his atmosphere at secondhand from the sail-
 :

THE WHITE WHALE 5

ors 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 in-
visible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of
me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way
— he can better answer than anyone else. I take it that this part of the
bill of these three mysterious ladies must have run something like this

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.

“whaling voyage by one ishmael.

“BLOODY BATTLE IH AFFGHANISTAH .”

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby 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 cir-
cumstances, 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 unbiassed free-
willand discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself. ’Such a portentous 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
forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Hot ignoring what is
good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be sociable with
it —would they let me — since it is but well to be on friendly terms with
alj the inmates of the place one lodges in.
6 MOBY DICK; OR
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome;
the great floodgates 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 CAKPET-BAG

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked under my

it

arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good
city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in Hew was on a
Bedford. It
Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learn-
ing that the little packet for Hantucket 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 Hew Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it
may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For
my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Hantucket craft,
because there was a fine boisterous something about everything con-
nected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Be-
sides, though Hew Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising

the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Hantucket
is now much behind her, yet Hantucket was her great original the —
Tyre of this Carthage ;
—
the place where the first dead American whale
was stranded. Where else but from Hantucket did those aboriginal
whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the
Leviathan? And where but from Hantucket, too, did that first ad-
venturous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobble-
stones — so goes the story — to throw at the whales, in order to discover
when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit ?

How having a night, a day, and still another night, following before
me in Hew 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 grap-
 —;

THE WHITE WHALE 7

nels I 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 towards the north with the darkness towards 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 and jolly there.
expensive
Farther on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,”
there came such fervent 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, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most
miserable plight. “Too expensive and jolly, again,” thought I, paus-
ing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the
sounds of the tinkling glasses within. “But go on, Ishmael,” said I
at last “don’t you hear ? get away from before the door your patched
; ;

boots are stopping the way.” So on I went. I now by instinct fol-

lowed 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, on either hand,
!

and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about 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 came to a smoky light
proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood in-
vitingly 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 ashbox in the porch. “Ha !” thought I, “ha,” as the flying particles
almost choked me, “are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomor-
rah ? But ‘The Crossed Harpoons,’ and ‘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
8 MOBY DICK; OK
and the preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the
weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. “Ha, Ishmael,” mut-
tered I, backing out, “wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The
!”
Trap’
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of outhanging 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 —Bather ominous
? in that particular 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 wooden house itself looked as if it might have been
little

carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, 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 howl-
ing than ever it did about St. Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, never-
theless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr
any one indoors, with his feet
to
on the hob quietly toasting for bed. “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 window where the frost is all on the out-
from a glass
side, or whether thou observest it from that sashless 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. What a fine
frosty night how Orion glitters what northern lights
; ;
Let them talk !

of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories ;

give me
the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
 THE WHITE WHALE 9

CHAPTER III

THE SPOUTER-INN

Entering that gabled-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,

low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very
large oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that
in the unequal cross-light? by which you viewed it, it was only by
diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful in-
quiry of the neighbours, that you could any way arrive at an under-
standing of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and
shadows, that at you almost thought some ambitious young artist,
first

in the time of the Ne w 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 win-
dow towards 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, por-
tentous, black mass of something hovering 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 was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimagi-
nable sublimity about it you to it, till you involuntarily
that fairly froze
took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting
meant. 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 un- —
natural 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 por-
tentous 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-
Homer in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there
10 MOBY DICK; OR
with its three dismantled masts alone visible ;
and an exasperated whale,
purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of im-
paling himself upon the three mastheads.
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 afterwards 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 was found imbedded in the hump.
at last
Crossing this dusky Imtry, and on through yon low-arched way cut —
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fireplaces 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
farther 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 decan-
ters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, 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
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 11

glasses deceitfully tapered downwards 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 ;
penny more
to this a
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 divers specimens of Shrim-
shander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accom-
modated with a room, received for answer that his house was full not —
a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you
haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye ? I s’pose
you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed ;
that if I should
ever do so,would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and
it

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’s blanket.
“I thought so. All right take a seat. Sup^gr ? you want supper ?
; —
Supper’ll be ready directly.”
I satdown 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 some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an
last
adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland —
no fire at all the landlord —
said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but tw o dismal tallow candles,
T

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 in a most direful manner.
“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty.”
“Landlord,” I whispered, “that ain’t the harpooneer, is it?”
12 MOBY DICK; OR
“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the har-
pooneer 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’ll 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 land-
lord cried, “That’s the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the
morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah,
offing this

boys; now we’ll have the latest news from the Feejees.”
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 watchcoats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,
all bedarned 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. Ho 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 the old fellow mixed* him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses,
which he swore was a sovereign cure for and catarrhs whatso-
all colds
ever, 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 caper-
ing 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
 THE WHITE WHALE «
much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since
the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate
(though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is con-
cerned), 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 reminis-
cences 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 unobserved, 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 “Bulk-
ington Bulkington where’s Bulkington ?” and darted out of the house
! !

in pursuit of him.
It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost super-
naturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon
a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of
the seamen.
Ho 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 sleeptwo in a bed, more than anybody else for sailors no ;

more sleep two in a bed at pea, 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 getting late, and any decent
harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he
 ! I

14 MOBY DICK; OR
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. —
shan’t sleep with him. I’ll 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 —
and I’ll make ye snug enough.”
wait, I say,
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. The shavings flew right and left; till at

last the plane-iron came hump 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 brown study.
in a
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, leav-
ing 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 awakened by the most violent knockings?” It seemed no bad
idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. Bor who could tell but
what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the har-
pooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down
Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spend-

ing a sufferable night unless in some other person’s bed, I began to

 —

THE WHITE WHALE 15

think that, after all, I might he cherishing unwarrantable prejudices

against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, “I’ll wait awhile; he
must he dropping in before long. I’ll 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 hoarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and
threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
“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. “Ho,” he
answered, “generally he’s an early bird — airley to bed and airley to
rise —yes, he’s the bird what catches the worm. — But tonight he went
out a-peddling, you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so late,
unless, may be 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 towering 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.
9
“With heads, to he sure ain’t there too many heads in the world V
;

“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you’d better
stop spinning that yarn to me —
I’m not green.”
“Maybe not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but I
rayther guess you’ll he done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you
a-slanderin’ his head.”
“I’ll break it for him,” said I, now hying 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 going up to him as cool as Mount Hecla in a
I,

snowstorm,
— “landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand
16 MOBY DICK; OR
one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and
want a bed you ;
tell me you me half a one that the other
can only give ;

half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer,

whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying
and exasperating stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feel-
ing towards the man who you design for my bedfellow a sort of con- —
nection, 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 you will be so
in the first place,

good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take
10 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 brought up a lot of ’balmed Hew Zealand
heads (great curios, you know), and he’s sold all on ’em but one, and
that one he’s trying to sell to-night, ’cause to-morrow’s Sunday, and it

would not do to be sellin’ 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 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 can-
nibal business as selling the heads of dead idolaters ?

“Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.”

“He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s getting dread-
ful late, you had better be turning flukes — it’s a nice bed ;
Sal 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
©OK1692S1
i
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 17

loot 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’ll give
ye a glim in a jiffy”; and so saying he lighted a candle and held it
towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when
looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed “I vum Sunday
it’s

you won’t see that harpooneer to-night he’s come to anchor somewhere
—
;

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 washstand 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 fireboard 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 comer; 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 fireplace, and a tall harpoon
standing 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 tried every way possible to
and smelt it,

arrive at some satisfactory conclusion 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, the same as in South American ponchos. But could it be pos-
sible 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
18 MOBY DICK; OR
shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this myste-

rious harpooneer had been wearing it went up in

of a rainy day. I
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 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 harpooneer’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 crock-
ery, 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 Nod, when I
a good thing offing towards the land of
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 infernal
head-pedlar.” 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 towards 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 cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that
moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly
saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 19

his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew
not what to make of this hut 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 adventure. 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 extraor-
dinary effects upon the skin. How, 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 fum-
bling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-

skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the
middle of the room, he then took the Hew Zealand head —a ghastly
thing enough —and crammed down it He now took
into the bag. off

his hat— new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with
a fresh
surprise. There was no hair on head—none speak
his to 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.
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 comprehen-
sion. Ignorance is and being completely non-
the parent of fear,
plussed 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
 ! —

20 MOBY DICK; OR
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 whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian
country. I quaked to think of it. A pedlar 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 and convinced my attention,
me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or
wrapall, or dreadnought, which he had previously hung on a chair, he
fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little de-
formed 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-

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 con-
cluded that must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it
it

proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace, and
removing the papered fireboard, sets up this little hunchbacked image,
like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the
bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fireplace made a
very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards 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 the shavings
into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the
fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to
be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the
biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite
 THE WHITE WHALE 21

offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to
fancy such dry sort of fare at all ;
he never moved his lips. All these
strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from
the devotee, who seemed to he praying in a sing-song or else singing
some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about
in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took
the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego
pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead wood-
cock.
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought was high time,
it

now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which
I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he’ examined the head of it
for an instant, and then holding it to* the light, with his mouth at the
handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco* smoke. The next mo-
ment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk
between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not
help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from
him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he
might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.
But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill com-
prehended my meaning.
“Who-e debel you ?” —he at last said
—“You no speak-e, dam-me, I
kill-e.” And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about

me in the dark.
“Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. “Landlord!
Watch Coffin
!
Angels ! Save me !” !

“Speake-e ! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e !” again growled

the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk

scattered

the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen

would get on

fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the
22 MOBY DICK; OR
room light and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
in hand,
“Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again. “Queequeg here
wouldn’t harm a hair of jour head.”
“Stop jour grinning,” shouted I, “and whj didn’t jou tell me that
infernal harpooneer was a cannibal ?”
“I thought je know’d it ;
— didn’t I tell je, he was a peddlin’ heads
around town ? —But turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look
here —jou sabbee me, I sabbee jou — this man sleepe jou —jou sab-

bee ?”
“Me sabbee plenty” —granted Queequeg, puffing awaj at his pipe
and sitting up in bed.
“You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
throwing the clothes to one side. He reallj did this in not onlj a civil
but a reallj kind and charitable waj. I stood looking at him a mo-
ment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, cornel j look-
ing cannibal. “What’s all this fuss I have been making about,”
thought I to mjself — “the man’s a human being just as I am: he has
just as much reason to fear me as I have to be afraid of him. Better
sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
“Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe,
or whatever jou call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will

turn in with him. But I don’t fancj having a man smoking in bed
with me. It’s dangerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.”
This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politelj
motioned me to get into bed — rolling over to one side as much as to
—
saj “I won’t touch a leg of je.”
“Good-night, landlord,” said I ;
“jou maj go.”
I turned in, and never slept better in mj life.

CHAPTER IY
THE COUNTERPANE

Upon waking next morning about dajlight, I found Queequeg’s arm

thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You
had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of
patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and
 THE WHITE WHALE 23

this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth
of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade owing —
I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and
shade, his shirt-sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times — this
same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that
same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did
when I first awoke, I could hardly from the quilt, they so
tell it

blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight
and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When
I was a remember a somewhat similar circumstance that
child, I well
befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely
settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper
or other —
I think is was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had
seen a sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who,
little

somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to

—
bed supperless, my stepmother dragged me by the legs out of the
chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o’clock in
the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemi-
sphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so upstairs
I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly
as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the
sheets.
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must
elapse before I could hope to get out of bed again. Sixteen hours
in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so
light too; the sun shining in window, and a great rattling of
at the
coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house.
—
I felt worse and worse at last I got up, dressed, and softly going
down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly
threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to
give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but
condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But
she was the and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I
best
had to go to my room. Bor several hours I lay there broad awake,
feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the
greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a
 —

24 MOBY DICK; OR
troubled nightmare of a doze ;
and slowly waking from it —half steeped
in dreams —I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now
wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through
all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard;

but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over

the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phan-
tom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bedside.
For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most
awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand yet ever thinking that ;

if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken.

I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but
waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for
days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding
attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often
puzzle myself with it.

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to
those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’ s pagan
arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events
soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive
to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm
unlock his clasp — yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,
as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to
rouse him —“Queequeg!” —but his only answer was a snore. I then
rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and sud-
denly felt Throwing aside the counterpane, there
a slight scratch.
lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-
faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I ;
abed here in a strange
house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! “Quee-
queg! —
in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length, by
dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon
the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that sort of style,
I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his
arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the
water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me,
and rub-
bing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be
there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about mo
 THE WHITE WHALE 25

seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing

him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly ob-
serving so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made
up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were,
reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain
signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me he would
dress flrst and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole
apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances,
this is a very civilised overture ;
but, the truth is, these savages have
an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how
essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to Quee-
queg, because he treated me with so much civility and consideration,
while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed,
and watching all his toilet motions: for the time my curiosity getting
the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man Queequeg you
like
don’t see every day, he and his ways were well worth unusual re-
garding.
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very
tall one, —
by the bye, and then still minus his trousers, he hunted —
up his boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell,
—
but his next movement was to crush himself boots in hand, and hat
—
on under the bed when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings,
;

I inferred he was hard at work booting himself though by no law of ;

propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when
putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you was a creature in
see,

the transition state — neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just

enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible
manner. His education was not yet completed. He was an under-
graduate. If he had not been a small degree civilised, he very prob-
ably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if
he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting
under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat very
much dented and crushed down over his eyes and began creaking and
limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots,
his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones —
probably not made to order
either— rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off of a
bitter cold morning.
26 MOBY DICK; OR
Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that
the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain
view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure
that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots
on ; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat,
and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He
complied, .and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the
morning any Christian would have washed his face ;
but Queequeg, to
my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up
a piece of hard soap on the washstand centre table, dipped it into water
and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he
kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed
corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it

a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the
wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.
Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Roger’s best cutlery with a venge-
ance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came
to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how
exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept.
The was soon achieved, and he proudly marched
rest of his toilet
out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey-jacket, and
sporting his harpoon like a marshal’s baton.

CHAPTER V
BREAKFAST

I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted

the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards
him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter
of my bedfellow.
However, a good laugh mighty good thing, and rather too scarce
is a
a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own
proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be
backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and he spent
in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 27

about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think
for.

The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping
in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at.
They were nearly whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and
all

third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths,
and harpooneers, and ship keepers a brown and brawny company, with
;

bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey-jackets for

morning-gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.
This young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue,
and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three
days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few
shades lighter you might say a touch of satin wood is in him.
;
In the
complexion of a third still lingers a tropic town, but slightly bleached
withal he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could
;

show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed
like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting
climates, zone by zone.
“Grub, ho !” now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we
went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite
at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always,
though: Ledyard, the great Yew England traveller, and Mungo Park,
the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the
parlour. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledgedrawn
by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty
stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor
Mungo’s performances — this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very
best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part,
that sort of thing is to be had anywhere.
These by the circumstance that
reflections just here are occasioned
after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some
good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man
maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without
the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas
28 MOBY DICK; OR
entire strangers to them — and duelled them dead without winking and ;

yet, here they sat at a — of the same

social breakfast-table all calling,

all of kindred tastes —looking round sheepishly each other

as at as

though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the
Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid
warrior whalemen!
But as for Queequeg —why, Queequeg sat there among them — at the

head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure

I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not
have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon in to breakfast with
him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table
with it, imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the
to the
beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by
him, and every one knows that in most people’s estimation, to do any-
thing coolly is to do it genteelly.
We will not speak ^ of all Queequeg’ s peculiarities here; how he
eschewed coffee and hot rolls,and applied his undivided attention to
beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he with-
drew like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe,
and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his insepara-
ble hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.

CHAPTER VI
THE STREET

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish

an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first

daylight stroll through the streets of Hew Bedford.

In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will fre-
quently offer to view the queerest-looking nondescripts from foreign
parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut Streets, Mediterranean mari-
ners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not
unknown to Lascars and Malays ;
and
Bombay, in the Apollo Green,
at
live Yankees have often scared the natives. But Hew Bedford beats
 THE WHITE WHALE 29

all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you

see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting
at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their
bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feejeeans, Tongatabooars, Erromangoans, Pannan-
gians, and Brighgians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-
craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights
still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this
town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst
for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart
frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe
and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Moun-
tains whence they came. In some things you would think them hut a
few hours old. Look there that chap strutting round the comer. He
!

wears a heaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt

and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou’-wester and a bom-
bazine cloak.
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one —I mean
a downright bumpkin dandy —a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow
histwo acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now
when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a dis-
tinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should
see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeak-
ing his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats ;
straps to his
canvas trousers. Ah poor Hay-seed! how bitterly will hurst those
straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons,
and all, down the throat of the tempest.
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals,
and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford
is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land
would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast
of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten
one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place
to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but
not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not
run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh
eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more
30 MOBY DICK; OR
patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent than in Yew
Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy
scoria of a country?
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder
lofty mansion, and your question will he answered. Yes; all these
brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and
Indian Oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up
hither from the bottom of the sea.
In Yew Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises apiece.
You must go to Yew Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,
they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly
burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see full of fine maples long
;
—
avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful
and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelahra-wise, proffer the passer-by
their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent
is art; which in many a district of Yew Bedford has superinduced
upon the barren refuse rocks.
bright terraces of flowers
And the women of Yew Bedford, they bloom like their own red
roses. But roses only bloom in summer whereas the fine carnation of
;

their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere

match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me
the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them
miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas
instead of the Puritanic sands.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHAPEL

In this same Yew Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and

few are the moody fishermen, shortly hound for the Indian Ocean or
Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I
did not.
Returning from my morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
first

special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driv-
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 31

ing sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth
called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Enter-
ing, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ wives
and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the
shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting
apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and in-
communicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these
silent island's of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble
tablets,with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the
pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not
pretend to quote:

SACRED
To the Memory
of
JOHN TALBOT,
Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard.
Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
November 1st, 1836.
THIS TABLET
Is erected to his Memory
BY HIS SISTER.

SACRED
To the Memory
of
ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
Forming one of the boats’ crews
OF
THE SHIP ELIZA,
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
On the Off-shore Ground in the
PACIFIC,
December 31st, 1839.
THIS MARBLE
Is here placed by their surviving
SHIPMATES.
 ;

32 MOBY DICK; OR
SACRED
To the Memory
of
The late
CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a
Sperm Whale on the coast of J apan,
August 3 d, 1833.
THIS TABLET
Is erected to his Memory
BY
HIS WIDOW.

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated my-
self near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg
near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wonder-
ing gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was
the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance ;
because he
was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading
Whether any of the relatives of
those frigid inscriptions on the wall.
the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congrega-
tion, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the
fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance
if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here
before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of
those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed
afresh.
Oh !
ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass ;
who standing
among flowers can say — here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the
desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in
those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes ! What despair in
those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infi-
delities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all F aith, and refuse resur-
rections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave.
As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included
why is it that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales,
 a

THE WHITE WHALE 33

though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands how

;
it is that
to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so
significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he
but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth ;
why the Life
Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what
eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies an-

tique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago ;

how it is that we still

refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwell-

ing in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the
dead wherefore but the rumour of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a
;

whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
what feelings, on the eve of a Nan-
It needs scarcely to he told, with
tucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light
of that darkened doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had
gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may he thine. But
somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine
chance for promotion, it seems — aye, a stove boat will make me an im-
mortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling —
speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
then ?Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and
Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my
true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are
too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking
that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take
my body who will, take it I say, it is not myself. And therefore three
cheers for Nantucket, and come a stove boat and stove body when they
will, for stave my soul, who can do this ?

CHAPTER VIII

THE PUEPIT

I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable ro-

bustness entered j immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon

34 MOBY DICK; OR
admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it

was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen among whom
he was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer
in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the minis-
try. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy
winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging
into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles,
there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom —the
spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February’s snow. No one
having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold
Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain
engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventur-
ous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he
had not come in his carriage, for his
carried no umbrella, and certainly
tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth
jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the
water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one
by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner:
when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old-fashioned pulpits, was a very lofty one, and since a
it

regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it

seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the
pulpit without stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like
those used in mounting a ship from a boat The wife of a whal-
at sea.
ing captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red wor-
sted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and
stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering
what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halt-
ing for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasp-
ing the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look
upwards, and then with a truly sailorlike but still reverential dexterity,
hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the maintop of his
vessel.

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case

with swinging ones, were of cloth covered rope, only the rounds were
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 35

of wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse

of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,
these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was
not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly
turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the
ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him
impregnable in his little Quebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for
this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and
sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any
mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober
reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolise something un-
seen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies
his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from
outward worldly ties
all

and connections? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of
the world, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-
containing stronghold —a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well
of water within the walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplain’s former seafarings. Between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back
was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy
breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there
floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel’s
face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
ship’s tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into
the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. “Ah, noble ship,” the angel
seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy
helm, for lo ! the sun is breaking through ;
the clouds are rolling off
serenest azure is at hand.”
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea taste that
had achieved the ladder and the picture. was in
Its panelled front

the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a pro-
jecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed
beak.
What could be more full of meaning? — for the pulpit is ever this
 —

36 MOBY DICK; OR
earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads
the world. From thence it is that the storm of God’s quick wrath
is first descried, and the how must bear the earliest brunt. From
thence it is that the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for
favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not
a voyage complete ;
and the pulpit is its prow.

CHAPTER IX
THE SERMON

Father Mapple and in a mild voice of unassuming authority

rose,

ordered the scattered people to condense. “ Starboard gangway, there I

side away to larboard —

larboard gangway to starboard! Midships!
!”
midships
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches,
and a still slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, and all was quiet again,
and every eye on the preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his
large brown hands across and offered
his chest, uplifted his closed eyes,
a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the
bottom of the sea.

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of

a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog in such tones he —
commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner to-
wards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation
and joy—

“The ribs and terrors in the whale,

Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sunlit waves rolled by,
And lift me deepening down to doom.

“I saw the opening maw of hell,

With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell
Oh, I was plunging to despair.
 — —

THE WHITE WHALE 37

“In black distress, I called my God,

When I could scarce believe Him mine,
He bowed His ear to my complaints
Ho more the whale did me confine.

“With speed He flew to my relief,

As on a radiant dolphin bore;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.

“My songs for ever shall record

That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power.”

Hearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above
the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly
turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down
upon the proper page, said: “Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse
of the first chapter of Jonali —‘And God had prepared a great fish to
swallow up Jonah.’
“Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters four yarns —
is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.
Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sea line sound! what
a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet ! What a noble thing is that
canticle in the fish’s belly! How
and boisterously grand!
billow-like
We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy
bottom of the waters; seaweed and all the slime of the sea is about
us! But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches! Ship-
mates, it is a two-stranded lesson ;
a lesson to us all as sinful men, and
a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson
to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly
awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally
the deliverance and joy of Jonah. among men, the
As with all sinners
sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command
—
of God never mind now what that command was, or how conveyed
which he found a hard command. But all the things that God would
—
have us do are hard for us to do remember that and hence, He —
oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade. And if we obey
 ;;

38 MOBY DICK; OR
God, we must disobey ourselves ;
and it is in this disobeying ourselves,
wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

“With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts

at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by
men will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only
the Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa,
bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto
seeks a ship that’s
unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been
no other city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opinion of learned
men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates ? Cadiz is in Spain as far by ;

water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient
days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa,
the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Medi-
terranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand
miles to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar.
See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from
God Miserable man Oh most contemptible and worthy of all scorn
! ! !

with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling
among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So
disordered, self-condemning is his look; that had there been policemen
in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had
been arrested ere he touched a dock. How plainly he’s a fugitive!
Ho baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag —no friends accompany
him to the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging
search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo
and as he steps on board to see its captain in the cabin, all the sailors for
the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s evil
eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confi-
dence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the
man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome
but still serious way, one whispers to the other — Mack, he’s robbed a
widow’; or, ‘Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist’; ‘Harry lad,
or,

I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,
one of the missing murderers from Sodom.’ Another runs to read the
bill that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is
moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a
parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 39

looksfrom J onah to the bill while all his sympathetic shipmates now
;

crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted
Jonah trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks
so much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected
but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it and when
;

the sailors find him not to he the man that is advertised, they let him
pass, and he descends into the cabin.
u ‘Who’s there ?’
cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs ‘Who’s there ?’ — Oh how that harm- !

less question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee
again. But he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in the ship to Tarshish;
how soon sail ye, sir?’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up
to J onah, though the man now stands before him hut no
;
sooner does he
hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinising glance. ‘We sail
with the next coming tide,’ at last he slowly answered, still intently eye-
ing him. —
‘Ho sooner, sir?’ ‘Soon enough for any honest man that
goes a passenger.’ Ha! Jonah! that’s another stab. But he swiftly
calls away the Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll sail with ye,’ —he says,
— ‘the passage money, how much is that? — I’ll pay now.’ For it is

particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be over-

looked in this history, ‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere the craft did
sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
“How Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was. one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In
this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and with-
out a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

So Jonah’s Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah’s purse, ere

he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it’s
assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive but at ;

the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold.
Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still
molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Hot
a forger, any way, he mutters and Jonah is put down for his passage.
;

‘Point out my state-room, sir,’ says Jonah now, ‘I’m travel-weary;

I need sleep.’ ‘Thou look’st like it,’ says the Captain, ‘there’s thy
room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains
no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs
40 MOBY DICK; OR
lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts’
cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty
as he Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-
is,

room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and
Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the
ship’s water-line, Jonah finds the heralding presentiment of that sti-
fling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels’
wards.
“Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly os-

cillates in Jonah’s room ;

and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf
with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all,

though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with

reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it

but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The
lamp alarms and frightens Jonah as lying in his berth his tormented
;

eyes roll around the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds
no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp
more and more appalls him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are
all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight
upward, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crooked-
ness !’

“Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still

reeling, but with- conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of

the Roman racehorse but so much the more strike his steel tags into
him ;
as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy
anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and
at last amid the whirl of woe he feels a deep stupor steal over him,
as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and
there’s naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth,
Jonah’s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to
sleep.
“And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables;
and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all
careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of
recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels;
he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the
ship is like to break. But now when tKe boatswain calls all hands to
 THE WHITE WHALE 41

lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are tumbling overboard; when
the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank
thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in all this raging
tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and
raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he
the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is
cleaving the seas -after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down
into the sides of the ship — have taken it,
a berth in the cabin as I
and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and
shrieks in his ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper! arise!’
dead ear,
Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his
feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the

sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leap-

ing over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and
finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners
come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon
shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness over-
head, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward,
but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep.
“Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his
cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The
sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of
him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter
to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this
great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah’s; that discovered,
then how furiously they mob him with their questions. ‘What is thine
occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people?’
But mark now, my shipmates, the behaviour of poor J onah. The eager
mariners but ask him who he and where from; whereas, they not
is,

only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer

to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from
Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
“ ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he cries — —
and then ‘I fear the Lord the God
of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!’ Fear him, O
Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straight-
way, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mari-
ners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when
42 MOBY DICK; OR
J onah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew
the darkness of his —
deserts, when wretched Jonah cries out to them
to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake
this great tempest was upon them ;
they mercifully turn from him, and
seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant
gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with
the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
“And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the
sea when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the
;

sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterful
commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething
into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his
ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah
prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly. But observe his prayer,
and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep
and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punish-
ment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself
with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look to-
wards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful
repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.
And how God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the
pleasing to
eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I
do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sins, hut I do
place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not but if you ;

do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah.”

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
when describing Jonah’s sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell his tossed arms seemed
;

the warring elements at work and the thunders that rolled away from
;

off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his

simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.
There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the
leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with
closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with his God.
But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head
 THE WHITE WHALE 43

lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake

these words:
“Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you ;
both his hands
press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may he mine the
lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still
more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly
would I come down from this masthead and sit on the hatches there
where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me
that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot
of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of
true things, and hidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths
in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he
should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and
his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish
he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale,
and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantr
ings tore him along ‘into the midst of the seas/ where the eddying depths
sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘the weeds were wrapped
about his head/ and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Y$t
—
even then beyond the reach of any plummet ‘out of the belly of hell’
— when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost hones, even then,
God heard the engulfed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God
spake unto the and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the
fish ;

sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun,

and all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon
the dry land’ when the word of the Lord came a second time and
; ;

—
Jonah, bruised and beaten his ears, like two sea-shells, still multi-
—
tudinously murmuring of the ocean Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding.
And what was that, shipmates ? To preach the truth to the face of
Falsehood! That was it!

“This, shipmates, this is that other lesson ;

and woe to that pilot of

the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms
from Gospel duty Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters
!

when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to
please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more
to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not
dishonour! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be
 —

44 MOBY DICK; OR
false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul
!”
has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment then ;
lifting
his face to them
showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out
again,
—
with a heavenly enthusiasm, “But oh shipmates on the starboard ! !

hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that
delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the maintruck
higher than the keelson is low ? Delight is to him— a far, far upward,
and inward delight —who against the proud gods and commodores of
this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him
whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treach-
erous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives
no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though
he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,
— top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but
the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him,
whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can
never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight
and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say
with his final breath O Father — —
chiefly known to me by Thy rod
!

mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than

to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity
to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his
God?”
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction covered his face
with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had de-
parted, and he was left alone in the place.

CHAPTER X
A BOSOM FRIEND

Returning from the Chapel, I found Queequeg

to the Spouter-Inn
there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction
some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on
the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that
little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife
 THE WHITE WHALE 45

gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in

his heathenish way.
But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon,
going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap
began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth
—
page as I fancied stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him,
and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgle whistle of astonishment.
He would then begin at the next fifty; commence at num-
seeming to
ber one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and
it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together,

that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.

With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was,
—
and hideously marred about the face at least to my taste his counte- —
nance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable.
You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I
thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large,
deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that
would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain
lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not
altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and
never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being
shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and
looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture
to decide ;
was his head was phrenologically an excellent
but certain it

one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Wash-

ington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same
long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which
were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly
wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically
developed.
Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile
to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my
presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance but ;

appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous

book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the
night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had
found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this in-
46 MOBY DICK; OR
difference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings at times ;

you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are over-
awing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wis-
dom. I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or hut
very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances
whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his ac-
quaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet upon second
thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man
some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn that
is — —
which was the only way he could get there thrown among people
as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he
seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content
with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this
was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard
there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers,
we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon
as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher,
I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have “broken
his digester.”
As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in
that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it

then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms
gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary

twain ;
the storm booming without in solemn swells ;
I began to be sen-
sible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. Ho more my
splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish
world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very
indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilised hy-
pocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights
to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him.
And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were
the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought

I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew

my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing
my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these
advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospi-
talities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 47

I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little

complimented.
We then turned over the book together, and I endeavoured to ex-
plain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few
pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest ;
and from
that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer
sights to be seen in this
famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke
and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff.
And there we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keep-
ing it regularly passing between us.
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s
breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed and left
it out,
us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly
as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead
against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we
were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom
friends he would gladly die for me, if need should be.
;
In a country-
man, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too pre-
mature, a thing to be much distrusted ;
but in this simple savage those
old rules would not apply.
After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
together. He made me embalmed head; took out his
a present of his
enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some
thirty dollars in silver then spreading them on the table, and mechani-
;

cally dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards
me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he si-
lenced me by pouring them into my trousers’ pockets. I let them stay.
He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed
the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he
seemed anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to
follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would
comply or otherwise.
I was a good Christian ;
bom and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolater
in worshipping his piece of wood ? But what is worship ? thought I.

But what is worship ? to — do the will of God — that is worship. And

what is the will of God? — to do to my fellowman what I would have
48 MOBY DICK; OR
my fellowman to do to me— that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg
is my fellowman. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do
to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of
worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I
must turn So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the
idolater.
innocent little idol offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg salaamed
; ;

before him twice or thrice kissed his nose and that done, we undressed
; ;

and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.
But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.
How it is I know not ;
but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the
very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie
;

and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, lay I and
—
Queequeg a cosy, loving pair.

CHAPTER XI
NIGHTGOWN

We had and napping at short intervals,

lain thus in bed, chatting
when, at last, by reason of our confabulations what little nappishness
remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again,
though daybreak was yet some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent posi-
tion began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found our-
selves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against
the headboard with our four knees drawn up close together, and our
two noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans.
We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of
doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in
the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth,
some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this
world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in
itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and
have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable
any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your
nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed,
in general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably
 ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 49

warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished

with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For
the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket
between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then
there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
He had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when
all at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets,
whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way
of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the
snugness of being in bed because no
: man can ever feel his own identity
aright except his eyes he closed ;
as if darkness were indeed the proper
element of our essences, though light he more congenial to our clayey
part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant
and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the
unilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable re-

vulsion. Uor did I at all from Queequeg that per-

object to the hint
haps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake
and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his
tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance
to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff
prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them. For now I liked
nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, be-
cause he seemed to he full of such serene household joy then. I no
more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of insurance. I
was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing
a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn
about our shoulders, we now passed the tomahawk from one to the
other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke,
illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away
to far distant scenes, I know not, hut he now spoke of his native island
and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He
gladly complied. Though at the time I but illcomprehended not a
few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more
familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the

whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.

 —

50 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER XII
BIOGRAPHICAL

Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West

and South. It is not any map true places never are.
down in ;

When a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands

in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg’ s ambitious soul, lurked a strong de-
sire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler

or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High
Priest and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives
;

of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins

royal stuff ;
though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity
he nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbour ship visited his father’s hay, and Queequeg sought
a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement
of seamen, spurned his suit and not all the King his father’s influence
;

could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he

paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through
when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the
other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew
out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets,
with prow seaward, he sat down in the stem, paddle low in hand;
its

and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained
her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his
canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length
upon the deck, grappled a ring-holt there, and swore not to let it go,
though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended
a cutlass over his naked wrists Queequeg was the son of a King, and
;

Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his

wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told
him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage
this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captain’s cabin. They put
him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like
the Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Quee-
 —

the white whale 51

queg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain

the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom
so he told me —
he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the
Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they
were ;
and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas ! the
practices ofwhalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could
be both miserable and wicked infinitely more so than all his father’s
;

heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour; and seeing what the
sailors did there; and then going on to Uantucket, and seeing how they
spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for
lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians ;
I’ll die a pagan.
And thus an old idolater at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer
ways about him, though now some time from home.
By him whether he did not propose going hack, and
hints, I asked
having a coronation since he might now consider his father dead and
;

gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered
no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather
Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne
of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would
return, —
as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce,
however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four
oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron
was in lieu of a sceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his
future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation.
Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own
and informeddesign,
him of my intention to sail out of Hantucket, as being the most promis-
ing port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once
resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel,

get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in
short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip
into the pot-luck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for
besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced
harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one,
who, me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling,
like
though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen.
 ,

52 MOBY DICK; OR
His story being ended with dying puff, Queequeg em-
his pipe’s last
braced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the
light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon

were sleeping.

CHAPTER XIII

WHEELBARROW

Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a

barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, how-
ever, my comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the
boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had
sprung up between me and Queequeg — especially as Peter Coffin’s
cock-and-bull stories had previously so much alarmed me about him.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including
my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’ s canvas sack and hammock,
away we went down to the Moss the little Nantucket packet schooner
moored at the wharf. As we were going along the people stared ;
not at
Queequeg so much —for they were used to seeing cannibals like him
in their streets, —but at seeing him and me upon such confidential
terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by
turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on
his harpoon barbs. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome
thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find
their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that though
what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for
his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a
mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In
short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’

—
meadows armed with their own scythes though in no wise obliged to
—
furnish them even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, pre-
ferred his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my
hand to his, he told me a funny story
about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbour.
The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry
his heavy chest to his boarding-house. Not to seem ignorant about
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 53

the thing —though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise
way in which to manage the barrow —Queequeg puts
upon his chest
it lashes it fast and then shoulders the harrow and marches up the
; ;

wharf. “Why,” said I, “Queequeg, you might have known better than
that, one would think. Didn’t the people laugh ?”
Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of
Kokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water
of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl;
and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the
braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant
ship once touched at Kokovoko, and i»ts commander —from all accounts,
a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain — this
commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a
pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding
guests were assembled at the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain
marches and being assigned the post of honour, places himself over
in,

against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his Majesty
the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being said for those people have —
their grace as well as we —
though Queequeg told me that unlike us,
who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary,
copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts
grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the im-

.
memorial ceremony of the island that : is, dipping his consecrated and
consecrating fingers into the howl before the blessed beverage circulates.
Seeing himself placed next to the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and
thinking himself —being Captain of a ship — as having plain precedence
over a mere King, especially in the King’s own house —the Captain
coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl ;
—taking it I sup-
pose for a huge finger-glass. “How,” said Queequeg, “what you tink
now ? —Didn’t our people laugh ?”

At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on hoard the

schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one
side, Hew Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees

all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks
on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-
wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last while from ;

others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of

54 MOBY DICK; OR
fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were
on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only be-
gins a second and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for
;

ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of
all earthly effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the
little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his

snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air !

—how I spurned that turn-
pike earth !
— that common highway all over dented with the marks
of slavish heels and hoofs and turned me to admire the magnanimity
;

of the sea which will permit no records.

At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with
me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart he showed his filed and pointed
;

teeth. On, on we flew ;

and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to
the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan.
Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like
a wire the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes.
;

So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bow-
sprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the
passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow-be-
ings should be so companionable; as though a white man were any-
thing more dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some
boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have
come from the heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one
of these young saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought
the bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the
brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous
dexterity and strength sent him high up bodily into the air; then
slightly tapping his stem in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with
bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon
him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.
“Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running towards that offi-
cer; “Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.”
“Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking
up Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that
to ? Don’t you
know you might have killed that chap ?”
“What him say ?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
 THE WHITE WHALE 55

“He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there, point-
ing to the still shivering greenhorn.
“Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into ah unearthly
expression of disdain; “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e
so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!”
“Look you,” roared the Captain, “I’ll kill-e you you can- ,

nibal, if you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your
eye.”
But it so happened was nigh time for the Captain
just then, that it

tomind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the mainsail had
parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from
side to side, completely sweeping the entire afterpart of the deck. The
poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept over-
board all hands were in a panic and to attempt snatching at the boom
; ;

to stay it, seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again,
almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point
of snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed
capable of being done those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood
;

eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale.

In the midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his
knees, and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a
rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like
a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the
next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The
schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away
the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side
with a long living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was
seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before
him, and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing
foam. I looked at the grand and glorious fellow, hut saw no one to
be saved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpen-
dicularly from the water, Queequeg now took an instant’s glance around
him, and seeming to see just how matters were, dived down and dis-
appeared. A few minutes more, and he rose again, one arm still
striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form. The boat
soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands
yoted Queequeg a noble trump ;
the Captain begged his pardon. From
 ;

56 MOBY DICK; OR
that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Quee-
queg took his last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think
that he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous
Societies. —
He only asked for water fresh water something to wipe —
the brine off that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and lean-
;

ing against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed
to be saying to himself
— “It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all merid-
ians. We cannibals must help these Christians.”

CHAPTER XIV
NANTUCKET

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so,

after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.

Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real
corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore,

more lonely than the Eddystone Lighthouse. Look at it a mere hil- —

lock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is
more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute
for blotting-paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have
to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Can-
ada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a
leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about
like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools
before their houses, to get Under the shade in summer time; that one
blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie
that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snowshoos;
that they are so shut up, belted about, every way enclosed, surrounded,
and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and
tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of
sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no
Illinois.

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was
settled by the red men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle
swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant
 ! ;

THE WHITE WHALE 57

Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw the child borne
out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same
direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they dis-
covered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket, —the
poor little Indian’s skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, horn on a beach, should
take to the sea for a livelihood ! They first caught crabs and quohogs
in the sands
;
grown holder, they waded out with nets for mackerel
more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and, at
last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery

world ;
put an incessant belt of circumnavigation round it peeped in at
:

Behring’s Straits.; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting
war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood most ;

monstrous and most mountainous That Himmalehan, salt-sea Masto- !

don, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his

very panics are more to he dreaded than his most fearless and malicious
assaults
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea-hermits, issuing
from and conquered the watery world
their ant-hill in the sea, overrun
like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic,
Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let
America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the
English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from
the sun; two-thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s.
For the sea is Emperors own empires; other seamen
his; he owns it, as
having hut a right of way through it. Merchant ships are hut exten-
sion bridges armed ones hut floating forts even pirates and privateers,
; ;

though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder
other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking
to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer,
he alone resides and riots on the sea he alone, in Bible language, goes
;

down to it in ships ;
to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.
There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would
not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He
lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the
waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years
he knows not the land ;
so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like
58 MOBY DICK; OR
another world, more strangely than the moon would an Earthsman.
to

With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to
sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of
land, furls his sails,and lays him to his rest, while under his very
pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.

CHAPTER XV
CHOWDER

It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to
anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore ;
so we could attend to no busi-
ness that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of
the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the
Twy Pots, whom he asserted to he the proprietor of one of the best kept
hotels in all Nantucket,and moreover he had assured us that Cousin
Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he
plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at
the Twy Pots. But the direction he had given us about keeping a
yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to
the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a
corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first

man we met where the place was : these crooked directions of his very
much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted
that the yellow warehouse —our first —
point of departure must be left
on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say it
was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in the
dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire
the way, we at' last came to something which there was no mistaking.
Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses’
ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old topmast, planted in front of

an old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the
other side, so that this old topmast looked not a little like a gallows.
Perhaps I was oversensitive to such impressions at the time, but I
could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort
of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns yes, ;
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 59

two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It’s ominous, thinks
I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port;
tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel and here a gallows
;

and a pair of prodigious black pots too ! Are these last throwing out
oblique hints touching Tophet ?
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman
with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn,
under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured
eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen
shirt.

“Get along with ye,” said she to the man, “or I’ll be combing ye !”
“Come on, Queequeg,” said I, “all right. There’s Mrs. Hussey.”
And turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but
so it

leaving Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs.

Upon making known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey,
postponing further scolding for the present ushered us into a little
room, and seating us a,t a table spread with the relics of a recently
concluded repast, turned round to us and said — “Clam or Cod ?”

“What’s that about Cods, ma’am?” said I, with much politeness.

“Clam or Cod ?” she repeated.
“A clam for supper ? a cold clam what you mean, Mrs. Hus-
;
is that
sey ?” says I “but that’s a rather cold and clammy reception in the
;

winter time, ain’t it, Mrs. Hussey ?”

But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing

but the word “clam,” Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading
to the kitchen, and bawling out “clam for two,” disappeared.
“Queequeg,” said I, “do you think that we can make out a supper for
us both on one clam ?”
However, a warm savoury steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chow-
der came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet
friends ! harken to me. was made of small juicy clams, scarcely
It
bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted
pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and
plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being
sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his
 ,

60 MOBY DICK; OR
favourite fishy food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly
excellent, with great expedition: when leaning back
we despatched it

a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey’s clam and cod announce-

ment, I thought I would try a little experiment. Stepping to the
kitchen door, I uttered the word “cod” with great emphasis, and re-
sumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury steam came forth again,
but with a different flavour, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was
placed before us.
We resumed business and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks
;

I to myself, I wonder now if this has any effect on the head ? What’s
that stultifying s'aying about chowder-headed people ? “But look, Quee-
queg, ain’t that a live eel in your bowl ? Where’s your harpoon ?”
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Twy Pots, which well deserved its

name ;
Chowder for
for the pots there were always boiling chowders.
breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you
began to look for fishbones coming through your clothes. The area be-
fore the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a pol-
ished necklace of codfish vertebrae; and Hosea Hussey had his account
books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavour to
the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning
happening to taka a stroll along the beach among some fishermen’s
boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and march-
ing along the sand with each foot in a cod’s decapitated head, looking
very slipshod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hus-
sey concerning the nearest way to bed ;
but, as Queequeg was about to
precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arms, and demanded
his harpoon ;
she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. “Why not ?”
said I ;
“every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon —but why not !”

“Because it’s “Ever since young Stiggs coming

dangerous,” says she.
from that unfort’nt v’y’ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half,
with only three barrels of ile was found dead in my first floor back, with
his harpoon in his side ever since then I allow no boarders to take sich
;

dangerous weapons in their rooms a-night. So, Mr. Queequeg” (for she
learned his name), “I will just take this here iron, and keep it for you
till morning. But the chowder clam or cod to-morrow
;
for breakfast,
men ?”
 THE WHITE WHALE «i

“Both,” says I a and

: let’s have a. couple of smoked herring by way
of variety.”

CHAPTER XVI
THE SHIP

Ih bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and
no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand that he had been
diligently consulting Yojo —
the name of his black little god and Yojo —
had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it every
way, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in har-
bour, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo
earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly with
me, inasmuch as Yojo proposed befriending us ;
and, in order to do so,

had already pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael,

should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it had turned
out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship myself, for
the present irrespective of Queequeg.
I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed
great confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s judgment and surprising
forecast of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as
a

rather good sold of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole,

but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.

this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching the selection
How,
of our craft ; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little relied

upon Queequeg’s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry us
and our fortunes securely; but as all my remonstrances produced no
effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and
accordingly pre-

pared to set about this business with a determined rushing sort of energy
and vigour, that should quickly settle that trifling little affair.
Hext morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our little
—
bedroom for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or
day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo
that

day; how it was I never could find out, for, though I applied myself to

several times, I never could master his religion

leaving Queequeg,
it

then, fasting on his tomahawk-pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his

 , , , , —

62 MOBY DICK; OR
sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied outamong the shipping. After
much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that
there were three ships up for three-years’ voyages the Devil-dam the —
Tit-bit and the Pequod. Devil-dam I do not know the origin of; Tit-
bit is obvious; Pequod you will no doubt remember, was the name of
,

a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient

Medes. I peered and pryed about the Devil-dam: from her, hopped
over to the Tit-bit; and, finally, going on hoard the Pequod looked
around her for a moment, and then decided that this was the very ship
for us.
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I
know; —square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-hox
galliots,and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such
a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod . She was a ship of the
old school, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed
look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons
and calms of all four oceans, her old hull’s complexion was darkened
like a French grenadier’s, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia.
Her venerable hows looked bearded. Her masts cut somewhere bn —
the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a
gale —her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings
of Cologne. Her worn and wrinkled, like the
ancient decks were
pilgrim-worshipped flagstone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket
bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were added new and mar-
vellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for more than
half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her
chief mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and now
a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the Pequod ,

this old Peleg, during the term of his chiefmateship, had built upon
her original grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness
both of material and device, unmatched by anything except it be
Thorkhill-Hake’s carved buckler or bedstead. She was apparelled like
any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of
polished ivory. —
She was a thing of trophies a cannibal of a craft,
tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round,
her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous
jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 63

pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews
ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled through
sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend
helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass,
curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary
foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like
the Tartar, when he holds hack his fiery steed by clutching its jaw.
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy All noble things are
!

touched with that.

Now when* I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having
authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage,
at first Isaw nobody; but I eould not well overlook a strange sort of
tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a- little behind the mainmast. It
seemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical
shape, some ten feet high ;
consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber
black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the
right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of
these slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at
the apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved
to and fro like the top-knot on some old Pottowattamie Sachem’s head.
A triangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship so that the
insider commanded a complete view forward.
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one
who by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon,
and the work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the
ship’s
burden of command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair,
wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was
formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the
wigwam was constructed.
There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance
of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old
seamen, and heavily rolled up in pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style;
only there was a fine and almost microscopic network of the minutest
wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his
continual sailings in many hard and always looking to windward
gales,

— for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together.
Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.
64 MOBY DICK; OR
“Is this the Captain of the PequodV ’
said I, advancing to the door
of the tent.
“Supposing it be the Captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want
of him ?” he demanded.
“I was thinking of shipping.”
“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer —ever been
in a stove boat ?”
“No, sir, I never have.”
9
“Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh V
“Nothing, sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been
”
several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that
“Marchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost
see that leg ? — I’ll take that leg. away from thy stern, if ever thou
talkest of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service, in-

deed ! I suppose now ye proud of having served in

feel considerable
those marchant ships. But flukes man, what makes thee want to go
!

a- whaling, eh ? —
it looks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh ? Hast not —
been a pirate, hast thou ? —Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou ?

—Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to .sea?”
I protested my saw that under the
innocence of these things. I
mask of these half-humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an in-
sulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and
rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod
or the Vineyard.
“But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I
think of shipping ye.”
“Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.”
“Want to see what whaling is, eh ? Have ye clapped eye on Captain
Ahab ?”
“Who is Captain Ahab, sir?”
“Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship.”
“I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain
himself.”
“Thou ail; speaking to Captain Peleg that’s who ye are speaking —
to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the
Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, in-
cluding crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going
 ,

THE WHITE WHALE 65

to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do,
I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it,

past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou
wilt find that he has only one leg.”
“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?”
“Lost by a whale ! Young man, come nearer to me : it was de-
voured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever
chipped a boat! ah, ah!” —
I was a little alarmed about his energy, perhaps also a little touched
at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly
as I could, “What you say is no doubt true enough, sir ;
hut how could
I know was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale,
there
though indeed I might have inferred as much from the simple fact
of the accident.”
“Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d’ye see;
thou dost not talk shark a bit. Sure ye’ve been to sea before now;
sure of that?”
“Sir,” said I, “I thought I told you that I had been four voyages
in the merchant ”

“Hard down out of that ! Mind what I said about the marchant
service — don’t aggravate me —I won’t have
But let us understand
it.

each other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye
yet feel inclined for it?”
“I do, sir.”

“Very good. How, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a
!”
live whale’s throat, and then jump after it ? Answer, quick
“I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so ;
not to be
got rid of, that is; which I don’t take to he the fact.”
“Good again. How then, thou not only wantest to go a- whaling,
to find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in
order to see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so.
Well then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the weather-
bow, and then back to me and tell me what ye see there.”
Lor a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not
knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest.
But concentrating all his crow’s feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg
started me on the errand.
 —

66 MOBY DICK; OR
Going forward and glancing over the weather-how, I perceived that
the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely
pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, hut
exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that
I could see.
“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came back; “what did
ye see?”
—
“Not much,” I replied “nothing hut water; considerable horizon
though, and there’s a squall coming up, I think.”
“Well, what dost thou think then of seeing the world ? Dio ye wish
to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can’t ye see the
world where you stand?”
I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would and ;

the Pequod was as good a ship as any —

I thought the best and all —
this I now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed
his willingness to ship me.
“And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he added
“come along with ye.” And so saying, he led the way below deck into
the cabin.
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon
and surprising figure. It turned out to he Captain Bildad, who along
with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the
other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a
crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery
wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of
plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their
money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved
state stocks bringing in good interest.
Now, Bildad, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was
like Peleg,

a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and
to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure
the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modi-
fied by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these
same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-
hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a ven-
geance.
So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with
 THE WHITE WHALE 67

Scripture names— singularly common fashion on

a the island — and
in childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of
the Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless
adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these unout-
grown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy
a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when
these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with
a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness
and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and
beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think
untraditionally and independently ;
receiving all nature’s sweet or
savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and con-
fiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental
advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language — that man
makes one in a whole nation’s census —a
mighty pageant creature,
formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him,

dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he

have what seems a half wilful over-ruling morbidness at the bottom
of his nature. For all men tragically great are made so through a
certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal
greatness is but disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an
one, but with quite another; and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar,
it only results again from another phase of the Quaker, modified by
individual circumstances.
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whale-
man. But unlike Captain Peleg —who cared not to rush for what was
called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things
the veriest of all trifles —Captain Bildad had not only been originally
educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but
all his subsequent ocean and the sight of many unclad, lovely is-
life,

—
land creatures, round the Horn all that had not moved this native
born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his
vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common

consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from con-

scientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself
had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn
foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled
68 MOBY DICK; OR
tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative
evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the
reminiscence, I do not know but ;
it did not seem to concern him much,
and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible con-
clusion that a man’s religion is one thing, and this practical world
quite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a little
cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a
broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boatheader, chief
mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted be-
fore, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from
active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining
days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income.
How Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an incor-
rigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard taskmaster.
They told me in Hantucket, though it certainly seems a curious story,
that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew upon arriving
home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted
and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was
certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used to
swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inor-
dinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When
Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking
at you,made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch some-
—
thing a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at some-
thing or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished
from before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his
utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare
flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap
to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.

Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when
I followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the
decks was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always
sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-
brim was placed beside him ;
his legs were stiffly crossed ;
his drab ves-
ture was buttoned up and spectacles on nose, he seemed
to his chin;
absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.
“Bildad,” cried Captain Peleg, “at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have
 THE WHITE WHALE 69

been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my
certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?”
As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,
Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up,
and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.
“He says he’s our man, Bildad,” said Peleg, “he wants to ship.”
“Host thee?” said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round
to me.
“I dost” said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.
“What do ye think of him, Bildad ?” said Peleg.
“He’ll do,” said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away
at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible.
I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as
Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I
said nothing, only looking round me sharply. Peleg now threw open
and drawing forth the ship’s articles, placed pen and ink before
a chest,
him, and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was high
time to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage
for the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they
paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain
shares of the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned
to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the
ship’s company. I was also aware that being a green hand at whSing,
my own lay would not be very large ;
but considering that I was used
to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no
doubt that from all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th
lay — that is the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage,
whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay
was what they call a rather long lay, yet it was better than nothing;
and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing
I would wear out on it, not to speak of my three years’ beef and board,
for which I would not have to pay one stiver.
It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a
princely fortune —
and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am
one of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite
content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am put-

ting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud* Upon the whole, I
 , ,

70 MOBY DICK; OR
thought that the 275th lay would he about the fair thing, but would
not have been surprised had I been offered the 200th, considering I
was of a broad-shouldered make.
But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had
heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony
Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod
therefore the other andmore inconsiderable and scattered owners, left
nearly the whole management of the ship’s affairs to these two. And
I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty
deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on
board the Pequod quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his
Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying
to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small sur-
prise, considering that he was such an interested party in these pro-
ceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself
out of his book. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth ”

“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye say, what

lay shall we young man ?”
give this
“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the seven hundred
and seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, would it ? ‘where moth and —
’ ”
rust do corrupt, but lay
Lay, indeed, thought and such a lay! the seven hundred and
I,

seventy-seventh Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one,
!

shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do corrupt.
It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed and though from the mag-
;

nitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slight-
est consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy-
seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a teenth
of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-
seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and
seventy-seven gold doubloons and so I thought at the time.
;

“Why, blast your eyes, Bildad,” cried Peleg, “thou dost not want
to swindle this young man! he must have more than that.”
“Seven hundred and seventy-seven,” again said Bildad, without
 THE WHITE WHALE W
lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling— “for where your treas-
ure is, there will your heart be also.”
“I am
going to put him down for the three hundredth,” said Peleg,
“do ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say.”
Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
“Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the
duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship widows and orphans, —
—
many of them and that if we too abundantly reward the labours of
this young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and
those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain
Peleg.”
“Thou, Bildad!” roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about
the cabin. “Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice
in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about
that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed
round Cape Horn.”
“Captain Peleg,” said Bildad steadily, “thy conscience may be
drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can’t tell; but as thou
art stillan impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy
conscience be but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee founder-
ing down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg.”
“Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing,
ye insult me. It’s an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature
that he’s bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again
to me, and start my soul-bolts, but I’ll — —
I’ll yes, I’ll swallow a live
goat with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting,
drab-coloured son of a —
wooden gun a straight wake with ye !”
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a
marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.
Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up
all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily
commanded, I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad,
who I made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the
awakened wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down again
on the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest
72 MOBY DICK; OR
intention of withdrawing. He
seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg
and his ways. As for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had,
there seemed no more left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb,
though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated. “Whew!”
he whistled at last
— “the squall’s gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad,
thou used to he good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen, will
ye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone. That’s he; thank ye,
Bildad. How then, my young man, Ishmael’s thy name, didn’t ye
say? Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth
lay.”
“Captain Peleg,” said I, “I have a friend with me who wants to
ship too — shall I bring him down to-morrow?”
“To be sure,” said Peleg. “Fetch him along, and we’ll look at
him.”
“What lay does he want?” groaned Bildad, glancing up from the
book in which he had again been burying himself.
“Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad,” said Peleg. “Has he
ever whaled it any?” turning to me.
“Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg.”
“Well, bring him along then.”
And, after signing the papers, off I went nothing doubting hut that ;

I had done a good morning’s work, and that the Pequod was the identical
ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the
Cape.
But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the
captain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though,
indeed, in many cases, a whale ship will be completely fitted out,
and receive all her crew on hoard, ere the captain makes himself
visible by arriving to take command. For sometimes these voyages
are so prolonged, and the short intervals at home so exceedingly brief,
that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of
that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port,
but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is

always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing

yourself into his hands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg, in-
quiring where Captain Ahafc was to bq fo\md.
 , — ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 73

“And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab ? It’s all right enough
thou art shipped.”
“Yes, but I should like to see him.”
“But I don’t think thou wilt be able to at present. I don’t know
exactly what’s the matter with him but he keeps close inside the
;

house; a sort of sick, and yet he don’t look so. In fact, he ain’t sick;
but no, he isn’t well either. Anyhow, young man, he won’t always
see me, so I don’t suppose he will thee. He’s a queer man, Captain
Ahab — some think
so —but a good one. Oh, thou’lt like him well
enough; no fear, no fear. He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man,
Captain Ahab ;
doesn’t speak much ;
but, when he does speak, then
you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the
common ;
Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ’mong the cannibals
been used td deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in
mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! ay, the keenest and
the surest that out of all our isle ! Oh ! he ain’t Captain Bildad ;
no,
and he ain’t Captain Peleg; lies Ahab boy, and Ahab of old, thou
!”
knowest, was a crowned king
“And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs,
did they not lick his blood ?”
“Come hither to me — hither, hither,” said Peleg, with a significance
in his eye that almost startled me. “Look ye, lad; never say that on
board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not
name himself. ’Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed
mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the
old squaw Tistig, at Gay Head, said that the name would somehow
prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the
same. I wish to warn thee. It’s a lie. I know Captain Ahab well;
I’ve sailed with him as mate years ago; I know what he is a good —
—
man not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man
—
something like me only there’s a good deal more of him. Aye, aye,
I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage
home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell but it was the sharp ;

shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any
one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage
by that accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody —desperate moody,
 —

74 MOBY DICK; OR
and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off. And once for all,

let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it’s better to sail with
a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So good-bye to thee
and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to have a wicked
name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife —not three voyages wedded
a sweet, resigned girl. by that sweet girl that old man
Think of that ;

has a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in
Ahab? Ho, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his
!”
humanities
As What had been
I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness.
incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain
wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the
time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know
what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a
strange awe of him but ;
which I cannot at all describe,
that sort of awe,
was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it; and
it did not disincline me towards him though I felt impatience at what
;

seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known

to me then. However, my thoughts were at length carried in
other directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my
mind.

CHAP TEH XVII

THE RAMADAN

As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Easting and Humiliation, was to con-

tinue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards nightfall;
for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obli-
gations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart
to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toadstool ;
or
those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree
of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before
the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the
inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.
I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in
 — ;

THE WHITE WHALE 75

these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,
pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these
subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most
absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan; but what of that? —
Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed
to be content and there let him rest. All our arguing with him
;

would not avail let him be, I say and Heaven have mercy on us all
; :

Presbyterians and Pagans alike —for we are all somehow dreadfully

cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door
but no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside. “Que&-
queg,” said I softly, through the keyhole: — all silent. “I say Quee-
queg ! why —
you speak ? It’s I Ishmael.” But all remained still
don’t
as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abun-
dant time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked
through the keyhole; but the door opening into an odd comer of the
room, the keyhole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one. I
could only see part of the footboard of the bed and a line of the wall,
but nothing more. I was surprised to behold resting against the wall
the wooden shaft of Queequeg’s harpoon, which the landlady the even-
ing previous had taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber.
That’s strange, thought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon stands
yonder, and he seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he
must be inside here, and no possible mistake.
— —
“Queequeg! Queequeg!” 'all still. Something must have hap-
pened. Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly
resisted. Running downstairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the
first person I met —
the chambermaid. “La! la !” she cried, “I thought
something must be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast,
and the door was locked and not a mouse to be heard and it’s been
; ;

just so silent ever since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone
off and locked your baggage in for safe-keeping. La! la, ma’am!
Mistress murder Mrs. Hussey apoplexy
! !
!”
! —
and with these cries, she
ran towards the kitchen, I following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation
 —

76 MOBY DICK; OR
of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black hoy mean-
time.
“Woodhouse !” cried I, “which way to it ? Run for God’s sake, and
fetch something to pry open the door — the axe !
—the axe — !
he’s had a
stroke ;
depend upon it
!”
— and so saying I was unmethodically rushing
upstairs again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the
mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.
“What’s the matter with you, young man ?”
“Get the axe! For God’s sake, run for the doctor, some one, while
!”
I pry it open
“Look here,” said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-
have one hand free; “look here: are you talking about
cruet, so as to
—
prying open any of my doors ?” and with that she seized my arm.
“What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you, ship-
mate ?’
In as calm, hut rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to under-
stand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to
one side of her nose, she ruminated for an instant then exclaimed ;

“Ho! I haven’t seen it since I put it there.” Running to a little

closet under the landing of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning,
told me that Queequeg’s harpoon was missing. “He’s killed himself,”
she cried. “It’s unfort’nate Stiggs done over again —there goes an-
other counterpane 1

—God pity his poor mother !

— it will be the ruin
of my house. Has the poor lad a sister ? Where’s that girl ? :

— there,
Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign,
with — ‘no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlour’ ;

might as well kill both birds at once. The Lord be merciful to

Kill ?

his ghost! What’s that noise there? You, young man, avast there!”
And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to
force open the door.
“I don’t allow it; I won’t have my premises spoiled. Go for the
locksmith, there’s one about a mile from here. But avast!” putting
her hand in her side-pocket, “here’s a key that’ll fit, I guess ;
let’s see.”

And with that, she turned it in the lock ;

but, alas !
Queequeg’s sup-
plemental holt remained unwithdrawn within.
“Have to hurst it open,” said and was running down the entry a
I,

little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing
 ©Cl K 369282

© Dcddj Mead & Company, Inc.

I TORE FROM HER, AND WITH A SUDDEN BODILY RUSH DASHED MYSELF FULL AGAINST THE
MARK.
 .

*
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 77

I should not break down her premises but I tore from her, and with a
;

sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.

With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming
against the wr all, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good
heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right
in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo
on the top of his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way,
but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.

“Queequeg,” said I, going up to him, “Queequeg, what’s the matter

with you?”
“He hain’t been a-sittin’ so all day, has he ?” said the landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him ;
I almost felt
like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost
intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained; espe-
cially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of eight
or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.
“Mrs. Hussey,” said I, “he’s alive at all events; so leave us, if
you please, and I will see to this strange affair myself.”
Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavoured to prevail 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.
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’ll 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
 !

78 MOBY DICK; OR
began grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and
to
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 yourself; get up
and have some supper. You’ll starve; you’ll kill yourself, Queequeg.”
But not a word did he reply.
Despairing of him, therefore, I determined 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 promised to be a very cold night; and he had noth-
over him, as it

ing 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 Think of it sleeping all night in the same
really wretched. ;

room with a wideawake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccount-

able Bamadan
But somehow I dropped and knew nothing more till
off at last,
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 towards me where

I lay pressed his forehead again against mine and said his Bamadan
; ;

was over.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s re-
ligion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult

any other person, because that other person doesn’t believe it also. But
when a man’s religion becomes really frantic when it is a positive tor- ;

ment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable

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 fasts, voluntary or otherwise, were
excessively bad for the digestion.
 ,

THE WHITE WHALE 79

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 on the gaining of a great battle
his father the king,
wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o’clock in the
afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.
“No more, Queequeg,” said I shuddering; “that will do”; for I
knew the inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a
sailorwho 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 cocoanuts; 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
a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan
piety.
At last weand dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously
rose
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 hoard
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 towards the ship,

Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice

 — ;

80 MOBY DICK; OR
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.”
“Yes,” 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, “art
thou at present in communion with any Christian church?”
“Why,” said I, “he’s a member of the first Congregational Church”
and I entered upon a long rigmarole story, touching the conversion
of Queequeg, and concluded by saying that in the grand belief we all
joined hands.
“Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing nearer.
“Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, 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 something.
Come come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell
aboard,
—
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, 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 posing
his harpoon, cried out insome 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 decksand struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.
“How,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him
whale-e eye; why, dat whale dead.”
“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
 — !

THE WHITE WHALE 81

vicinity of the flying harpoon,had retreated towards the cabin gang-

way. “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’ll 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 noways 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;
so that through Captain Peleg’s obstinate mistake touching his appel-
lative, it stood something like this

Quohog.
his X mark.

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly 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 dark-
ness, 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 Bel, 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 harpoon-
 , ;

82 MOBY DICK; OR
eer,” 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 There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest

sharkish.
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 afterclaps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones.”
“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 death ;
how, then, canst 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 Cap-
tain 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 Cap-
tain 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
 THE WHITE WHALE 88

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 hut
shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trousers; 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.
“Have ye shipped in her ?” he repeated.
“You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying to gain a little

more time for an uninterrupted look at him.

—
“Aye, the Pequod that ship there,” he said, drawing hack 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 “we have just signed the articles.”
I,

“Anything down there about your souls ?”

“About what ?”
“Oh, perhaps you haven’t got any,” he said quickly. “Ho matter
though, I know many chaps that haven’t got any, —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.

“He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that

sort in other chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous em-
phasis 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 haven’t seen Old —
Thunder yet, have ye ?”
“Who’s Old Thunder ?” said I, again riveted with the insane earnest-
ness of his manner.
“Captain Ahab.”
V’
“What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod
“Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name.
Ye haven’t seen him yet, have ye ?”

“Ho, we haven’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will

be all right again before long.”

“All right again before long !” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
 ,

84 MOBY DICK; OR
derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right,
then this left arm of mine will be all right not before.” ;

“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 yep 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 skrimmage with the
;

—
Spaniard afore the altar in Santa? heard nothing about that, eh?
Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about
his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy? Didn’t ye
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 Nan-
tucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, 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.”
“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
you must that
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 reverie; 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
;
.Morn- !

ing to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry
I stopped ye.”
Took here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell
 — ;

THE WHITE WHALE 85

us, out with it; hut 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 bear a chap talk up that way
you are just the man for him the — likes of ye. Morning to ye, ship-
mates, 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 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 and we walked away, both commenting, after each
I,

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
looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
though Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
at a distance.
said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, hut 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-re-
vealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of
vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the
Pequod ; and Captain Ahah; 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 and the prediction of the

the ship the day previous ;

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 an d finally as it seemed to me I pronounced him in my heart,
a humbug.
86 MOBY DICK; OR

CHAPTER XX
ALL ASTIR

A day or two passed^ and there was great activity aboard the Pequod.
Hot only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming
on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, every-
thing 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 lookout 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 nightfall.
On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was
given at all company were stopping, that their
the inns where the ship’s
chests must he 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, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they al-
ways 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.
Every one 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 although this *also holds true of merchant 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 pros-
ecution 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 everything, almost, but a
spare captain and duplicate ship.
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 87

At the period of our arrival at the island, the heaviest stowage of the
P equod had been almost completed comprising 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, hut withal very kindhearted, 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 be-
loved brother Bildad was concerned, and in 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 the article upon the paper. Every once in a
while Peleg came running out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men
down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the masthead, 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
88 MOBY DICK; OR
a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be abso-
lute 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.

CHAPTEE XXI
GOING ABOAKD

It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey 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 same time coming close
at the
behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating
itself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain
twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.
“Going aboard?”
“Hands off, will you,” said I.
“Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way !”
“Ain’t going aboard, then?”
“Yes, we what business is that of yours ? Do you
are,” said I, “but
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 unaccount-
able glances.
“Elijah,” said I, “you oblige my friend and me by withdrawing.
We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer
not to be detained.”
“Ye be, be ye ? Coming back afore breakfast?”
“He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I ;
“come on,”
 — ;
;

THE WHITE WHALE 89

“Holloa!” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed

a few paces.
“Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.”
But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on
—
my shoulder, said “Did ye see anything looking like men going
towards 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, “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 be-
fore the Grand Jury.” And with these cracked words he finally de-
parted, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his

frantic impudence.
At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in pro-
found 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. See-
ing 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 facedownwards and enclosed in his folded arms. The pro-
foundest 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 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 marking the sleeper, jocularly
hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body;
90 MOBY DICK; OR
telling him to establish 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.

“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; hut how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Quee-
queg, you are heavy, it’s Get off,
grinding the face of the poor.
Queequeg Look, he’ll 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 Queequeg gave me to understand
in his broken fashion,
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 attendant, 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 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.
“Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who he ye smokers?”
“Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?”
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 01

“Ay, ye are going in her, be ye ?

ay, She sails to-day. The Cap-
tain came aboard last night.”
“What Captain?—Ahab?”
“Who but him indeed ?”
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab,
when we heard a noise on deck.
“Holloa! 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.

CHAPTEE XXII
MERRY CHRISTMAS

At upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers,

length, towards noon,
and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after
the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whaleboat, with her last
gift —
a nightcap 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
“How, 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
“Ho 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
92 MOBY DICK; OR
sign of him was was in the cabin.
yet to be seen; only, they said he
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 seemed natural enough; es-
all this
pecially as in the merchant service many captains never show them-
selves on deck for a considerable 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 Cap-
tain 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 up the anchor.
to be the next thing to heaving
“Man the capstan! —
Blood and Thunder jump!” was the next —
command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes.
How, 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 addition 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 Hantucket 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, par-
ticularly in 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
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 93

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. was comforting myself, however, with the thought that
I
in pious Bildad might he 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 sheephead ;
spring, and break thy backbone Why, don’t !

ye spring, I say, all of ye — spring! Quohog! 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 sharp, cold Christmas and ;
day merged into
as the short northern
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 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 dress’d in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan roll’d 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
 —

94 MOBY DICK; OR
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.
was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were
It
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 word there; again came
into the cabin to speak another farewell
on deck, and looked to windward looked towards the wide and endless
;

waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents looked ;

towards the 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, “Nevertheless, 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, —“Captain Bildad —come, old shipmate, we must go. Back
the mainyard 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’ll 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’ll have fine weather now,
so that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun —
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 95

is all he needs, and have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye

ye’ll
go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don’t stave the boats need-
lessly, ye harpooneers good white cedar plank is raised full three per
;

cent, within the year. Don’t forget your prayers, either. Mr. Star-
buck, 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
Day, 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 fornication. Good-bye, good-bye ! Don’t keep that cheese too
long down Mr. Starhuck; it’ll spoil. Be careful with the
in the hold,
—
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 Hew Bedford at the inn..
When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vin-
dictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing
at her helm hut Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and
fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter 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, hearth-

stone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities.
 ! ! ;!

96 MOBY DICK; OR
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 against 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, Glimpses do ye seem to see of that
now, Bulkington?
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, in-

definite as God — so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than
be ingloriously upon the lee, even if that were safety
dashed
For worm-like, then, oh who would craven crawl to land
! Ter- !

rors of the terrible is all this agony so vain ?

! Take heart, take
heart, O Bulkington Bear thee grimly, demigod Up from
! !

the spray of thy ocean-perishing — straight up, leaps thy apothe-

sis

CHAPTER XXIV
THE ADVOCATE

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling

and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded
among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit there- ;

fore, 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
 ! ;

THE WHITE WHALE 97

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 unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant
the sperm whaleship 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 un-
speakable 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
marched up to a battery, would
freely
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 interlinked terrors and wonders of
God!
But, though the world scouts at us whale-hunters, yet does it un-
wittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adora-
tion! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that bum 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 whale-
men in bounties upwards of £1,000,000? And lastly, how comes
it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the

banded- whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven

hundred vessels manned by eighteen thousand men yearly consuming
; ;
 !

98 MOBY DICK; OR
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 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
upon the whole broad world,
potentially
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 issues, that

whaling may well he regarded as that Egyptian mother who bore off-
spring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless,
endless task to catalogue all those 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 American and European, men-of-war now peace-
fully 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 cele-
brate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks,
your Krusensterns ;
hut I say that scores of anonymous Captains have
sailed out of Nantucket, that were and greater than your
as great,
Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handed-
ness, they, in the heathenish 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 hut the lifetime commonplaces of our heroic
Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three
chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the
ship’s common Ah, the world
log. Oh, the world !

Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce 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
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 99

policy of the Spanish Crown, touching those colonies; and, if space

permitted, it might be shown how from those whalemen at
distinctly
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 whalemen. After its first blun-
der-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. More-
over, 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 un-
counted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do com-
mercial homage to the whale ship, that cleared the way for the mission-
ary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive mission-
aries 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
sesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to
shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet
every time.
“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 Leviathan? 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 from Other, the Norwegian whale-
the words
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.”
Nogood Mood in their veins? They have something better than
royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary
Morrel afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers
;
 ? !

100 MOBY DICK; OR

of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Eolgers 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 whaling is not
respectable.”
Whaling not respectable Whaling is imperial! By old English
statutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.” 1
“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 hones of a whale brought all the way from the
Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed pro-
cession.
“Grant it, since you cite it ;
but, say what you will, there is no real
dignity in whaling.”
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 Queequeg no more
to !

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 my execu-
death,
tors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk,
then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whal-
ing; for a whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

CHAPTER XXV
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES

The matechief of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket,

and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born
1
See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
 ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 101

on an icy coast, seemed well adapted toendure hot latitudes, liis 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 superfluousness.
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-
looking 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. Looking into his eyes, you
seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand fold perils
he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man whose
life for the most part was a telling pantomine of action, and not a tame

chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there
were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases
seem well-nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious
for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery
loneliness of his life did therefore 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.
102 MOBY DICK; OR
“Ay, ay,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful
a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere long
seewhat 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 in

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 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, must indeed have been extreme. But
still flourish,

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 confine-
ment, 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 with-
stand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which some-
times menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and
mighty man.
But were the coming narrative any instance, the com-
to reveal, in
plete 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 ex-
; ;

pose 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 faces hut man, in the ideal,
;
is so
noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over
 ! !

THE WHITE WHALE 103

any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their
costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel 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 her upbraidings against the permitting stars.
stifle 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
If, then, tomeanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark weave round them tragic ;

graces if even the most mournful, 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 has 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,

Runyan, 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 warhorse; 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, O God

CHAPTER XXVI
KNIGHTS AND SQUIREiS

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 crises of the
chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged
 — ;

104 MOBY DICK; OR

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 comfortable
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 he a question ;
hut, if he ever did chance to
cast his mind that way after a comfortable 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, un-
fearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave pedlars, 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 succession, lighting one from
the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to he in
readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his
legs into his trousers, he put his pipe into his mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of
his peculiar disposition ;
for every one knows that this earthly air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries
of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling
and as in time of it ;

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 mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vine-
third
yard; a short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning
 s s ; ;

THE WHITE WHALE 105

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 was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of
lost
their majestic hulk and mystic ways and so dead to anything like an
;

apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them, that in

his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was hut a species of magnified
mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and
some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil.
This ignorant 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 in-
serted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of
those battering seas.
How these three mates — Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momen-
tous men. They
was who by universal prescription
it commanded three
of the Pequod’ boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in
which Captain 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 headsman, like a
Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or har-
pooneer, who in certain conjunctures 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’ harpooneers were, and to what headsman
each of them belonged.
First of was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had
all

selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known.

 106 MOBY DICK; OR
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most
westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, 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 hones, and
black rounding eyes —for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, hut
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, how in
hand, the aboriginal forest 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 you would almost have credited the
of his lithe snaky limbs,
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. Sus-
pended 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 ships of owners uncommonly heed-
ful of what manner of men they shipped Daggoo retained all his bar-
;

baric 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’s com-
pany, be it day not one in two of the many
said, that at the present

thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale-fishery,

are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein
 s ! ;

THE WHITE WHALE 107

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 Nantucket 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 homewards, they drop them there again.
How it is, there is no telling, hut Islanders seem to make the best
whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Peqaod Isolatos too,
I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each
Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated
along one keel, what a set these Isolatos were ! An Anacharsis Clootz
deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth,
accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances
before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back.
—
Black Little Pip he never did! Poor Alabama boy! On the grim
Pequod’ 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 hid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine
in glory called a coward here, hailed a hero there
;

CHAPTER, XXVII
ahab

For 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.
 108 MOBY DICK; OR
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I in-
stantly 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 height-
ened at times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences unin-
vitedly 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 appre-
hensiveness or uneasiness — to call it so —which I felt, yet whenever I
came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to
cherish such emotions. Eor 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 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 ahandonedly embarked.
But was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship,
it

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 like sea-officers and men, each in
his own different way, could not readily he 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 grey 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
towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Eeality outran
apprehensions ;
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
 ©C1K1G.02S3

© Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

FOREBODING SHIVERS RAN OVER ME. REALITY OUTRAN APPREHENSIONS; CAPTAIN AHAB
STOOD UPON HIS QUARTER-DECK.

/
s
 THE WHITE WHALE 109

them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robust-
ness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and
shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Thread-
ing its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down
one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his
clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It re-
sembled 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 was the scar
it left by some desperate wound, no one
could certainly say. By some tacit consent, 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 grey Manxman insinu-
ated, 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 birthmark 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. had previously
It

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 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
110 MOBY DICK; OR
side of the Pequoct’s quarter-deck, and pretty close to the mizzen
shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into
the plank. His hone 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, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and
forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke nor
fearless, ;

did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest ges-
tures 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 an apparently
eternal anguish 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 hut 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 supervision the mates were fully competent to,

so that therewas little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite

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, warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
ere long, the
present, 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

 THE WHITE WHALE Ill

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.

CHAPTEK XXVIII
ENTER AHAB J
TO HIM, STUBB

Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now
1

went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost per-
petually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic.
The warmly perfumed, overflowing, redundant days,
cool, clear, ringing,
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, For
the golden helmeted suns!
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-com-
manders, the old greybeards 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,” —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 and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band
set,

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 cau-
tiousness dropt it to its place, for fear of disturbing their slumber-

ing shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to

112 MOBY DICK; OR
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 re-
pose 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 taffrail 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; hut 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 !”
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’ll clear the world of thee !”
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing ter-

rors 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 ;
 THE WHITE WHALE n*
it would be the first time I ever did pray. It’s queer ;
very queer ;
and
lie’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 hammock 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
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 But that’s against
to think of ’em.

my principles. Think not is my eleventh commandment; and sleep

when you can, is my twelfth —
So 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! well have He might as

kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn’t
observe it, I was so taken 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 dream-
ing, —
though How? how? how? —but the only way’s to stash it; so

here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I’ll see how this

•plaguy juggling thinks over by daylight.”

114 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTEE XXIX
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 narwhal. How could
one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethink-
ing him of the royalty it symbolised ? Eor 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, — aye, 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 serene-
ness, to sendup mild white vapours among mild white hairs, not among
”
torn iron-grey locks like mine. I’ll 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.

CHAPTEE XXX
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
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 115

tried to kick back, upon my my

man, I kicked my leg right
soul, little
off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blaz-
ing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask
—
you know how curious all dreams are through all this rage that I was
in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was

not much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. AVhy/ thinks I, 'what’s
the row ? It’s not a real leg, only a false leg.’ And there’s a mighty
difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That’s what
makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear
than a blow from a cane. The living member that makes the living —
insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while, mind,
while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid so —
confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was
—
thinking to myself, 'what’s his leg now, but a cane a whalebone
cane. thinks
Yes,’ was only a playful cudgelling—
I, 'it in fact, only
a whaleboning he gave me — not a base
that kick. Besides,’ thinks I,
'look at once; why,
it end — the part—what
of it the foot a small sort
of end it is; whereas, if a broad-footed farmer kicked me, there s a
devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to a point only.’
But now comes While I was
the greatest joke of the dream, Flask.
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 fright- !

ened. Such a phiz But, somehow, next moment I was over the
!

fright. 'What am I about V says I at last. 'And what business is that

of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback ? Do you want a kick V
By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round
his stem to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a
clout — —
what do you think I saw? why thunder alive, man, his stern
was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second
thoughts. 'I guess I won’t kick you, old fellow.’ 'Wise Stubb,’ said
he, 'wise Stubb’ ;
and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of
his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn’t going to stop say-
ing 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
 —;;

116 MOBY DICK; OR

insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t be?’ ‘Yes, be did,’ says I
‘right here it was.’ ‘Very good,’ says be — ‘be used bis ivory leg, didn’t

be ?’
‘Yes, be did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says be, ‘wise Stubb, what have
you to complain of? Didn’t be kick with right good will? it wasn’t
a common pitch pine leg he kicked with,No, you were kickedwas it?

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, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; he
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?”
“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho’.”
“May be ;
may be. But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask. D’ye
see Ahab standing there, sideways looking over stem? 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 !”
“Masthead, there! Look sharp, all of ye! there are whales here-
abouts ! If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him !”
“What d’ye think of that now, Flask? ain’t there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh ? A white whale —did ye mark that,
man ? Look ye — there’s something special in the wind. Stand by for
it, Flask. Ahab has that that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he
comes this way.”

CHAPTER XXXI
CETOLOGY

Ai.ready we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be
lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass
ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls
 —

THE WHITE WHALE m

of the leviathan; at the outset it is hut 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.
some systematised exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
It is
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
Cotology,” says Captain Scoreshy, a. d. 1820.
“It is not my were it in my power, to enter into the in-
intention,
quiry 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, yet of books there are plenty; and so
in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many
are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who
have at large or in little, written of the whale. Bun over a few:
The Authors of the Bible Aristotle Pliny Aldrovandi Sir Thomas
; ; ; ;

Browne; Gesner; Kay; Linnseus; Kondeletius; Willoughby Green;

Artedi; Sibhald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest;
Baron Cuvier; Frederic Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoreshy;
Beale; Bennett; J. Boss Brown; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olm-
stead; and the Kev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalising
purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will show.
Of the names on 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 Scoreshy. On the sep-
arate subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing
authority. But Scoreshy knew nothing and says nothing of the great

sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost

 ! ;

118 MOBY DICK; OR

unworthy mentioning. And here he 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, some seventy years back,
and the profound ignorance which, till

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
you that the Greenland whale, without one rival,
past days, will satisfy
was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come
for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross hear ye good people ; !

all, —
the Greenland whale is deposed, the great sperm whale now —
reigneth
There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the
living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale’s and Bennett’s
both in their time surgeons to English South Sea whale ships, and both
exact and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale
to be found in their volumes is necessarily small, but so far as it goes,
it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description.
As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not com-
plete 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 com-
prehensive 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 de-
scription of the various species, or — in this place at least — to much
of any 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 To grope down into the bottom of the sea after
it.

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 taunt- !
 THE WHITE WHALE 119

ings in Job might well appal me. “Will he (the leviathan) make a
covenant with thee ? Behold the hope of him is vain !” But I
have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to
do with whales with these visible hands I ;
am in earnest and I will
;

try. There are some preliminaries to settle.

First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
is in the very vestibule attested
by the fact, that in some quarters it
still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System
of Nature, a. d. 1776, Linnaeus declares, “I hereby separate the whales
from the But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the
fish.”

year 1850, sharks and shads, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus’s
express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas
with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the
whales from the waters, he states as follows : “On account of their
warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow
ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex
lege naturae jure meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends
Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of
mine in a certain voyage and they united in the opinion that the
reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted
they were humbug.
Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old-fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.
This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal
respect does the whale differ from other fish l Above, Linnaeus has
given you those items. But in brief, they are these : lungs and warm
blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold-blooded.
Next how : shall weby his obvious externals, so as
define the whale,
conspicuously to label him for all time to come ? To be short, then, a
whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him.
However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded medi-
tation. 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
 ; ; ;

120 MOBY DICK; OR

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
1
hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien .

Hence all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be in-
cluded 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.
The Folio Whale; II. the Octavo Whale;
I. III. the Duo-
decimo Whale.
As the type of the Folio I present the Sperm Whale of the Octavo,
the Grampus of the Duodecimo, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters: — I.

The Sperm Whale; II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin-Back Whale;
IV. the Kumprbacked Whale; V. the Razor-Back Whale; VI. the
Sulphur-Bottom Whale.
BOOK I. ( Folio ), Chapter I.Sperm Whale ). This whale,
( —
among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and
the Physeter whale, and the Anvil-Headed whale, is the present Cacha-
lot of the French and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Mac-
rocephalus 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 sub-
stance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many
other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now

1
1 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 noisy, con-
temptible 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.
 THE WHITE WHALE 121

have to do. Philologically considered,Some centuries it is absurd.

ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own
proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained
from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was
popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the
one then known in England as the Greenland or Eight Whale. It was
the idea also that this same spermaceti was that quickening humour of
the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally ex-
presses. 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 druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb.
When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti
became known, its original name was still retained by the dealers ;
no
doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its

scarcity. And so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed

upon the whale from which this spermaceti was really derived.
BOOK I. (. Folio ), Chapter II. ( Right Whale ). —
In one respect this
is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly
hunted by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone
or baleen; and the oil specially known as “whale oil,” an inferior article

in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated

by all the following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the
Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Bight 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 F olios ? It is the Great Mysticetus of the
English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English whalemen;
the Baliene Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish
of the Swedes. It is- the whale which for more than two centuries past
has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas ;
it is the
whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian
Ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor’-West Coast, and various other
parts of the world, designated by them Bight Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of
the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely

agree in all their grand features; nor ha*s there yet been presented a
 ,

122 MOBY DICK; OR

single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction.
It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differ-
ences, 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, Tail-Spout,
and Long- John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the
whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
Atlantic, in the New York packet tracks. In the length he attains, and
in his baleen, the Fin-Back resembles the right whale, but is of a less
portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips

present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds

of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from
which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is
some three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part
of the back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end.
Even if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated
fin will, at times be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When
the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples,
and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled
surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it

somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved
on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The Fin-Back
is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters.
Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in
the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet
rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain gifted with
;

such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present

pursuit from man ;
this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
Cain of mark, that style upon his back. From
his race, bearing for his
having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included
with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated Whalebone
Whales that is, whales with baleen. Of these so-called Whalebone
whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, how-
ever, are little known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-
 THE WHITE WHALE 123

headed whales, bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated

whales, are the fisherman’s names for a few sorts.
In connection with this appellative of “Whalebone whales,” it is
of great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may
be convenient in facilitating allusions to some kinds of whales, yet it is
in vain to attempt a clear classification of the leviathan, founded upon
either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth notwithstanding that those
;

marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford

the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other detached
bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How then ?

The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth ;

these are things whose peculiar-
ities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales, without
any regard what may be the nature of their structure in other and
to
more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the hump-
backed whale, each has a hump ;
but there the similitude ceases. Then,
this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these
has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the
same with the other parts above-mentioned. In various sorts of whales,
they form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of
them detached, such an irregular isolation as utterly to defy all general
;

methodisation 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. Hay; what thing, for example, is there in the Green-
land whale’s anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have
seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Green-
land whale. And
you descend into the bowels of the various levia-
if

thans, why, there you will not find distinctions of a fiftieth part as
available to the systematiser as those external ones already enumerated.
What then remains ? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in
their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this

is the bibliograpical 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-Bach ) .
—This whale is often
seen on the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured
 ; ; . .

124 MOBY DICK; OR

there, and towed into harbour. He has a great pack on him like a

pedlar ;
him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any
or you might call
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. Chapter V. (Razor-Back)
(Folio), 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 YI. (Sulphur-Bottom). —Another retir-

ing 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. Prodi-
gies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur-Bottom! I can say nothing
more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Hantucketer.
Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II. (Octavo).
OCTAVOES .
1
These embrace the whales of middling magnitude,
among which at present may be numbered :
— I., the Grampus; II., the
Black Fish III., theNarwhal IV., the Thrasher ; V., the Killer
BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter I. (Grampus). —Though this fish,
whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a
proverb to landsmen, is so well-known a denizen of the deep, yet is he
not popularly classed among whales ;
but possessing all the grand dis-
tinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him
for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-
five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist.
1
Why this book of whalesnot denominated the Quarto is very plain.
is
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.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 125

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 popu-
lar fisherman’s names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.
Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so,
and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Kish, so called,
because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. him the
So, call
Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from
the circumstances that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards,
he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale
averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost
all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin
in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not
more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture
the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic
—
employment as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company,
and quite alone by themselves, burn unsavoury tallow instead of odorous
wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield
you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter III. (Narwhal), that is, Nostril
whale . —Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I sup-
pose 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 owner something
ill effect, giving its

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 Harwhal 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 Harwhal, rising to the surface of the
Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so
 a

126 MOBY DICK; OR

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 Narwhal —however that may
would certainly be
be — it

very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. The Nar-

whal I have heard called the Tusk whale, the Homed whale, and the
Unicom whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism
to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. F rom certain
same sea-unicorn’s horn
cloistered old authors I have gathered that this
was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and
as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also dis-
tilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns
of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was
in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me
that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen
Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of
Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed Thames; “when
down the
Sir Martin returned from that voyage,” saith Black Letter, “on bended
knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Nar-
whal, 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 like-
wise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of
the unicorn nature.
The Narwhal 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), Chaptee IV. {Killer ). —Of this whale little

is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the pro-

fessed 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 —
sort of Feejee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the
lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to
death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he
has. Exceptions 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.
 . —

THE WHITE WHALE 127

BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter V. (Thresher ). — This gentleman

isfamous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes,
lie mounts the Folio whale’s hack, and as he swims, he works his
passage by flogging him as some schoolmasters get along in the world
;

by a similar process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the

Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends BOOK II. (Octavo), and begins BOOK III.
(Duodecimo)
DUODECIMOES. — These include the smaller whales. I. The
Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-
mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
feet should be marshalled among WHALES —
a word, which, in the
popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures
set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms

of my definition of what a whale is i. e., a spouting fish, with a hori-

zontal 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 withstand three
cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye the spirit ;

of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Por-

poise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and
from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in
delicate fluid extracted
request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their

hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have
occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small

that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have a
 A

128 MOBY DICK; OR

chance, watch him; and yon will then see the great Sperm whale him-
self in miniature.
BOOK III. (
Duodecimo ), Chapter II. ( Algerine Porpoise ). —
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. (Duodeci mo), 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 'Bight-Whale Porpoise, from the cir-
cumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Polio. In
shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a
less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is quite a neat and gentlemanlike
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 down to his side fins
his entire back
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. A most mean and mealy aspect His oil is much like that !

of the common porpoise.

Beyond the Duodecimo, system does not proceed, inasmuch as

this
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 reputa-
tion, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their forecastle
appellations ;
for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investi-
gators, 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-Hose Whale; the Junk Whale;
the Pudding-Headed Whale the Cape Whale the Leading Whale the
; ; ;
 THE WHITE WHALE 129

Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Copper 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 un-
couth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete and can hardly ;

help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but sig-
nifying 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 grand ones, true ones,
first architects ;

ever leave the copestone to posterity. Heaven keep me from ever com-
pleting anything. This whole book is but draught nay, but the —
draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

CHAPTER XXXII
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’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 depart-
ment and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned
supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title
of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former
 ;

130 MOBY DICK; OR

dignity is sadly abridged. At present be ranks simply as senior Har-
pooneer ;
and as such, is one of the Captain’s more inferior subalterns.
Nevertheless as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of
a whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the American Fishery
he is not only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circum-
stances (night-watches on a whaling ground) command of the
the
ship’s deck is also his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea
demands, that he should nominally live apart from the men before the
mast, and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior;
though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction and man at sea, is
drawn between officer

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, most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
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 whale-

men 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 Nan-
tucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-
deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy ;
nay,
extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial
purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the
least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only
homage he ever was implicit, instantaneous obedience, though he
exacted,
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
;
 !

the white whale 131

circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he ad-

dressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem,
or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of
the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those
forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself incidentally
;

making use of them for other and more private ends than they were
legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain,
which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested through
;

those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible

dictatorship. For he a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it
can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men,
without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always,
in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever
keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings and
;

leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who be-
come 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 indomitableness in its

fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so im-
portant 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, Imust 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 embodied air
132 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER XXXIII
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 tid-
ings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial.
But presently, catching hold of the mizzen shrouds, he swings him-
self 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 Star-
buck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and,
after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasant-
ness, “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends the scuttle. The second
Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the
main brace, to see whether it be all right with that important rope, he
likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner, Mr. Flask,”
follows after his predecessors.
But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck
seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint ;
for, tipping all sorts

of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes,

he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the
Grand Turk’s head and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap
;

up into the mizzen-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, in-
dependent, 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
 THE WHITE WHALE 133

upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly

officers will,

enough towards their commander yet, ten to one, let those very officers
;

the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same com-
mander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory
and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table this is ;

marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A

problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon;
and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein
certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he
who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own
private dinner-table of invited guests-, that man’s unchallenged power
and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man’s royalty
of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar was not the greatest.
Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Ciesar.
It is* a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now,
if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship-
master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity
of sea-life just mentioned.
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-
lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still
deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be
served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet,
in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With
one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife, as he
carved the chief dish before him, I do not suppose that for the world
they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation,

even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No ! And when reaching

out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab
thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards him, the mate received his
meat as though receiving alms ;
and cut it tenderly ;
and a little startled

if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it noise-
lessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the

Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor pro-

foundly 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 pot conversation only he himself was dumb.

;
Whgt t
 ! !

134 MOBY DICK; OR

a relief was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in
it

the hold below. And poor little Flask, be was the youngest son, and
little boy of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of the
saline beef; bis 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 be have been able to bold bis bead up
in this honest world; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never for-
bade him. And bad Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab bad
never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did Flask presume to help
himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied
it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny complex-
ion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such market-
less 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 and
person down at the dinner,
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. was that Flask once admitted
Therefore it

in private, that ever since he had risen to the dignity of an officer, from
that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than
hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his
hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought
Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer;
but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the fore-
castle, 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 Pequod had a grudge
sailor of the
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
 THE WHITE WHALE 135

a peep at Flask through the cabin skylight, sitting silly and dum-
foundered before awful Ahab.
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may he called the first

table in the Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in

inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather
was restored some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then
to
the three harpooneers were hidden 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 domineer ings 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 allday loading with
spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that
to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale
Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly
quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he
did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an
ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,

harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humour, as-

sistedDough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting

his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in
hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He
was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this
bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital
nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific

Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages,

Dough-Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after
seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he
would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and
fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was
over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, op-
136 MOBY DICK; OR
posing his filed teeth to the Indian’s : crosswise to them, Daggoo seated
on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head
to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the
low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes
passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonder-
fully 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, doubt-
less, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding

element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sub-
lime life of the worlds. by bread, are giants made or
Hot by beef 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 hones might be picked, the
simple-witted steward all hut shattered the crockery hanging around
him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Hor 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 Dough-Boy hard
indiscretions. Alas ! !

fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Hot a napkin
should he carry on his arm, hut 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 sedentary in their habits, they
were scarcely ever in it except at meal-times, and just before
sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar
quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American
whale captains, who ? as a set, rather incline tp the opinion that by
 THE WHITE WHALE 137

rights the ship’s cabin belongs to them and that

by courtesy alone
;
it is-

that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real
truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly he
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 in-
wards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a per-
manent thing, residing in the open air. Mor did they lose much
hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was in-

accessible.Though nominally included in th'e census of Christen-

dom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last
of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring
and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying
himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his
own paws ;
so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up
in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its

CHAPTER XXXIY
THE MASTHEAD

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with
the other seamen my first masthead came round.
In most American whalemen the mastheads are manned almost
simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port even though she may ;

have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper
cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage

she drawing nigh home with anything empty in her say, an empty
is —
vial even —
then, her mastheads are kept manned to the last; and not
till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she al-

together relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

Mow, as the business of standing mastheads, 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 mastheads 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,
138 MOBY DICK; OR
by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest masthead 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 masthead standers, is an assertion based upon the general
belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for
astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar
stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with
prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were
wont mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the
to
lookouts 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 lat-
ter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground
with a tackle in him we have a remarkable instance of dauntless stand-
;

er-of-mastheads ;
who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or
frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the
last, literally died at his post. Of modem standers-of-mastheads 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 in-
competent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange
sight. Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of Yen-
There is

dome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the
air ;
careless, now, who rules the decks below ;
whether Louis Philippe,
Louis Blanc, or Louis Napoleon. Great Washington, too, stands high
aloft on his towering mainmast in Baltimore, and like one of Her-
column marks that point of human grandeur beyond
cules’ pillars, his
which few mortals will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of
gun-metal, stands his masthead in Trafalgar Square; and even when
most obscured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden
hero is there; for where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither
great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single
hailfrom below, however madly invoked, to befriend by their counsels
the distracted decks upon which they gaze however, it may be ;

surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of

 THE WHITE WHALE 139

the future and descry what shoals and what rocks must be
shunned.
It may seem
unwarrantable to couple in any respect the masthead
standers of the land with those of the sea but that in truth it is not
;

so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole
historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells
us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were
regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island
erected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the lookouts ascended
by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-
house. A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whale-
men 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 masthead, that of a
whale ship at sea.
The three masts are kept manned from sunrise to sunset; the sea-
men 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 masthead; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is de-
lightful. 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 Khodes. 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 lan-

guor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime unevent-
fulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with
startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary
excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities;
fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall
—
have for dinner for all your meals for three years and more are
snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare- is immutable.
In one of those southern whalemen, on a long three or four years’
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at
the masthead would amount to several entire months. And it is much
 , /;

140 MOBY DICK; OR

to be deplored that the place to wliich you devote so considerable a
portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly
destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted
to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed,
a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of
those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate
themselves. Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t’-gal-
lanhmast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost pecul-
iar to whalemen) call 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 speak-
ing the thickest watch-coat no more of a house than the unclad body
is

for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot
freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great
risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps
in winter) ;
so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere

envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or

chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a con-
venient closet of your watch-coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads
of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little

tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests which the lookouts of a Green-

in
land 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
far the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland
in this admirable volume, all standers of mastheads 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 ourselves any other apparatus
we may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a
large tierce or pipe ; it is open above, however, where it is furnished
 THE WHITE WHALE 141

with a movable side-screen to keep to windward of yonr 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 shi-p, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for
umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which
to keep your speaking-trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his masthead in
this crow’s nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him
(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the
purpose of popping off the stray narwhals, or vagrant sea unicorns
infesting those waters ;
for you cannot successfully shoot at them from
the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon
them is a very different thing. How, it was plainly a labour of love
for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed con-
veniences 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 as-

cribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship’s planks (and
in the Gl'aciers case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-
down blacksmiths among her crew;) I say, that though the Captain is

very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned “binnacle devia-
tions,”“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 oc-
casionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle so nicely
tucked in on one side of his crow’s-nest, within easy reach of his hand.
Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave,
the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that
he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful
friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers
and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that

bird’s nest within three or four perches of the pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
Captain Sleet and his Greenland men were; yet that disadvantage is
greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those
 — !

142 MOBY DICK; OR

seductive seas in which we Southern fishers mostly float. For one, I
used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have
a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find
there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg
over the 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 altitude, —how could I but lightly hold my obligations
to observe all whale ships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye
open, and sing out every time.”
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
Kantucket ! Beware any lad with
of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries
lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and
who offers to ship with 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 Platonist will tow you ten wakes
round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.
Kor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-
fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and ab-
sent-minded men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seek-
ing sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently
perches himself upon the masthead of some luckless disappointed whale-
ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates

“Poll 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 honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would
rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young
Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect ;
they are short-
sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left
their opera-glasses at home.
 ! ;

THE WHITE WHALE 143

“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 listless-

ness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the

blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his
identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that
deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature and every :

strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him every dimly ;

discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the

embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by
continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit

ebbs away to whence it came becomes diffused through time and space
;

like Wickliff’s sprinkled 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, by the sea, from
borrowed from the sea ;

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 midday, 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 XXXY
THE QUARTER-DECK

(Enter Ahab: Then, all.)

It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning
shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin gang-
way 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
 —

144 MOBY DICK; OR

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 in question, those dents looked deeper, even as
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his
thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the
mainmast 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 hut 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 he out.”
—
The hours wore on; Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon,
pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
Itdrew 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. “Mastheads, there! come

!”
down
When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious
and not wholly unapprehensive were eyeing him, for he looked
faces,

not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab,
after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes
among the crew, started from his standpoint and as though not a soul
;

were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent
head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the
wondering whispering among the men till Stubb cautiously whispered
;

to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose
of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehe-
mently pausing he cried
“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”
 ©C1KJC9284

*#>=-, -
-

© Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

‘d’ye mark him, flask? WHISPERED STUBB; ‘the CHICK that’s IN HIM PECKS THE
SHELL. TWILL SOON BE OUT.”

1 /
 ,

,
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 145

“Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of
clubbed voices.
“Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in bis tones; observing
the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so mag-
netically thrown them.
“And what do ye next, men ?”
“Lower away, and after him !”
“And what tune is it ye pull to, men V 9

“A dead whale or a stove boat !”

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving grew the
countenance of the old man at every shout while the mariners began
;

to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they

themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half revolving in
his pivot-hole, with onehand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly,
almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus
“All ye mastheaders have before now heard me give orders about
a white whale. Look ye d’ye see this Spanish ounce of gold ?” hold-
!

— —
ing up a broad bright coin to the sun “it is a sixteen dollar piece,
men. D’ye see Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.”
it ?

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking,
was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as
if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile

lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and

inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of
his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the
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.
 —

146 MOBY DICK; OR

“It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw down the
top-maul ;
“a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men ;
look sharp
for white water ;
if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with
even more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the men-
tion 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 he the
same that some call Moby Dick.”
“Moby Dick?” shouted Ahab. “Do ye know the white whale then,
Tash ?”
“Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down ?” said the
Gay-Header deliberately.
“And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very bushy, even
for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab ?”
“And he have one, two, tree — oh good many iron
!
in him hide, too,
Captain,” cried Queequeg disjointedly, “all twisketee 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 ”

“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab; “ay, Queequeg, the harpoons 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; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like
a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye
have seen —Moby Dick— Moby Dick!”
“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who with Stuhb and Flask, had
thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, hut at last
seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the won-
der. “Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick hut it was not —
Moby Dick that took off thy leg?”
“Who told thee that ?” cried Ahab then pausing. “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. Aye, aye,”
he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-
stricken moose ;
“aye, aye ! it was that accursed white whale that razed
me made
;
a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day !” Then
 ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 147

tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out:

“Aye, aye ! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn,
and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before
I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase
that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till
he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye
splice hands on it, now ? I think ye do look brave.”
“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer
to the excited old man: “a sharp eye for the White Whale; a sharp
lance for Moby Dick !”
“God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout, “God bless
ye, men. Steward go draw the great measure of grog. But what’s
!

this long face about, Mr. Starbuck? wilt thou not chase the white
whale ? art not game for Moby Dick ?”
“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too,
Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow
but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How
many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it,

Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”
“Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou re-

quirest a little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and

the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe,
by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch ;
then,
let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!”
“He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for ? methinks
it rings most vast, but hollow.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “ that simply smote
thee from blindest instinct Madness To be enraged with a dumb
! !

thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”

“Hark ye —the lower
yet again, All little layer. visible objects,

man, are but pasteboard masks. But

as each event— in in the living

act,the undoubted deed— some unknown but reasoning thing

there, still

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
 ;

148 MOBY DICK; OR

I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing
it. That inscrutable thing what I hate; and to be the white
is chiefly
whale agent, or he the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate
upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; Fd 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 intoler-

able than fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare ! So, so ;

thou reddenest and
palest ;
my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starhuck,
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 un-
recking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no
reasons for the torrid life they feel ! The crew, man, the crew ! Are
they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See
Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it.

Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Star-

huck! And what is it? Beckon it. ’Tis hut to help strike a fin;
no wondrous feat for Starhuck. What is it more? From this one
poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Bantucket, surely he will not
hang back, when every foremost hand has clutched a whetstone ? Ah !

constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but
speak !
—Aye, aye ! thy silence, that — that voices thee. (Aside) Some-
thing shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs.
Starhuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion.”
—
“God keep me! keep us all!” murmured Starhuck slowly.
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 heaved and rolled as be-
sails filled out; the ship

fore. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye

 ;
!
!!

THE WHITE WHALE W9

come ? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows
Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications of the fore-
going 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 Ahah.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he
ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before
him near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his
three mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship’s
company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant
searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met
his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their
leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but,
alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
“Drink and pass !” he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to
the nearest seaman. “The crew alone now drink. Bound 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 serpenLsnapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way
it went, this way it comes. —
Hand it me here’s a hollow Men, ye !

seem the years so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill
;

“Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan

and ye mates, flank me with your lances and ye harpooneers, stand
there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I
may in some sort revive an old custom of my fishermen fathers before
me. O men, you will yet see that Ha boy, come back ? bad pennies
!

come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brim-
—
ming 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, 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,
 ;
!

150 MOBY DICK; OR

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 cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen

—
there you three most honourable gentlemen 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 Cant them; cant them over!
not with that keen steel!
know ye not the goblet end ? Turn up the socket So so, now, ye !
;

cupbearers, advance. The irons take them hold them while I fill !”
!
;

Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed

the harpoon socket with the fiery waters from the pewter.
“How three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league.
Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! now waitsYon ratifying sun
to sit upon it. Drink ye harpooneers drink and swear, ye men that
!
!

—
man the deathful whaleboat’s bow Death to Moby Dick! God hunt
us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death !”
The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and male-
dictions against the white whale, were simultaneously
the spirits
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 dis-
persed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 151

CHAPTER XXXYI
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 long —
—
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 daz-
zlingly 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.
Dry heat upon my brow ? Oh ! time was, when as the sunrise nobly
spurred me, so the sunset soothed. Ho more. This lovely light, it

lights not me ;
all loveliness i’s anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy.
Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power;
damned, most subtly -and 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 stubborn, 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’ll do! They think me mad Starbuck does; —
but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness
that’s only calm to comprehend itself The prophecy was- that I should
!

be dismembered; and Aye! I lost this leg.— I now prophesy that I

will dismember my dismemberer.. How, then, be the prophet and the
fulfiller 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
 ;
!!

152 MOBY DICK; OR

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,
!

Abab’s compliments to ye come and see if you can swerve me. Swerve
;

me ? ye cannot swerve me, ye swerve yourselves man has ye there.

else !

Swerve me? T*he path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron nails,
whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through
the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush
Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!

CHAPTER XXXVII
DUSK

(By the mainmast ; Starbuclc leaning against it.)

My soul is overmanned and by a madman

more than matched ;
she’s ;

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
!

— aye, he would he 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-in-
sulting purpose, 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 somewhere by the sharkish sea.

The white whale is their demogorgon. Hark the infernal orgies that !
!

revelry is forward ! mark the unfaltering silence aft ! Methinks it

 ! —

THE WHITE WHALE 158

pictures Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay,

life.

embattled, bantering how, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where
he broods within his sternward 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 feel — Oh, life! ’tis now that
I do feel the latent horror in thee ! but ’tis not I ! that horror’s out of
me and ! with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to
fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures Stand by me, hold me, bind me, !

0 ye blessed influences!

CHAPTEK XXXVIII
FIRST NIGHT-WATCH

FORETOP

( Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)

Ha ! ha ! ha ! hem ! clear my throat !

— I’ve been thinking over it ever
since, and that ha-ha’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 pre-
destinated. 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, hut be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. Such a
waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa,
la, lirra, skirra! What’s my juicy little pear at home 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
 ! ! — ! ! —

154 MOBY DICK; OR

We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker’s brim!.
And break on the lips while meeting.

A brave stave that —who Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye,

calls! sir

(Aside) he’s my superior, he has his too, if I’m not mistaken. —Aye,
aye, sir, just through with this job —coming.

CHAPTER XXXIX
MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS

(Foresail rises and discovers the watch 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.

FIRST NANTUCKET SAILOR

Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for the digestion! Take a
tonic, follow me
(Sings, and all follow.)
Our captain stood upon the deck,
A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys.
And by your braces stand,
And we’ll have one of those fine whales,
Hand boys, over hand
So, be cheery, my lads may your hearts never fail
!

While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!

mate’s voice from the quarter-deck

Eight bells there, forward!

 —
!

THE WHITE WHALE 155

SECOND NANTUCKET SAILOR

Avast the chorus ! Eight bells there ! d’ye hear, bell-boy ? Strike
the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch.
I’ve the sort of mouth for that — the hogshead mouth. So, so ( thrusts
his head down the scuttle ), Star —bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells
there below! Tumble up!

DUTCH SAILOR
Grand snoozing to-night maty; fat night for that. I mark this in
our old Mogul’s wine; it’s quite as deadening to some as filliping to
others. We sing; they sleep — ay, lie down there, like ground-tier
butts. At ’em again ! There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em
through it. Tell them to avast dreaming of their lassies. That’s the
way that's it ;
thy throat ain’t spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter.

FRENCH SAILOR

Hist, boys ! let’s have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket
Bay. What say ye ? There comes the other watch. Stand by all

legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!

pip ( sulky and sleepy)

Don’t know where it is.

FRENCH SAILOR

Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. men, I say; merry’s
Jig it,

the word; hurrah! Damn me,* won’t you dance? Form, now, Indian
file, and gallop into the double shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs!
legs

ICELAND SAILOR

I don’t like your floor, maty ;

it’s too springy to my taste. I’m used
to ice-floors. I’m sorry to throw cold water on the subject; but excuse
me.

MALTESE SAILOR

Me too; where’s your girls? Who but a fool would take his left
 !

156 MOBY DICK; OR

hand by his right, and say to himself, how d’ye do? Partners! I

must have partners!

SICILIAN SAILOR

Aye; girls and a green! —then I’ll hop with ye; yea, turn grass-

hopper !

LONG-ISLAND SAILOR

Well, well, ye sulkies, there’s plenty more of us. Hoe corn when
you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here comes the
music; now for it!

AZORE SAILOR

{Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle ).

Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bits; up you mount!
ISTov;, hoys!
{The half ofthem dance to the tambourine ; some go below ; some
sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)

azore sailor {dancing).

Go it, Pip! Bang it, hell-boy! Eig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-

boy! Make fire-flies; break the jigglers!

pip

Jigglers, you say? —there goes another, dropped off ;

I pound it so.

china sailor

Eattle thy teeth, then, and pound away make

;
a pagoda of thyself.

FRENCH SAILOR.

Merry-mad ! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it! Split
jibs ! tear yourselves
 ) ! —

THE WHITE WHALE 157

tashtego ( quietly smoking).

That’s a white man ;

he calls that fun : humph ! I save my sweat.

OLD MANX SAILOR

I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are
dancing over. dance over your grave, I will that’s the bitterest
I’ll —
threat of your night-women, that beats head-winds round corners. O
Christ to think of the green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well,
!

well ;
belike the whole world’s a ball, as you scholars have it and so ;

’tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you’re young;
I was once.

THIRD NANTUCKET SAILOR

Spell oh !
—whew ! this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm
—give us a Tash. whiff,
They
( dancing
cease , and gather in clusters . Meantime the sky
darkens— the wind rises.)

LASCAR SAILOR

By Brahma ! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide

Ganges turned to wind ! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva

Maltese sailor ( reclining and shaking his cap)

It’s the waves — the snow’s caps turn to jig it now. They’ll shake
their tassels soon. Now
would all the waves were women, then I’d
go drown, and chassee with them evermore! There’s naught so sweet
—
on earth heaven may not match it as those swift glances of warm,
!
—
wild bosoms in the dance, when the over-arbouring arms hide such ripe,
bursting grapes.

Sicilian sailor X reclining

Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad — fleet interlacings of the limbs
lithe swayings —coyings— flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze: un-
 ! ! ) —
!

158 MOBY DICK; OR

ceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh,
Pagan? {Nudging.)

tahitan sailor {reclining on a mat

Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls !

—the Heeva-Heeva ! Ah
low-veiled, high-palmed Tahiti! on thy mat, but the
I still rest me
soft soil has slid ! I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat green the !

firstday I brought ye thence now worn and wilted ;

quite. Ah me !

not thou nor I can hear the change How then, if ! so be transplanted
to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee’s peak of
spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the villages! —The
blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! {Leaps to his feet.)

PORTUGUESE SAILOR

How the sea rolls swashing ’gainst the side! Stand by for reefing,
hearties ! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they’ll go lung-
ing presently.

DANISH SAILOR

Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdestl Well
done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly/ He’s no more afraid than
the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed
guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
t

FOURTH NANTUCKET SAILOR

He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he must
always kill a squall, something as they hurst a waterspout with a pistol
— fire your ship right into it

ENGLISH SAILOR

Blood! but that old man’s a grand old cove! We are the lads to
hunt him up his whale

ALL

Aye! aye!
 ! !

THE WHITE WHALE 159

OLD MANX SAILOR

How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree to
live when shifted to any other soil, and here there’s none but the crew’s
cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather
when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our
captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there’s another in the
sky — lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.

DAGGOO

What of that ? Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me ! I’m quarried

out of it

SPANISH SAILOR

(Aside.) He wants to bully, ah !

—the old grudge makes me touchy.
(Advancing.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side
of mankind — devilish dark at that. No offence.

daggoo (grimly).

None.

ST. JAGO’s SAILOR

That Spaniard’s mad or drunk. But that can’t be, or else in his own
case our old Mogul’s fire-waters are somewhat long in working.

FIFTH NANTUCKET SAILOR

What’s that I saw —lightning? Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR

No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

daggoo (springing).

Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!

Spanish sailor (meeting him).

Knife thee heartily ! big frame, small spirit

 !! !

160 MOBY DICK; OR

ALL

A row ! a row a row

!

Tashtego ( with a whiff).

A row, a’ low, and a row aloft —gods and men —both brawlers!
Humph
BELFAST SAILOR

A row! arrah, a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in

with ye

ENGLISH SAILOR

Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard’s knife! A ring, a ring!

OLD MANX SAILOR

Heady formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain

struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! Ho!

MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.

Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef top-

sails !

ALL

The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! ( They scatter.)

pip ( shrinking under the windlass).

Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash! there goes the jib-
stay ! Blang-whang God ! ! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal
yard ! It’s worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the
year! Who’d go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go,
all cursing, and here I don’t. Fine prospects to ’em; they’re on the
road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those
chaps there are worse yet—they are your white squalls, they.* White
squalls? white whale, Here have I heard chat
shirr! shirr! all their

just now, and white whale — the —but spoken of once! shirr! shirr!
and only evening— makes me
this over my tambourine
it jingle all like
 ! ;

THE WHITE WHALE 161

that anaconda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt him! Oh, thou
big white God somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on
aloft there
this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have
no bowels to feel fear

CHAPTEK XL
MOBY DICK

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the
rest my oath had been welded with theirs and stronger I shouted, and
; ;

more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul.
A was in me; Ahab’s quenchless
wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling
feud seemed mine. With greedy ear' I learned the history of that mur-
derous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of
violence and revenge.
For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilised seas mostly fre-
quented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of
his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen
him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given
battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of
whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire
watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest
along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth
or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort

the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the

times of sailing from home ;
all these, with other circumstances, direct
and indirect, long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide
whaling fleet of the special individualising tidings concerning Moby
Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have
encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a
sperm whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale,
after doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped
them ;
some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the
to

whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as
 , ;

162 MOBY DICK; OR

of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not
unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the
monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident igno-
rantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most
part, were content ix> ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it

were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the
individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter
between Ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly
regarded.
And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by
chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had
every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him,
as for any other -whale of that species. But at length, such calamities
did ensue in these assaults —not restricted to sprained wrists and
ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations —but fatal to the last
degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating
and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick ;
those things had gone far to
shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of the
White Whale had eventually come.
Hor did "wild rumours of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the
more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not
only do fabulous rumours naturally grow out of the very body of all
surprising terrible events, — as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi
but, in maritime more than in that of terra, firma wild ru-
life, far
mours abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling
to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale-
-

fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness

and fearfulness of the rumours which- sometimes circulate there. For
not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and
superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are
by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is ap-
pallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its
greater marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such
remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a
thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled hearthstones, or
aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and
longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 163

wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with

many a mighty birth.
No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit
over the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumours of the White
Whale did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of mor-
bid hints, and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies,
which eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed
from anything that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a
panic did he finally strike, that few who by those rumours, at least,
had heard of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to
encounter the perils of his jaw.
But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work.
Not even at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm
Whale, from all other species of the levia-
as fearfully distinguished
than, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are
those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous
enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right Whale, would per-
—
haps either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or timid-
ity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale. At any rate, there are
plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sail-
ing under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered
the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is re-
stricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North.
Seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish fire-
side interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern whaling.
Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale
anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows
which stem them.
And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary
times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists
Olassen and Povelson — declaring the Sperm Whale not only to be a
consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be so in-
credibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor
even down to so late a time as Cuvier’s, were these or almost similar
impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron himself
affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included)
 —

164 MOBY DICK; OR

are “struck with the most lively terrors,” and “often in the precipi-
tancy of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such vio-
lence as to cause instantaneous death.” And however the general
experiences in the fishery may amend such reports as these; yet in
their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the
superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of their vocation,
revived in the minds of the hunters.
So that overawed by the rumours and portents concerning him, not
a few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier
days of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to in-
duce long practised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this
new and daring warfare; such men protesting that although other
leviathans might he hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance
at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man
that to attempt it,would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity.
On this head, there are some remarkable documents that may be
consulted.
Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things
were ready to give chase to Moby Dick and a still greater number who,
;

chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the spe-
cific details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious accom-
paniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if offered.
One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be
linked with the White Whale minds of the superstitiously in-
in the
clined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous that ;

he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the

same instant of time.
Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit alto-
gether without some faint show of superstitious probability. Dor as
the secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged, even
to the most erudite research ;
so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale
when beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to his
pursuers ;
and from time to time have originated the most curious and
contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning the
mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transports
himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points.
 THE WHITE WHALE 165

It is a thing well known to both American and English whale ships,

and as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by
Scoresby, that some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific,
in whose bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the
Greenland seas, Hor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these in-
stances has been declared that the interval of time between the two
it

assaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by in-
ference, it has been believed by some whalemen, that the Hor’-West
Passage, so long a problem to man, was never a problem to the whale.
So that here, in the real living experience of living men, the prodigies
related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near
whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships
floated up to the surface) ;
and that still more wonderful story of the
Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have
come from the Holy Land by an underground passage) these fabulous ;

narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman.

Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and know-
ing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped
alive it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should
;

go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only

ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time) ;

that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would

still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to
spout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for
again in unensanguined billows hundred of leagues away, his unsullied
jet would once more be seen.
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was
enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the mon-
ster to strike the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not
so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other
sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out a peculiar snow- —
white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidal white hump. These
were his prominent features the tokens whereby, even in the limitless,
;

uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those

who knew him.
The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with
the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive
160 MOBY DICK; OR
appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by
his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea,
leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden
gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable
hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale
with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which,
according to specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in
his assaults. More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of
dismay than perhaps aught when swimming before his ex-
else. For,
ulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had
several times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing down
upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back in
consternation to their ship.
Already several fatalities had attended But though sim-
his chase.
ilar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual

in the fishery; yet in most instances, such seemed the White Whale’s
infernal forethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that
he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an un-
intelligent agent.
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds
of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of
chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of tom comrades, they swam out
of the white curds of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene; ex-
asperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
His three boats and oars and men both, whirling
stove around him,
in the eddies one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow,
;

had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly

seeking with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale.
That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his
sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away
Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned
Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more
seeing malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since
that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness
against the whale, all the more fell, for that in his frantic morbidness
he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but
all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale
 THE WHITE WHALE 167

swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious

agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left
living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malig-
nity which has been from the beginning; which the ancient Ophites of
the east reverenced in their statute devil; —
Ahab did not fall down
and worship them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the
it like
abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All
that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things;
all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the
brain ;
all the subtle demonisms of life and thought ;
all evil, to crazy
Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby
Dick. He upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the
piled
general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and
then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell
upon it.
It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise
at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at
the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, pas-
sionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore
him, he probably felt the agonising bodily laceration, but nothing
more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and
for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched
together in one hammock, rounding in mid-winter that dreary, howling
Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled
into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was
only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final
monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at
intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic and, though un- ;

limbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian
chest, and was moreover by his delirium, that his mates
intensified

were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his ham-
mock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales.
And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild
stun’sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all ap-

pearances, the old man’s delirium seemed left behind him with the

Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed
light and air even then, when he bore that firm, collected front, how-
;
168 MOBY DICK; OR
ever pale, and issued his calm orders once again; and his mates
thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in
his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning
and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but be-
come transfigured into still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided
not, but deepeningly contracted like the unabated Hudson, when that
;

noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the High-

land gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot
of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad mad-
ness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That
before living agent, now became The living instrument. If such a
furious trope may stand, this special lunacy stormed his general sanity,
and carried it, and turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own
mad mark; so that far from having
Ahab, to that lost his strength,

one end, did now possess a thousand-fold more potency than ever he
had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object.
This much; yet Ahab’s larger, darker, deeper part remains un-
is

hinted. But vain to popularise profundities, and all truth is pro-

found. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked
Hotel de Cluny where we here stand however grand and wonderful, —
now quit it
;
—and take your way, ye nobler, and sadder souls,
to those vast Roman halls of Thermes where far beneath the fantastic
;

towers of man’s upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful
essence sits in bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities,
and throned on torsoes ! So with a broken throne, the great gods mock
that captive king ;
so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his
frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye
prouder, sadder souls !
question that proud, sad king ! A family like-
ness ! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties ;
and from your
grim sire only will the old State-secret come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely, all my
means are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to
kill, or change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind
he did long dissemble ;
in some sort, did still. But that thing of his
dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will de-
terminate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling,
that when with ivory leg be stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer
 THE WHITE WHALE ie«

thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick,
with the terrible casualty which had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea
was likewise popularly
ascribed to a kindred cause. .And so too all the added moodiness which
always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in* the Pequod on the
present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely,
that far from distrusting his tkness for another whaling voyage, on
account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent
isle were inclined to harbour the conceit, that for those very reasons
he was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full of
rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and
sore without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable
idea such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart
;

his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or,
if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet

such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl

on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it
is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed

in h;im, Ahab had purposely upon the present voyage with the
sailed
one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had
any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what
was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous
souls have wrenched the ship from such a fienflish man! They were
bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from
the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and super-
natural revenge.
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with
curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too,

chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals

—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue
or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indiffer-
ence and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask.
Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some
infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was
that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire —by what evil

magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost
theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how
 —

170 MOBY DICK; OR

all this came to be—what White Whale was to them, or how to
the
their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way,
he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,
all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The
subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads
his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does
not feel the irresistible arm drag ? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four
can stand still ? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the
time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale,
could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.

CHAPTER XLI
THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE

What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times,
he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,
which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm,
there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning
him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the
rest; and yet so mystical and well-nigh ineffable was it, that I almost
despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness
of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope
to explain myself here; and some dim, random way, explain
yet, in

myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances
beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles,
japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way
recognised a certain royal pre-eminence in this hue even the barbaric, ;

grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Ele-
phants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion;
and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quad-
ruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one
figure of a and the great Austrian Empire,
snow-white charger;
Caesarian heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the
same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the
 —;

THE WHITE WHALE m

human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every
dusky tribe; and though, besides all this, whiteness has been even made
significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked
a j°yful day ;
and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolisings,
this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things
the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red
Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deep-
est pledge of honour; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the
majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the
daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds though
;

even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been
made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian
fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the
altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made
incarnate in a snow-white bull and though to the noble Iroquois, the
;

mid-winter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest
festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the
purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings
of their fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white,
all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture,
worn beneath the cassock and though among the holy
the alb or tunic, ;

pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebra-

tion of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John,
white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders
stand clothed in white before the great white throne, and the Holy One
that sitteth there white like wool ;
yet for all these accumulated associ-
ations, with whatever and honourable, and sublime, there yet
is sweet,
lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which
strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in
blood.
This elusive quality which causes the thought of whiteness,
it is,

when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any
object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.
Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics
what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent
horrors they are ? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an
abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb
172 MOBY DICK; OR
gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his

heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or

1
shark .

whence come those clouds of spiritual

Bethink thee of the albatross :

wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God’s great,
2
unflattering laureate, Nature .

1
Withreference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who
would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness,
separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that
brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only arises
from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature
stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by
bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar benr
frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be
true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified
terror.
As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the same
quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit by the
Prench in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Komish mass for the
dead begins with “Requiem eternam” (eternal rest), whence Requiem de-
nominating the mass itself, and any other funereal music. Now in allusion
to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness
of his habits, the French call him Requin.
2
1 remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged
gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch be-
low, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main
hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a
hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel
wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throb-
bings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s
ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, me-
thought I peeped to secrets not below the heavens. As Abraham before the
angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and
in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories
of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I
cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But
at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A
goney,
he replied. Goney! I never had heard that name before; is it conceivable
that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashord! never! But
some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s nanfe for albatross.
So that by no possibility could Coleridge’s wild Rhyme have had aught to
do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird
upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird
to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little
brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.
I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 173

Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that

of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,
large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a
thousand monarchs in his lofty, over-scorning carriage. He was
the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those
days were only fenced by the Pocky Mountains and the Alleghanies.
At their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star
which every evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade
of his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings
more resplendent than gold and silver-heaters could have furnished him.
A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western
world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the
glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god,
bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching
amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that end-
lessly streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his
circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White
Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through
his cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always
to the bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.
Xor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of
this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so
clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it
which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain
nameless terror.
But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that acces-
sory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and
Albatross.
What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often
shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin

lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a
solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have
frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic
fowl.
But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will
tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea. At
last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round
its neck, with the ship’s time and place; and then letting it escape.
 ;

174 MOBY DICK; OR

It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name
he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men —has no substantive
deformity —and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes
him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should
this be so?
Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but
not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this crown-
ing attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted
ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White Squall.
Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice omitted so
potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage
masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the
in Froissart, when,
desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-
place !

Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all

mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It

cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of the
dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there
as if indeed that pallor were much like the badge of consternation in
the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And from that pallor
of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud in which we
wrap them. Nor even in our superstitions do we fail to throw the same
snowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white
fog. —Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us add, that even the king
of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolise whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealised significance it calls up a peculiar apparition of the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to
account for it ? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then,
by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of white-
ness —though for the time either wholly or in a great part stripped of
all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but,
nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modi-
fied; —can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct
us to the hidden cause we seek ?

Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,

 THE WHITE WHALE 175

and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls.
And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions
about to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few
perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore
may not be able to recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be hut loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare men-
tion of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless
processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, downcast and hooded with new-
fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the
Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White
Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors
and kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White
Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an
untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neigh-
bours —the By ward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer
towers, the White # mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar
moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention
of that name, while the thought of Virginia’s Blue Ridge is full of a
soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes
and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectral-
ness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal
thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by
the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets ? Or, to choose a wholly un-
substantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading
the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does “the tall pale man” of the
Hartz whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the
forest,

—
green of the groves why is this phantom more terrible than all the
whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earth-
quakes ;
nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas ;
nor the tearlessness of
arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning
spires,wrenched copestones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards
of anchored fleets) and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over
;

upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards —

it is not these things alone
;

which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou canst see.
176 MOBY DICK; OR
For Lima lias taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this
whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins
for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay;
spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that
fixes its own distortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of white-
ness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror
of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there
aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind
almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhib-
ited under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality.
What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively
elucidated by the following examples.
First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands,
if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels
just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under pre-
cisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to
view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky-whiteness as —
if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swim-

ming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the

shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real
ghost in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings heart and
; ;

helm they both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him
again. Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, “Sir, it was not
so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous
whiteness that so stirred me?”
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the
snow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the
mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast
altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to
lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the
back-woodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views
an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or
twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, behold-
ing the scenery of the Antarctic seas ;
where
by some infernal
at times,

trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and
half shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his
 ! —

THE WHITE WHALE 177

misery, views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him

with its lean ice monuments and splintered crosses.
But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about whiteness
is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to
a hypo, Ishmael.
Tell me, why young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley
this strong
of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey why is it that upon —
the sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so
that he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness
why will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in
frenzies of affright ? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings
of wild creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange muski-
ness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experi-
ence of former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt, of
the black bisons of distant Oregon?
No : but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles
from Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring
bison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies,
which this instant they may be trampling into dust.
Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings
of the festooned frosts of mountains the desolate shiftings of the wind-
;

rowed snows of prairies all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of

;

that buffalo robe to the frightened colt

Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the
mystic sign gives forth such hints ;
yet with me, as with the colt, some-

where those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this
visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed
in fright.
But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and
learned why it appeals with such power to the soul ;
and more strange
—
and far more portentous why, as we have seen, it is at once the most

meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Chris-
tian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying
agent in things

the most appalling to mankind.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless
voids

and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with
178 MOBY DICK; OR
the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the
milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a

colour as the visible absence of colour, and at the same time the con-

crete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb
blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows —a colourless,

all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider

that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly
hues —every stately or lovely emblazoning —the sweet tinges of sunset
skies and woods yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the but-
;

terfly cheeks of young girls all these are but subtile deceits, not actually
;

inherent in substance, but only laid on from without; and when we

proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which pro-
duces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever
remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without medium
upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its

own blank tinge —pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before
us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear
coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel
gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all

the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was
the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt ?

CHAPTER XLII
HARK !

“Hist! Hid you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

It was the middle-watch; a fair moonlight; the seamen were stand-
ing in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh water butts in the
waist, to the scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed
the buckets to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on
the hallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to
speak or rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in
the deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the
steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.
It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon,
 THE WHITE WHALE 179

whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbour, a

Cholo, the words above.
“Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d’ye mean?”
“There it is again — —
under the hatches don’t you hear it ? — a cough
— it sounded like a cough.”
“Cough be damned ! Pass along that return bucket.”
“There again —there it is !
— it sounds like two or three sleepers turn-
ing over, now!”
“Caramba ! have done, shipmate, will ye ? It’s the three soaked
biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye —nothing else.

Look to the bucket!”

“Say what ye will, shipmate; I’ve sharp ears.”
“Ay, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of the old Quak-
eress’s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Hantucket; you’re the
chap.”
“Grin away; we’ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is
somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck and ;

I suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb

tell Flask, one morning watch, that there was something of that sort

in the wind.”
!”
“Tish ! the bucket

CHAPTER XLIII

THE CHAET

Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall
that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his
purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the
transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts,
spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating him-
self before it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines

and shadings which there met and with slow but steady pencil
his eye ;

trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At in-
tervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein
180 MOBY DICK; OR
were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former voy-
ages of various ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains
over his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for
ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow,
till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and

courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing
lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his
cabin, Ahab Almost every night they
thus pondered over his charts.
were brought out almost every night some pencil marks were effaced,
;

and others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans
before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with
a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought
of his soul.
Now, any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the levia-
to
thans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one
solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so
did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents and ;

thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale’s food and, also, ;

calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in

particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost ap-
proaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this
or that ground in search of his prey.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodioalness of the
sperm whale’s resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that,
could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world; were
the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then
the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in
invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows.
On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory
1
charts of the sperm whale .

1
Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an
official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory,
Washington, 16th April 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely
such a chart is in course of completion; and portions of it are presented
in the circular. “This chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees
of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through each of
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 181

Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another,

the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct — say, rather, secret
intelligence from the Deity —mostly swim in veins , as they are called
continuing their way
along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any charts, with one
tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direc-
tion taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor’s parallel, and
though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable,
straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said
to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as
the vein is presumed to expand or contract) but never exceeds the visual
;

sweep from the whale ship’s mastheads, when circumspectly gliding

along this magic zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within
that breadth and along that path, migrating whales may with great con-
fidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known sepa-
rate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in
crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could,
by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to
be wholly without prospect of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle
his delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality,
perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular
seasons for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that
the herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this
year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were
found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and un-
questionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In
general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the
solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So
that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on
what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian Ocean, or Volcano

which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally
through each of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of
days that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two
others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have
been seen.”
182 MOBY DICK; OR
Bay on the Japanese coast; yet it did not follow, that were the Pequod
to visit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season,
she would infallibly encounter him there. So, -too, with some other
feeding-grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all
these seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak,
not his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab’s chances of ac-
complishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only
been made to whatever wayside, antecedent, extra prospects were his,

ere a particular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities

would become probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possi-

bility the next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place
were conjoined in the one technical phrase —the Season-on-the-Line.
For there and then, for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been
periodically described, lingering in those waters for a while, as the sun,
in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of
the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with
the white whale had taken place; there the waves were storied with
his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old
man had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But in the cautious
comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw
his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit him-
self to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned,

however flattering it might he to those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness

of his vow could he so tranquillise his unquiet heart as to postpone all

intervening quest.
Eow, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning
of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavours then could enable
her commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape
Horn, and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the
equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait
3
for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of the Pequod s
sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to
this very complexion of things. Because, an interval of three hundred
and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, in-
stead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous
hunt if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far re-
;

mote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled

 THE WHITE WHALE 183

brow Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any

off the

other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor’-

Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoom,
might blow Moby Dick into the devious zigzag world-circle of the
Pequod’s circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it

not but a mad idea, this — that in the broad boundless ocean, one soli-
tary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual
recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the
thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. Por the peculiar
snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not
but be unmistakable. “And have I not tallied the whale,” Ahab would
mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after mid-
night he would throw himself back in reveries —
“tallied him, and shall
he escape? His broad and scalloped out like a lost
fins are bored,
sheep’s ear!” And here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless
race till a weariness and faintness of pondering came over him and in
; ;

the open air of the deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah,
God what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed
!

with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched

hands and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
;

Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably

vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts
through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of frenzies, and
whirled them round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throb-
bing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was
sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up
from and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked
its base,

flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to
leap down among them when this hell in himself yawned beneath him,
;

a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes
Ahab would burst from his state-room, as though escaping from a
bed that was on Yet these perhaps, instead of being unsuppress-
fire.

able symptoms of some latent weakness, of fright at his own resolve,

were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. Por, at such times, Ahab,
the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this
Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused
 ;

184 MOBY DICK; OR

him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, liv-

ing principle or soul in and in sleep, being for the time dissoci-
him ;

ated from the characterising mind, which at other times employed it

for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the
scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was
no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued
with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab’s case, yielding
up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose ;
that pur-
pose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and
devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own ;
nay,
could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was
conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unhidden and unfeathered
birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes,
when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was, for the time, but
a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light,
to be sure, but without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in
itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature
in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus
;

a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature
;

he creates.

CHAPTER XLIV
THE AFFIDAVIT

So far what there may be of a narrative in this book and, indeed,

as ;

as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particu-

lars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier
part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume the leading ;

matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged

upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away
any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may
induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of
this affair.
I care not to perform this part of my task methodically ;
but shall be
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items,
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 185

practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these

citations — I take it —the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of
itself.

First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after

receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an in-
terval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the
same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same
private cypher, have been taken from the body. In the instance where
three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and
I think it may have been something more than that the man who darted
;

them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage

to Africa, went ashore and penetrated
there, joined a discovery party
far into the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two
years, often endangered by, serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas,
with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of
unknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have
been on its travels no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe,
;

brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose.
This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished
the other. I say, I myself have known three instances similar to this
that is, in two of them I saw the whales struck, and, upon the second
attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them, after-
wards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell
out that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the last time
distinctly recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale’s
eye, which I had observed there three years previous. I say three
years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are three
instances, then, which I personally know the truth of but I have heard ;

of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter

there is no good ground to impeach.
Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however
ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several
memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean
has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such
a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing
to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales for how- ;

ever peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be they soon put an
186 MOBY DICK; OR
end to his peculiarities by and boiling him down into a
killing him,
peculiarly valuable oil. No; the reason was this: that from the fatal
experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible 'prestige of perilousness
about such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that
most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their

tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea,

without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some
poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they
make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they
pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump
for their presumption.
But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity —
Nay, you may call it an ocean- wide renown; not only was
he famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death,
but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions
of a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was
it not so, O Timor Tom thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg,
!

who so long didst lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout
was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, 0 New
Zealand J ack thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the
!

vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of

Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblances of a
snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not so, 0 Don Miguel! thou
Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics
upon the back ? In plain prose, here are four whales as well known to
the students of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to the classic
scholar.
But this is not all. New Zealand Jack and Don Miguel, after at
various times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels,
were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and
killed by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with
that express object as much in view, as in setting out through the Narra-
gansett woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture that
notorious murderous savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the In-
dian King Philip.
I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make
mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in
 THE WHITE WHALE 187

printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole

story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this
is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as
much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of
the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some
hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery,
they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and
more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.
First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the gen-
eral perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid
conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.
One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and
deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at home,
however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you sup-
pose that that poor fellow there, who moment perhaps caught by
this the
whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the
—
bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan do you suppose that that
poor fellow’s name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read
to-morrow at your breakfast ? No: because the mails are very irregular
between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might
be called regular news direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I
tell you that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific,
among many others we spoke thirty different ships, every one of which
had had a death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three
that had each lost a boat’s crew. For God’s sake, be economical with
your lamps and candles not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop
!

of man’s blood was spilled for it.

Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a
whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever
found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-
fold enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my
facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of
being facetious than Moses when he wrote the history of the plagues
of Egypt.
But fortunately the upon
special point I here seek can be established

testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The

Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judi-
188 MOBY DICK; OR
ciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly de-
stroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale has
done it.

In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nan-

First:
tucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts,
lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long,
several of the whales were wounded when, suddenly, a very large whale
;

escaping from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down
upon the ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove hei
in, that in less than “ten minutes” she settled down and fell over. Not
a surviving plank of her has been seen since. After the severest ex-
posure, part of the crew reached the land in their boats. Being re-

turned home at last, Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific
incommand of another ship, but the gods shipwrecked him again upon
unknown rocks and breakers ;
for the second time his ship was utterly
lost,and forthwith forswearing the sea, he has never tempted it since.
At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen
Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the time of the
tragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed
with his son and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catas-
;

1
trophe.

1
The following are
extracts from Chace’s narrative “Every fact seemed
:

to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed

his operations he made two several attacks upon the ship, at a short interval
;

between them, both of which, according to their direction, were calculated

to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby combining the
speed of the two objects for the shock; to effect which the exact manoeuvres
which he made were necessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such as
indicated resentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal which we
had just before entered, and in which we had struck three of his companions,
as if fired with revenge for their sufferings.” Again: “At all events, the
whole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and
producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating
mischief, on the part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now
recall), induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion.”
Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a black
night in an open boat, w hen almost despairing of reaching any hospitable
r

shore. “The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears of being
swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks, with
all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, seemed scarcely en-
titled to a moment’s thought; the dismal-looking wreck, and the horrid aspect
and revenge of the whale , wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again
 THE WHITE WHALE 189

Secondly: The ship Union , also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807
totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, hut the authentic particu-
lars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter, though from

the whale-hunters I have now and then heard casual allusions to it.
Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J ,

then commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened

to be dining with a party of whaling captains, on hoard a Nantucket
ship in the harbour of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning
upon whales, the Commodore was pleased to he sceptical touching the
amazing strength ascribed them by the professional gentlemen pres-
to
ent. He peremptorily denied, for example, that any whale could so
smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a thimble-
ful. Very good; hut there is more coming. Some weeks after, the
Commodore set sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he
was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale, that begged a few
moments’ confidential business with him. That business consisted
in fetching the Commodore’s craft such a thwack, that with all his
pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave down and
repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore’s inter-
view with that whale as providential. I tell you, the sperm whale will
stand no nonsense.
I will now refer you to Langsdorff' s Voyages for a little circumstance
in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you
must know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusen-
stem’s famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present
century. Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter.
“By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next
day we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather
was very clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to
keep on our fur clothing. Eor some days we had very little wind; it
was not till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the north-west sprang
up. An uncommon large whale, the body of which was larger than the
ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the water, but was not perceived
by any one on board till the moment when the ship, which was in full

made appearance.” In another place

its — p. 45, —he speaks of “the mysterious
and mortal attack of the animal .”
190 MOBY DICK; OR
sail,was almost upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent its strik-
ing against him. We were thus placed in the most imminent danger,
as this gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the ship three feet
at least out of the water. and the sails fell altogether,
The masts reeled,
while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck, con-
cluding that we had struck upon some rock instead of this we saw the
;

monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain
D’Wolf applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not
the vessel had received any damage from the shock, but we found that
very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured.”
Now, the Captain D’Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual adven-
tures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of Dorchester near
Boston. I have the honour of being a nephew of his. I have particu-
larly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff. He sub-
stantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no means a large
one : a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my
uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.
In that up-and-down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full,
too, of honest wonders —the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient
Dampier’s old chums — I found a little matter set down so like that just
quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a
corroborative example, if such be needed.
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to “John Eerdinando,” as he calls
the modern Juan Fernandez. “In our way thither,” he says, “about
four o’clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty
leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which
put our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where
they were or what to think; but every one began to prepare for death.
And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it for
granted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the amazement
was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no
ground. . The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their
. .

carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks.
Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his
cabin !” Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake,
and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great earth-
 THE WHITE WHALE wi
quake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief along
the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder, if, in the darkness
of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an
unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another
known to me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale.
In more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the
assailing boats hack to their ships, hut to pursue the ship itself, and
long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The Eng-
lish ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his
strength, let me say, that there have been examples where the lines
attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to
the ship, and secured there; the whale towing her great hull through
the water, as a. horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often
observed that, if the sperm whale once struck is allowed time to rally,
he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate de-
signs of destruction to his pursuers ;
nor is it without conveying some
eloquent indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will
frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for
several consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one
more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant
one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvel-
lous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day,
but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the
ages so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon Verily
;
—
there is nothing new under the sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magis-
trate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and
Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own
times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities,
he has always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating
historian, except in some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the
matter presently to be mentioned.
How, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term
of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in
the neighbouring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed

vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years.
192 MOBY DICK; OR
A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid.
Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species this sea-
monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as
for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly in-
clined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long
time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the
Mediterranean and the deep waters connected with it. Even now I am
certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present
constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But
further investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times
there have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale
in the Mediterranean. I am
on good authority, that on the Bar-
told,

bary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British Navy found the skeleton
of a sperm whale. Now as a vessel of war readily passes through the
Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out
of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar sub-
stance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But
I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale —squid
or cuttle-fish —lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures,
but by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its

surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and
reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all

human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster, that for half a century stove

the ships of a Boman Emperor, must in all probability have been a
sperm whale.

CHAPTEK XLV
SURMISES

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby
Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that
one passion ;
nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and
long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether
to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage; or at least if this

were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more in-
 THE WHITE WHALE 193

fluential with him. would be refining too much, perhaps, even con-
It
sidering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the
White Whale might have possibly extended itself some degree to all
sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more
he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale
would prove to he the hated one he hunted. But if such a hypothesis
he indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations
which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling
passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him.
To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used
in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He
knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some re-
spects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete
spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intel-
lectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but
stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s
coerced will were Ahab’s, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s
brain ;
still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred
his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself
from it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would
elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Star-
buck would ever be apt to fall into open relapse of rebellion against his
captain’s leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him. Hot only that, but the
subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more signif-
icantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in fore-
seeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of
that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that
the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men’s courage is proof against protracted medita-
tion unrelieved by action) that when they stood their long night
;

watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of
than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage
crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all
sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable —
they live in the vary-
—
ing outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness and when retained
for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of
194 MOBY DICK; OR
lifeand passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that tempo-
rary interests and employments should intervene and hold them health-
ily suspended for the final dash.

Nor was Aliah unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emo-

tion mankind disdain all base considerations but such times are evanes-
;

cent. The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured

man, thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale
fully incites the hearts of this my
savage crew, and playing round their
savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them,
still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must

also have food for their more common, daily appetites. For even the
high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to
traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre,
without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious
perquisites by the way, Had they been strictly held to their one final
—
and romantic object that final and romantic object, too many would
have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab,
of all hopes of cash —
ay, cash. They may scorn cash now but let some ;

months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this

same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would
soon cashier Ahab.
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more re-
lated to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and per-
haps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of
the Pe quod^s voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing,
he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usur-
pation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if

so disposed, and end competent, could refuse all further obedi-

to that
ence to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From
even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible con-
sequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must
of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection
could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand,
backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute at-

mospheric influence which was possible for his crew to be subjected to.
it

For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be ver-
bally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good de-
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE i»5

gree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod’s voy-
age ; observe all customary usages and not only that, but force himself
;

to evince all his well-known passionate interest in the general pursuit of

his profession.
Be may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
all this as it

mastheads and admonishing them to keep a bright lookout, and not

omit reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without
reward.

CHAPTER XLVI
THE' MAT-MAKE®

It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging

about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.
Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-
mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and
yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of
reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his
own invisible self.
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As
I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the
long yarns of the warps, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as
Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword
between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly
and unthinkingly drove home every yarn I say so strange a dreaminess
:

did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken
by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this
were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically
weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads
of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vi-
bration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise
interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed neces-
sity; and here, thought I, with my own hand, I ply my own shuttle
and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof
slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be
 ;

196 MOBY DICK; OR

and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding
contrast in tbe final aspect of the completed fabric ;
this savage’s sword,

thought I, which thus and fashions both warp and woof

finally shapes
this easy indifferent sword must be chance —
ay, chance, freewill,
and
—
necessity— nowise incompatible all interweavingly working together.
The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate
course — its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that;
freewill still free to ply her shuttle between given threads and chance,
;

though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and
sideways in its motions modified by freewill, though thus prescribed to
by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow
at events.

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound

so strange, long-drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball
of freewill dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds
whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees
was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly
forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden inter-
vals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very
moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whale-
men’s lookouts perched as high in the air but from few of those lungs
;

could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence
as from Tashtego the Indian’s.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and
eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him
some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild
cries announcing their coming.
“There she blows there there there she blows
! ! ! ! ! she blows !”
“Where-away ?”
“On the lee-beam, about two miles off ! a school of them !”
Instantly was commotion.
all

The sperm whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating
and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish
from other tribes of his genus.
“There go flukes !” was now the cry from Tashtego and the whales ;

disappeared.
 THE WHITE WHALE 197

“Quick, steward !” cried Ahab. “Time time !”

!

Dough-Boy hurried .below, glanced at the watch, and reported the

exact minute to Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently
rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down
heading to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in
advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the
sperm whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he never-
theless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly
swims off in the opposite quarter — this deceitfulness of his could not
now be in action ;
for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen
Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our
vicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers —that is, those not
appointed to the boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the mainmast
head. The and mizzen had come down the line tubs
sailors at the fore ;

were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard
was backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like three samphire
baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews
with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised
on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war’s men about to
throw themselves on board an enemy’s ship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who
was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out
of air.

CHAPTER XLYII
THE FIRST LOWERING

The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of
the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles
and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always been
deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain’s,
on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The figure that
now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly
protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black
 — !

198 MOBY DICK; OR

cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trousers of the same
dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening
white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and
round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of this
figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of
the aboriginal natives of the Manillas; — a race notorious for a certain
diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to
he the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the water of the devil,
their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to he elsewhere.
While yet the wondering ship’s company were gazing upon these
strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head,

“All ready there, Fedallah?”

“Ready,” was the half-hissed reply.
“Lower away then; d’ye hear?” shouting across the deck. “Lower
away there, I say.”
Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the
men sprang over the rail the sheaves whirled round in the blocks with
; ;

a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea ;

while, with a dexterous,
off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like,

leaped down the rolling ship’s side into the tossed boats below.
Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship’s lee, when a fourth
keel, coming from the windward side pulled round under the stern, and
showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who standing erect in the stern,
loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely,
so as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all their eyes again
riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other
boats obeyed not the command.
“Captain Ahab ? ” said Starbuck.
“Spread yourselves,” cried Ahab; “give way, all four boats. Thou,
Flask, pull out more to leeward!”
“Ay, ay, sir,” cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his
great steering oar. “Lay back!” addressing his crew. “There!
there !
— there again ! There she blows 'right ahead, boys !
—lay back
Hever heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.”
“Oh, I don’t mind ’em, sir,” said Archy ;
“I knew it all before now.
Didn’t I hear ’em in the hold ? And didn’t I tell Cabaco here of it ?

What say ye, Cabaco ? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask.”

 — !

THE WHITE WHALE i»»

“Pull, pull, my fine hearts alive; pull, my children; pull, my little

ones/’ drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of
whom still showed signs of uneasiness. you break your “Why don’t
backbones, my boys ? What is it you stare at ? Those chaps in yonder
boats ? Tut They are only five more hands come to help us never
! —
—
mind from where the more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull: never
mind the brimstone — devils are good fellows enough. So, so; there
you are now ;
that’s the stroke for a thousand pounds ;
that’s the stroke
tosweep the stakes ! Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes
Three cheers, men — all hearts alive ! Easy, easy don’t be in a hurry
;

don’t be in a hurry. Why don’t you snap your oars, you rascals ? Bite
something, you dogs ! So, so, so, then ;
— softly, softly ! That’s it

that’s it ! long and strong. Give way there, give way ! The devil fetch
ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye
sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye ? pull, can’t ye ? pull, won’t ye ? Why
in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don’t ye pull? — pull and
break something !
pull, and start your eyes out Here !” whipping out
!

the sharp knife from his girdle; “every mother’s son of ye draw his
knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That’s it — that’s it.

How ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her

!”
start her, my silver spoons ! Start her, marling-spikes
Stubb’s exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had
rather a peculiar way of talking tothem in general, and especially in
inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from
this specimen of his sermonisings that he ever flew into downright
passions with his congregation. Hot at all; and therein consisted his
chief peculiarity. He
would say the most terrific things to his crew, in
a tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed
so calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear
such queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling
for the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy
and indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering oar, and so
—
broadly gaped open-mouthed at times that the mere sight of such a —
yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted like a charm upon
the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists,
whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all inferiors

on their guard in the matter of obeying them.

200 MOBY DICK; OR
In obedience from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
to a sign
across Stubb’s bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were
pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.
“Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if
ye please!”
“Holloa !” returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he
spoke ;
still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew ;
his face set like
a flint from Stubb’s.
“What think ye of those yellow boys, sir ?”
“Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong,
strong boys !” in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again)
“A sad business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but
never mind, Mr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong,
come what will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There’s hogsheads of
sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that’s what ye came for. (Pull, my
boys!) Sperm, sperm’s the play! This at least is duty; duty and
!”
profit hand in hand

“Ay, ay, I thought as much,” soliloquised Stubb, when the boats

diverged, “as soon as I clapt eye on ’em, I thought so. Ay, and that’s
what he went into the after-hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long sus-
pected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale’s at the
bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can’t be helped! All right!
!”
Give way, men ! It ain’t the White Whale today ! Give way
How the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical in-
stant as the lowering of the boatfrom the deck, this had not unreason-
ably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship’s
company; but Archy’s fancied discovery having some time, previous
got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had
in some small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the
extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb’s
confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the
time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left
abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab’s
precise agency in the matter from the beginning. Eor me, I silently
recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the
Pequod during the dim Hantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical
hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
 ©GIK 169283

© Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc

“pull, pull, my fine hearts alive; pull, my children; pull, my little ones!”
-
 THE WHITE WHALE 201

Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the

furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a
circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those
tiger-yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five
trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which
periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst
boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen
pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and
displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the
gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery
horizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like
a fencer’s thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance
any tendency to trip; Ahab was managing his steering
seen steadily
oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn
him. All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then
remained fixed, while the boat’s five oars were seen simultaneously
peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three
spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales had irregu-
larly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly dis-
cernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab
had observed it.

“Every man look out along his oars!” cried Starbuck. “Thou,
Queequeg, stand up!”
Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the
savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards
the spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the ex-
treme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level
with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly bal-
ancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently
eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.

Not very far distant Flask’s boat was also lying breathlessly still;

its commander recklessly standing upon 'the top of the loggerhead, a

stout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above

the level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with
the whale-line. Its stop is not more spacious than the palm of a man’s

hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched
at the masthead of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks.
202 MOBY DICK; OR
But little King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little

King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead
standpoint of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.
“I can’t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on
to that.”
Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady
his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his
lofty shoulders for a pedestal.
“Good a masthead as any, sir. Will you mount ?”

“That I will and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish
you fifty feet taller.”

Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks

of the boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm
to Flask’s foot, and then putting Fl'ask’s hand on his hearse-plumed
head and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dex-
terous fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And
here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing
him with a breastband to lean against and steady himself by.
At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous
habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect
posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously
perverse and cross-running seas; still more strange to see him giddily
perched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But
the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more
curious ;
for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy unthought
of barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmo-
niously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask
seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looker nobler than the rider. Though
truly vivacious, tumultuous ostentatious little Flask would now and
then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby
give to the negro’s lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity
stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter
her tides and her seasons for that.
Meanwhile Stubb, the second mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solic-
itudes. The whales might have made one of their regular sound-
ings, not a temporary dive from mere fright and if that were the case,
;

Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the
 THE WHITE WHALE 203

languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband,

where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He ldaded it, and
rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; hut hardly had he
ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tash-
tego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to windward like two
fixed stars, suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his
seat, crying out in a quick frenzy of hurry, “Down, down all, and give
way !
—there they are !”

To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been

visible at that moment ;
nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white
water, and thin scattered puffs of vapour hovering over it, and suffus-
ingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling
billows. The air around suddenly vibrated — and tingled, as it

were — like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this
atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of
water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the
other indications, the puffs of vapour they spouted seemed their forerun-
ning couriers and detached flying outriders.
All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
water and air. But it b’ade fair to outstrip them; it flew on and on,
as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the
hills.

“Pull, pull, my good boys,” said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but
intensest concentrated whisper to his men ;
while the sharp fixed glance
from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two
visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say
much to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him only the ;

silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his

peculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with entreaty.
How different the loud little King-Post. “Sing out and say some-
thing, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderboltsBeach me, beach !

me on their black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I’ll sign
over to you my Martha’s Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife,
and children, boys. Lay me on lay me on! 0 Lord, Lord! but —
I shall go stark, staring mad! See! see that white water!” And
so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head, and stamped up and
down on it ;
then picking it up, flirted it far off upon the sea ;
and finally
 —

204 MOBY DICK; OR

fell to rearing and plunging in the boat’s stern like a crazed colt

from the prairie.

“Look at that chap, now,” philosophically drawled Stubb, who,
with his unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his
teeth, at a short distance, followed after
—“He’s got fits, that Flask
has. Fits ? yes, give him fits — that’s the —pitch
very word fits into
’em. Merrily, merrily, heart’s alive. Pudding for supper, you
—
know; merry’s the word. Pull, pull, babes — sucklings —
pull, all.

But what the devil are you hurrying about ? Softly, softly, and
steadily, my men. Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing more. Crack
all your backbones, and bite your knives in two that’s all. Take —
it easy —
why don’t ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers
and lungs !”
But what was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow
it

—
crew of his 'these were words best omitted here; for you live under
the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks
in the audacious- seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado
brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped
after his prey.
Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions
of Flask to “that whale,” as he called the fictitious monster which
he declared to be incessantly tantalising his boat’s bow with his tail

these allusions of his were at times so vivid and lifelife, that they
would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over
the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must
put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage pro-
nouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but
arms, in these critical moments.
It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe The vast swells of!

the omnipotent sea the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled
;

along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-

green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an
instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost
seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into
the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to
gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down
its other side; — all these, with the cries of the headsmen and har-
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 205

pooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous
sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her- boats with out-
stretched sails*, like a wildhen after her screaming brood; all this
was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of
his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man’s
ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world;
neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man
does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed,
churned circle of the hunted sperm whale.
The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming
more and more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun
cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapour no longer
blended, hut tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed
separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart; Star-
buck giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our
sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along;

the boat going with such madness through the water, that the lee
oars could scarcely he worked rapidly enough to escape being tom
from the rowlocks.
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist ;
neither
ship nor boat to he seen.
“Give way, men,” whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft
the sheet of his sail; “there is time to kill fish yet before the squall
comes. There’s white water again ! —-close to ! Spring !”
Soon after, two on each side of us denoted
cries in quick succession

that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard,
when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck sai d: “Stand !

up!” and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.

Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death
peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense
countenance of the mate in the stem of the boat, they knew that the
imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing
sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the
boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing
around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.
“That’s his hump. There, there, give it to him!” whispered Star-
buck.
206 MOBY DICK; OR
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat;was the darted it

iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an in-

visible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on
a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapour
shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake
beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed
helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall,
whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely
grazed by the iron, escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swim-
ming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across
the gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our
knees in the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that
to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral
boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean.
The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers
together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us
like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were
burning; immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the
other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a
flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the
driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night;
no sign, of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts
to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing
now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the water-
proof match-keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite
the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed
it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There,
then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that
almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a
man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or
boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still

spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of
the boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand
to his ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto
 THE WHITE WHALE 207

muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick
mists were dimly parted by a huge vague form. Affrighted, we all
sprang into the sea as the ship loomed into view, hearing
at last
right down upon us within distance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one in-
stant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship’s bows like a chip at the
base of a cataract and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was
;

seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for

it,were dashed against it by the
and were at last taken up and
seas,
safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats
had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time.
The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might
light upon some token of our perishing, —
an oar or a lance pole.

CHAPTER XLVIII
THE HYENA

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed
affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast
practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and
more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing.
He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions,
all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as

an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints.

And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden dis-
aster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him
only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed
by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of way-
ward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time
of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness,
so what just before might have seemed to him a thing most
that
momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is
nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort
of genial, desperado philosophy and with it I now regarded this whole
;

voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.
208 MOBY DICK; OR
“Queequeg,” said I when they had dragged me, the last man, to

the deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the
water; “Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often
happen ?” Without much emotion, though soaked through just like

me, he gave me understand that such things did often happen.

to
“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in
was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr.
his oil-jacket,
Stubb, I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever
met, our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and
prudent. I suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale with
your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman’s dis-
cretion ?”
“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale
off Cape Horn.”
“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was stand-
ing close by; “you are experienced in these things, and I am not.
Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr.
Flask, for an oarman to break his own back pulling himself back-
foremost into death’s jaws?”
“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law.
I should like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face
foremost. Ha, ha the whale would give them squint for
! squint, mind
that!”
Here then, from three impartial witnesses^ I had a deliberate state-
ment of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and
capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were
matters of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that
at the superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must
resign my life into the hands of him who steered the boat —oftentimes
a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the
point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings; consider-
ing that the particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to
he imputed to Starbuck’s driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of
a squall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous
for his great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged
to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s boat ;
and finally considering
in what a devil’s chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale:
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 209

taking all things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below

and make a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said I, “come along
you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”
It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at
their last wills and testaments, hut there are no people in the world
more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical
life that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded
upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier a stone was rolled away
;

from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as
supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case
might be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up
in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a
quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug
family vault.
How then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my
frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and
the devil fetch the hindmost.

CHAPTEK XLIX
ARAB'S BOAT AJ5TD CREW. FEDALLAH

«Who> would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had hut
one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-
hole with my timber toe. Oh ! he’s a wonderful old man !”
“I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask.
“If his leg were off at would be a different thing.
the hip, now, it

That would disable him; hut he has one knee, and good part of the
other left, you know.”
“I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.”

Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, con-

sidering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the
voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardise that life in the
active perils of the chase. So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with

tears in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be

carried into the thickest of the fight.
 ;

210 MOBY DICK; OR

But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering
that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger
considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and ex-
traordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then
comprises a peril ;
under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed
man to enter a whaleboat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-
owners of th e-Pequod must have plainly thought not.
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little

of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes

of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving
his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat, actually

apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt — above all for

Captain Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s
crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads
of the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a boat’s
crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.
Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all
that matter. Until Cabaco’s published discovery, the sailors had little

foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of
port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the

whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and
then found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with
his own hands what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and
for
even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line
is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this

was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra

coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better
withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety
he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is
sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for bracing the
knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale when ;
it was observed
how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the
semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter’s chisel
gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these
things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time.
But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heed-
fulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby
 THE WHITE WHALE 211

Dick; for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal
monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve
the remotest suspicion as to any boat’s crew being assigned to that boat.
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon
waned away for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and
;

then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from
the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating
outlaws of whalers and the ships themselves often pick up such queer
;

castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, hits
of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what
not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down
into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any
unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate
phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it
were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Bedallah re-
mained a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly
world like this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced him-
self to be linked with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes ;
nay, so far as to have
some sort of a half-hinted influenceHeaven knows, but it might have
;

been even authority over him; all this none knew. But one cannot
sustain an indifferent air cencerning Bedallah. He was such a creature
as civilised, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide
among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles
to the east of the continent — these insulated, immemorial, unalterable
countries, which even in these modem days much of the
still preserve
ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations, when the mem-
ory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his
descendants,unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real
phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created
and to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels
indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the
uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.
212 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER L
THE SPIBIT-SPOUT

Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds ;
that off the Azores; off the
Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the
Rio de la Plata and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality,
;

southerly from St. Plelena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
silence, not a solitude; on such 'a silent night a silvery jet was seen
far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon,
it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising

from the sea. Eedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight
nights, it was his wont to mount to the mainmast head, and stand a
lookout there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And
yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in

a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with
what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft
at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one
sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there for several
successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this
silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moonlit
jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as some winged spirit
if

had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. “There she
blows !” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have
quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For
though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and
so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on hoard instinctively de-
sired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded
the t’gallant sails and royals to he set, and every stunsail spread. The
best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every masthead
manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,
upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so
 ,

THE WHITE WHALE 213

many sails, made

the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath
the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences

—
were struggling in her one to mount direct to heaven, the other to
drive yawningly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s
face that night, you would have thought, that in him also two different
things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along
the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On
life and death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly
sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet
the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw
it once, but not a second time.
This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some
days after, lo at the same silent hour, it was again announced again
! :

it was descried by all ;

but upon making sail to overtake it, once more
it disappeared as had never been. And so it served us night after
if it

night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted

into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be disappear- ;

ing again for one whole day, or two days or three and somehow seem- ;

ing at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and further

in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accord-
ance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things in-
vested the Pequod were there wanting some of the seamen who swore
that whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in
however far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was
cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time,
there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition,
as if were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the
it

monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest
and most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in
which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devil-
ish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so
wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful
errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began
 ;

214 MOBY DICK; OR

howling around ns, and we rose and upon the long, troubled seas
fell

that are there when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast,
;

and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver
chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks then all this desolate ;

vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than
before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us ;
while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens.
And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen
and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,
as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a
thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their
homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the
black sea, as if its were u conscience and the great mundane
vast tides ;

soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had
bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as
called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before
had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea,
where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed
condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store,
or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and
unvarying still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky still beck-
; ;

oning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be descried.

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything
above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively
to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practi-
cal fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole,
and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours
would stand gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of
sleet or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together. Mean-
time, the crew driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous
seas that burstingly broke over its bows, stood in a line along the bul-
warks in the waist ;
and the better to guard against the leaping waves,
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 215

each man had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail,
inwhich he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken
and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day
tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac
waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of
the ocean prevailed ;
still in silence the men swung in the bowlines ;
still

wordless Ahab up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed

stood
demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never
could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one night going down
into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him with
closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair the rain and half-
;

melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before emerged,
still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the table
beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents which
have previously been spoken His lantern swung from his tightly
of.

clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back
so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale
that swung from a beam in the ceiling 1 .

“Terrible old man!” thought Starbuck with a shudder; “sleeping in

this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.”

CHAPTEB LI

THE ALBATROSS

South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruis-
ing ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Alba-
tross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the
foremast head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro
in the far ocean fisheries —
a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the^
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral ap-

pearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her
spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over

1
The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the
course of the ship.
 ,

216 MOBY DICK; OR

with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were was
set. A wild sight it

to see her long-bearded lookouts at those three mastheads. They seemed

clad in the skins of beasts, so tom and bepatched the raiment that had
survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed
to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea ;
and though,
when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the
air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from
the mastheads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-look-
ing fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to
our own lookouts, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from be-
low.
“Ship ahoy ! Have ye seen the White Whale V ’

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in
the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his
hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove
to make himself heard without it. Meantime
was still increas-
his ship
ing the distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of
the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident
at the first mere mention of the White Whale’s name to another ship,
Ahab for a moment paused it almost seemed as though he would have
;

lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind
forbade. But taking advantage of his windward position, he again
seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel
was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he loudly hailed “Ahoy —
there! This is the Pequod hound round the world! Tell them to
address all future letters to the Pacific Ocean! and this time three
”
years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly,
then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless
fish, some days before had been placidly swimming by our
that for
side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged them-

selves, fore and aft with the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course
of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a simi-
lar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously
carry meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into
the water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed
 THE WHITE WHALE 217

more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before
evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding
the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his
old lion voice, —
“Up helm! Keep her off round the world!”
Bound the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud
feelings ;
but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct ? Only
through numberless perils to the very pgint whence we started, where
those that we behind secure, were all the time before us.
left

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could

for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange
than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise
in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of,

or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other,

swims before all human hearts —while chasing such over this round
globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us
whelmed.

CHAPTEB LII

THE GAM

The ostensible reason why Ahah did not go on hoard of the whaler
we had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But
even had this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have

boarded her —judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions

— had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained
if so it

a negative answer to the question he put. Bor, as it eventually turned

out, he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger
captain, except he could contribute some of that information he so
absorbingly sought. But all this might remain inadequately estimated,
w ere not something said here of the peculiar usages of whaling vessels
r

when meeting each other in foreign seas, and especially on a common

cruising-ground.
If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in Kew York State, or

the equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England ;

if casually encounter-
ing each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of
 ;

218 MOBY DICK; OR

them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation and stopping for a moment
;

to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and
resting in consort then, how much more natural that upon the illimi-
:

table Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels
descrying each other at the ends of the earth — off lone Panning’s Island,
or the far-away King’s Mills; how much more natural, I say, that
under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails,

but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And
especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels
owned in one seaport, and whose captains, and not a few of
officers,

the men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have
all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about.
Por the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of
a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-
worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship
would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground
to which she may he destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her.
And in degree, all this will -hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing
each other’s track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are
equally long absent from home. Por one of them may have received
a transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and
some of those letters may he for the people of the ship she now meets.
Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable
chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors,
but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common
pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils.
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with
Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number
of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when
they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them for
;

your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not

fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English
whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the
American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his
nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-pe*asant. But where this
 THE WHITE WHALE 219

superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would he

hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more
whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a
harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantuck-
eter does not take much to heart ;
probably, because he knows that he
has a few foibles himself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers
have most reason to be sociable —and they are so : whereas, some mer-
chant ships crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will often-
times pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually
cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broad-
way and ;
all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each
other’s rig. As for men-of-war, when they chance to meet at sea, they
first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a
ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to he much right-down
hearty goodwill and brotherly love about it at all. As touching slave
ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run
away from each other as soon as possible. And as for pirates, when
they chance to cross each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is
—“How
—
many skulls ?” the same way that whalers hail
—“How many barrels ?”
And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for
they are infernal villains on both sides, and don’t like to see overmuch
of each other’s villainous likenesses.
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler ! What does the whaler do when she meets
another whaler in any sort of decent weather; she has a “Gam,” a
thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of
the name even and by chance they should hear of it, they only grin
;
if

at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,”

and suchlike pretty exclamations. Why is it that all merchant seamen,
and and man-of-war’s men, and slave ship sailors, cherish
also all pirates
such a scornful feeling towards whale ships ? this is a question it would
be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like
to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory
about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed ;
hut only
at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd

fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence,

 ,

220 MOBY DICK; OR

I conclude, that in boasting himself to he high lifted above a whaleman,
in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.
But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running
up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word.
Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark
does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for
many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born
Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated
into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.

GAM. Noun —A social meeting of two ( or more) whale ships

generally on a cruising-ground ; when, after exchanging hails , they ex-
change visits by boats' crews; the two captains remaining , for the time,
on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other .

There is another little item about Gamming which must not be

forgotten here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of
detail ;
In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship,
so has the whale-fishery.
when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the
stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often
steers himself with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated with gay
cords and ribbons. But the whale boat has no seat astern, no sofa
of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if whal-
ing captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old
aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale boat never
admits of any such effeminacy ;
and therefore as in gamming a complete
boat’screw must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or har-
pooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the
occasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in, is -pulled off to his
visit all standing like a pine tree. And often you will notice that being
conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from
the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the
importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is

this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting
steering-oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the
after-oar reciprocatingby rapping his knees in front. He is thus
completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself
sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, vio-
lent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length
 THE WHITE WHALE 221

of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make

a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then,
again, it would never do in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, it
would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying
himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his
hands. Indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he gen-
eraly carries his hands in his trousers’ pockets; hut perhaps being
generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.
Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too,
where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment
or two — in a sudden squall, say — to seize hold of the nearest oarsman’s
hair, and hold on there like grim death.

CHAPTER LIII

THE TOWN-HO'S STORY

(As told at the Golden Inn)

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there,
is muchsome noted four comers of a great highway, where you
like
meet more travellers than in any other part.
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another home-
ward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho , 1 was encountered. She was
manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued
she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest
in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of
the Town-Ho’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale
a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so-called judg-
ments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This
latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming
what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated,
never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. Eor that secret
part of the story was unknown to the Captain of the Town-Ho himself.*
It was the private property of three confederate white seamen of that
The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the masthead,
1

still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.

 , s

222 MOBY DICK; OR

ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish
injunctions of secrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his
sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was
wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent
an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who
came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call

it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among
themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod’ mainmast.
Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as
publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now
proceed to put on lasting record.
For my humour’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once
narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one
saint’s eve,smoking upon the thick gilt-tiled piazza of the Golden Inn.
Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on
the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they
occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.
“Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am
about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho Sperm Whaler of
Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’
sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn.She was some-
where to the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the
pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more
water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had
stabbed her, gentlemen. But the Captain having some unusual reason
for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes, and
therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then
considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after
searching the hold as low down
was possible in rather heavy weather,
as
the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the
pumps at wide and easy intervals but no good luck came more days
; ;

went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly
increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the Captain, mak-
ing all sail, stood away for the nearest harbour among the islands, there
to have his hull hove out and repaired.
“Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest
chance favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by
 ©C1K1G92SG

© Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

ISHMAEL TELLS THE TOWN'HO S STORY.

17 'JLC
»

«
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 223

the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically re-
lieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship
free ;
never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well-nigh
the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the
Town-Ho had but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port
all

without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the
brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly
provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from
Buffalo.
“
‘Lakeman Buffalo
!
— Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is
!

Buffalo V said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

“On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but I crave your —
—
courtesy may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gen-
tlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as large
and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla
this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet been
nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly con-
nected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those
—
grand fresh-water seas of ours, Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and
Superior, and Michigan, —
possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with
many of the ocean’s noblest traits ;
with many of its rimmed varieties
of races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic
isles, even as the Polynesian waters do by two
;
in large part, are shored
great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is they furnish long maritime ;

approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted

all round their banks here and there are frowned upon by batteries, and
;

by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the
fleet thunderings of naval victories ;
at intervals, they yield their beaches

to wild barbarians, whose red-painted faces flash from out their peltry
wigwams ;
for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered
forests,where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic
genealogies; those same woods harbouring wild Afric beasts of prey,
and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors;
they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Win-
nebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the
armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beach canoe ; they are
224 MOBY DICK; OR
swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the
salted wave ;
they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land,
however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all
its shrieking crew.
“Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, was wild-ocean
Steelkilt
born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as
any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him
down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though
in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your con-
templative Pacific; still was he quite as vengeful and full of social
quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-
horn handled bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with
some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner who, though a
sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered
by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest
slave’s right thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harm-
;

less and At all events, he had proved so thus far but Radney
docile. ;

was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt but gentlemen, you shall —
hear.
“It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing
her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho’s leak seemed again
increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps
every day. You must know that in a settled and civilised ocean like
our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their
whole way across it ;
though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer
of the deckhappen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability
would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it,
on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom*. Nor in the
solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it
altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles'
in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it
lie along tolerably accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat
is offered them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out-of-
the-way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her
captain begins to feel a little anxious.
“Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak
was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 225

manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the mate.

He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew,
and every way expanded to the breeze. ,How this Radney, I suppose,
was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous
apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking
creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gen-
tlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety
of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on account
of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working that
evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness
slyly going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually
overflowed by the rippling clear water ;
clear as any spring, gentlemen
that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, 'and poured itself .

out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.

“How, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional
world ©f ours —watery or otherwise— that a person placed in command
over his fellowmen finds one of them to be very significantly his
superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man
he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness ;
and if he have a
chance he will pull down and pulverise that subaltern’s tower, and
make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may,
gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a
head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasselled hous-
ings of your last viceroy’s snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart,
and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne,
had he been bom son to Charlemagne’s father. But Radney, the mate,
was ngly as a mule yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did
;

not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.

“Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with
the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on
with his gay banterings.
“ ‘Aye, aye, my merry lads, it’s a lively leak this hold a cannikin,
;

one of ye, and let’s have a taste. By the Lord, it’s worth bottling!
I’ll tellyou what, men, old Rad’s investment must go for it! he had
best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys,
that sword-fish only began the job; he’s come back again with a gang
of ship carpenters, saw-fish and file-fish, and what not and the whole ;
 ;;

226 MOBY DICK; OR

posse of ’em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom
making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I’d tell

him to jump overboard and scatter ’em. They’re playing the devil
with his estate, I can tell him. But he’s a simple old soul, —Rad,
and a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is in-

vested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he’d give a poor devil like me

the model of his nose.’
“
'Damn, your eyes what’s that ! pump stopping for V roared Radney,
pretending not to have heard the sailor’ talk. ‘Thunder away at it!’
“
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. ‘Lively, boys,
lively, now And with
!’
that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines
the men tossed their hats and ere long that peculiar gasping of
off to it,

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

THE WHITE WHALE 227

mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly

how this affair stood between the two men.
“But there was more than this the order about the shovel was almost
:

as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had

spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale ship
will understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lake-
man comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as
fully
he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate’s
malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder casks heaped up in
him and the slow match silently burning along towards them; as he
instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness
to up the deeper passionateness in an already ireful being
stir —
repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when
—
aggrieved this nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over
Steelkilt.

“Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily

exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that
sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would do it. And
then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads
as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps,
had done little or nothing all day. To
Radney replied with an
this,

oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally

reiterating his command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated
Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper’s club hammer which he had
snatched from a cask near by.
“Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps,
for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt
could but ill brook this hearing in the mate; but somehow still smoth-
ering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained
doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the
hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to
do his bidding.
and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily
“Steelkilt rose,
followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately re-
peated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbear-

ance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intima-
 : ;

228 MOBY DICK; OR

tion with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man
but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly
round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, be-

thinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with

his humour, the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to

the officer
“ ‘Mr. Badney, Take that hammer away,
I will not obey you.
or look to yourself.’ But the predestinated mate coming still closer
to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer
within an inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insuffer-
able maledictions. Entreating not the thousandth part of an inch;
stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance,
Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly draw-
ing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek
he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been
branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer
touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was
stove in his head ;
he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale.
“Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
mastheads. They were both Canallers.
“ ‘Canallers !’ cried Don Pedro. ‘We have seen many whale ships in
our harbours, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon; who and
what are they V
“Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our Grand Erie
Canal. You must have heard of it,
“
‘Hay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and heredi-
tary land, we know but little of your vigorous Horth.’
“Aye ? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha’s very fine; and
ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such
information may throw sidelight upon my story.
“For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire
breadth of the State of Hew
York; through numerous populous cities
and most thriving villages through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps,
;

and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room

and bar-room; through great forests; on Eoman arches over Indian
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 229

rivers through sun and shade by happy hearts or broken through

; ;
all
;

the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and es-
pecially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost like
mile-stones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and
awful lawless life. There’s your true Ashantee, gentlemen there howl
;

your pagans where you ever find them, next door to you under the
; ;

long-flung shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches. For by

some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan free-
booters that they everencamp around the halls of justice, so sinners,
gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.
“
‘Is that a friar passing V said Don Pedro, looking downwards into
the crowded piazza, with humorous concern.
“
‘Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella’s Inquisition wades
in Lima,’ laughed Don Sebastian. ‘Proceed, Senor.’
“ ‘A moment ! Pardon !’
cried another of the company. ‘In the
name of all us Limees, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that
we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting pres-
ent Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do
not bow and look surprised you know the proverb all along this coast
;

“Corrupt as Lima.” It but bears out your saying, too; churches more
plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open — and “Corrupt as
Lima.” So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the
blessed evangelist, St. —
Mark! St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup!
Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.’
“Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would

make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is

he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed,
flowery USTile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked
Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore,
all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller
so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily ribboned hat betoken his
grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages
through which he floats ;
his swart visage and bold swagger are not un-
shunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received

good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would
fain be not ungrateful but it is often one of the prime redeeming quali-
;
230 MOBY DICK; OR
ties of jour man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to hack
a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum,
gentlemen, what the wilderness of this canal life is, is emphatically
evinced by this: that our w ild
T
whale-fishery contains so many of its

most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except
Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor
does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many
thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line, the
probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition be-

tween quietly reaping in a Christian cornfield, and recklessly ploughing

the waters of the most barbaric seas.
“‘I see! I see!’ impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his
chicha upon his silvery ruffles. The world’s one
‘Ho need to travel !

Lima. I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the gener-
ations were cold and holy as the hills. But the story.’ —
“I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay.
Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior
mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck.
But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers
rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards
the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt,
and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm’s way,
the valiant Captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling
upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke
him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the re-

volving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it

with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But
Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they suc-
ceeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about
three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians
entrenched themselves behind the barricade.
“ ‘Come out of that, ye pirates !’ roared the Captain, now menac-
ing them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the
steward. ‘Come out of that, ye cut-throats !’

“Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down

there, defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 231

understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt’s) death would he the signal

for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his
heart lest this might prove but too true, the Captain a little desisted,
but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.
“ ‘Will
you promise not to touch us, if we do V demanded their
ringleader.
“ ‘Turn
to! turn to! —I make no promise; — to your duty! Do
you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this ?

Turn to!’ and he once more raised a pistol.

“
‘Sink the ship V cried Steelkilt. ‘Aye, let her sink. Not a man
of us turns to unless you swear not to raise a ropeyam against us.
What say ye, men V turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their
response.
“The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping
his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:
— ‘It’s

not our fault; we didn’t want it; him to take his hammer
I told
away; it was boy’s business; he might have known me before this; I
told him not to prick the buffalo ;
I believe I have broken a finger here
against his cursed jaw; ain’t those mincing knives down in the fore-
castle there men ? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain,
by God, look to yourself say the word don’t be a fool forget it all
; ; ;

we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we’re your men;
but we won’t be flogged.’
“ ‘Turn to I make no promises, turn to, I say
!
!’

“ ‘Look ye, now,’ cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards

him, ‘there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have
shipped for the cruise, d’ye see; you well know, sir, we can
now as

claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don’t want

a row; it’s not our interest; we want to be peaceful; we are ready
to work, but we won’t be flogged.’
“ ‘Turn to!’ roared the Captain.

“Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:

— ‘I tell

you what now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for
it is

such a shabby rascal, we won’t lift a hand against ye unless ye at-

tack us; but till you say the word about not flogging us, we don’t

do a hand’s turn,’
232 MOBY DICK; OR
“ T>own into the forecastle then, down with ye, I’ll keep ye there
till ye’re sick of it. Down ye go.’
“ ‘Shall Most of them were
we ?’ cried the ringleader to his men.
against it; hut at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him
down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears in a
cave.
“As the Lakeman’s hare head was just level with the planks, the
Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over
the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and
loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock be-
longing to the companion-way. Then opening the slide a little, the
Captain whispered something down the crack, closed it, and turned
— —
the key upon them ten in number leaving on deck some twenty or
more, who thus far had remained neutral.
“All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, for-
ward and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatch-
way, at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge,
after breaking through the bulkhead below. But the hours of
darkness passed in peace ;
the men who still remained at their
duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at

intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded through the

ship.
“At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,
summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water
was then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit
were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and
pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every
day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a
confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary
summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the
forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of
the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate
retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion. Em-
boldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but
Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and
betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others
 THE WHITE WHALE 233

of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms
below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.
“
‘Better turn to now V said the Captain with a heartless jeer.
“
‘Shut us up again, will ye!’ cried Steelkilt.
“
‘Oh, certainly,’ said the Captain, and the key clicked.
“It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection
of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice
that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long emtombment in
a place as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt
proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparent of one mind with him,
to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison;
and armed with their keen mincing knifes (long, crescentic, heavy
implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bow-
sprit to the taffrail ;
and
by any devilishness of desperation possible,
if

seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they
joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that
den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other
two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing,
for anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each
insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make
the rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected,
reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades
would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both of them
could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a time.

And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come out.

“Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece
of treachery, namely; to be foremost in breaking out, in order to
be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender;
and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct
might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still

to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry
of villainy, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when
their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other
in three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords and gagged him
with cords, and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.
 —

234 MOBY DICK; OR

“ Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood,
he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle.
In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, hound hand and foot,
the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his per-
fidious allies, who at once claimed the honour of securing a man
who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and
dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized
up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there
they hung till morning. ‘Damn ye/ cried the Captain, passing to
and fro before them, ‘the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains !’
“At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who
had rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he
told the former that he had a good mind to flog them all round
thought, upon the whole, he would do so —
he ought to justice de- —
manded it; but for the present, considering their timely surrender,
he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly admin-
istered in the vernacular.
“ ‘But as for you, men
ye carrion rogues/ turning to the three in
the rigging
— ‘for you I mean to mince ye up for the twy-pots’; and,
seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the
two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads
sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.
“‘My wrist is sprained with ye!’ he cried, at last; ‘but there is

still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn’t give up.
Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say
for himself.’
“For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion
of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head,
said in a sort of hiss, ‘What I say —and mind well— you
is this it if

flog me, I murder you!’

“
‘Say ye so ? then see how ye frightened me’ — and the Captain drew
off with the rope to strike.
“
‘Best not/ hissed the Lakeman.
“ ‘But I must/ —and the rope was once more drawn back for the
stroke.
“Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Cap-
 THE WHITE WHALE 235

tain ;
who, to the amazement of all hands, started hack, paced the deck
rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his
rope, said, ‘I won’t do it — let him go — cut him down: d’ye hear?’
But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale
man, with a bandaged head, arrested them Radney the chief mate. —
Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth hut that morning, hear- ;

ing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had
watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he
could hardly speak, but mumbling something about his being willing
and able to do what the Captain dared not attempt, he snatched the
rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.
“ ‘You are a
coward!’ hissed the Lakeman.
“ ‘So I am, hut take that.’ The
mate was in the very act of strik-
ing, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and
then pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt’s threat,
whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down,
all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen,
the iron pumps clanged as before.
“Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a
clamour was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors
running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort
with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back,
so at their own instance they were put down in the ship’s run for
security. Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On
the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt’s instigation they had
resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the
last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in

order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to
another thing —namely, not to sing out for whales, in case any should
be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils,
the Town-IIo still maintained her mastheads, and her Captain* was
moment, as on the day his craft
just as willing to lower for a fish that
first struck the cruising-ground and Radney the mate was quite as
;

ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth
seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.
“But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this
236 MOBY DICK; OR
sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least

was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon
till all

the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was
in Radney the chief mate’s watch and as if the infatuated man sought
;

to run more than half-way to meet his doom, after the scene at the
rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the Captain, upon
resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two
other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his re-
venge.
“During the Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on
night,
the bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gun-
wale of the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship’s
side. In this attitude, it was well known he sometimes dozed. There
was a considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down
between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found
that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o’clock, in
the morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed.
At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very
carefully in his watches below.
“ ‘What are you making there ?” said a shipmate.
“ ‘What do you think ? what does it look like V
“ ‘Like a lanyard for your hag but it’s an odd one, seems to me.’
;

“ ‘Yes, rather oddish,’ said the Lakeman, holding it at arm’s

length before him; ‘but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven’t

enough twine, —have you any V
“But there was none in the forecastle.
“ ‘Then must
I get some from old Rad’ and he rose to go aft.
;

“
‘You don’t mean to go a begging to him!’ said a sailor.
“ ‘Why not ? Do you think he won’t do me a turn, when it’s to

help himself in the end, shipmate V and going to the mate, he looked
at him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock.

It was given him —

neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but
the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the
pocket of the Lakeman’s monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat
into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick

at the silent helm —nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave
 THE WHITE WHALE 237

always ready dug the seaman’s hand—that

to hour was then fatal to
come and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already
;

stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

“But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the
bloody deed ha had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and with-
out being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself
seemed to step in to take put of his hands into its own the damning
thing he would have done.
“It was just between daybreak
and sunrise of the morning of the
second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid
Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted
out, ‘There she rolls! there she rolls!’ Jesu, what a whale! It was
Moby Dick.
“ ‘Moby Dick !’
cried Don Sebastian ;
‘St. Dominic ! Sir sailor, but
do whales have christenings ? Whom
you Moby Dick V call

“A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster,

Don ;
—
but that would be too long a story.
“
‘How ? how V cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.
—
“Hay, Dons, Dons nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let
me get more into the air, sirs.
“ ‘The chicha! the chicha!’ cried Don Pedro;
‘our vigorous friend
looks faint —
fill up his empty glass
;
!’

“Ho need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed. How, gentle- —

men, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
ship —forgetful of the compact among the crew —in the excitement
of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily
lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time past
it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mastheads. All
was now a frenzy. ‘The White Whale the White Whale!’ was the —
cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful
rumours, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish;
while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling
beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling
sun shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.
Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these
events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.
 ;

238 MOBY DICK; OR

The mutineer was the bowsman when fast to a fish,
of the mate, and
it was his duty to sit next him, while Eadney stood up with his lance

in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command.
Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate’s got the start
and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he
strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and,
spear in hand, Eadney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious
man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach
him on the whale’s topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman
hauled him up and up through ;
a blinding foam that blent two white-
nesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken
ledge, and keeling That instant,
over, spilled out the standing mate.
as he fell on the whale’s slippery back, the boat righted, and was
dashed aside by the swell, while Eadney was tossed over into the sea,
on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and,
for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil wildly seeking to
remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed
round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between the jaws;
and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went
down.
“Meantime, at the first tap of the boat’s bottom, the Lakeman had
slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,

downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line.
He cut and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby
it;

Dick rose again, with some tatters of Eadney’s red woollen shirt,
caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave
chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disap-
peared.
“In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port a savage, solitary —
place —where no civilised creature resided. There, headed by the
Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted
among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double
war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbour.
“The ship’s company being reduced to but a handful, the Captain
called upon the islanders to assist him in the laborious business of
 THE WHITE WHALE 239

heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigi-
lance over their dangerous allies was this small hand of whites necessi-
tated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work
they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they
were in such a weakened condition that the Captain durst not put off
with them in so heavy a vessel. After taking council with his officers,
he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out
his two cannons from the hows stacked his muskets on the poop and
; ;

warning the islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took
one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whale boat, steered
straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to
procure a reinforcement to his crew.
“On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which
seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away
from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice
of Steelkilt hailed him to heave-to, or he would run him under water.
The Captain presented a pistol.With one foot on each prow of
the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring
him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury
him in bubbles and foam.
“ ‘What do you want of me V cried the Captain.
“ ‘Where are
you bound ? and for what are you bound V demanded
Steelkilt; ‘no lies.”
“
‘I am bound more men.’
to Tahiti for
“ ‘Very good. Let me board you a moment I come in peace.’ —
With that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing
the gunwale, stood face to face with the Captain.
“ ‘Cross your arms, sir throw back your head. How, repeat after
me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on
yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may light-

nings strike me !’
“ ‘A pretty scholar,’ laughed the Lakeman. ‘Adios, Senor !’
and
leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.
“Watching the boat until it was fairly beached, and drawn up to

the roots of the cocoanut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due
time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck
 !

240 MOBY DICK; OR

befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were
providentially inwant of precisely that number of men which the sailor
headed. They embarked and so for ever got the start of their former
;

captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.

“Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale boat arrived,
and the Captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahi-
tians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small na-
tive schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all

right there, again resumed his cruisings.

“Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know but upon the island ;

of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which re-
fuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale
that destroyed him. . . .

“
‘Are you through ?’ said Don Sebastian quietly.
“I am, Don.
“ ‘Then
I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this your story is in substance really true ? It is so passing wonderful
Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I
seem to press.’
“
‘Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebas-
tian’s suit,’ cried the company, with exceeding interest.
“Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentle-
men ?
“
‘Nay,’ said Don Sebastian; ‘but I know a worthy priest near by,
who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well
advised ? this may grow too serious.’
“Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don ?
“ ‘Though there are
no Auto-da-Fes in Lima now,’ said one of the
company to another; ‘I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the arch-
iepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no
need of this.’

“ ‘This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,’ said Don Sebas-
tian gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.
“Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 241

the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

“So help me, HeaVen, and on my honour, the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be
true it happened on this ball I trod the ship I knew the crew
; ; ;

I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.”

CHAPTER LIV
OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES

I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas, some-
thing like the true form of a whale as he actually appears to the eye
of the whalemen when in his own absolute body the whale moored
is

alongside the whale ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.
It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those cu-
rious imaginary portraits of him. which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the

world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all

wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures.
Eor ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the
marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,

medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-
armour and a helmeted head like St. George’s; ever
like Saladin’s,
since then has something of the same sort of licence prevailed, not
only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific

presentations of him.
How, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways pur-
porting to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of
Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost end-

less sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits,
every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any
of them actually came into being. Ho wonder then, that in some sort

our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth.
The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the
 ;

242 MOBY DICK; OR

wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan,
learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is
half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet
that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering

tail of an anaconda, than the broad palm of the true whale’s majestic
flukes.

But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter’s

portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian

• Hindoo. It is Guido’s picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from
the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido
model of such aget the
strange creature as that? fSTor does Hogarth, in painting that same

scene in his own “Perseus Descending,” make out one whit better.
The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster uiidulatefe on the
surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah
on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows
are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors’ Gate leading from the
Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus
whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale, as depicted in the
prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said
of these? As for the bookbinder’s whale winding like a vinestalk
—
round the stalk of a descending anchor as stamped and gilded on the
backs and title-pages of many books both old and new that is a very —
picturesque but purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take from the it,

like figures on antique vases. Though universally denominated a

dolphin, I nevertheless call this bookbinder’s fish an attempt at a whale
because it was so intended when the device was first introduced. It was
introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th cen-
tury, during the Kevival of Learning and in those days, and even down
;

to a comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to

be a species of the Leviathan.
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books
you will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where
all manner of spouts, jete d’eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and

Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his. unexhausted brain. In

the title-page of the original edition of the Advancement of Learning
you will find some curious whales.
 ! i

THE WHITE WHALE 243

But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at

those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delinea-
tions, by those who know. In old Harris’s collection of voyages there
are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages,
a.d. 1671, entitled A Whaling Voyage to Spitzhergen in the ship Jonas

in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland , master. In one of those

plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among
ice-isles, with white bears running over their living hacks. In
another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale
with perpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Col-
nett, a Post Captain in the English Navy, entitled A Voyage round
Cape Horn into the South Seas , for the purpose of extending the
Spermaceti Whale Fisheries. In this book is an outline purporting
to be a “Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale
from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August,- 1793, and hoisted
on deck.” I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken
for the benefit of his mariners. To mention hut one thing about it,

let me say that it has an eye which applied, according to the accompany-
ing scale, to a full-grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale
a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did
ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of natural history for
the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of
mistake. Look at that popular work Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.
In the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged
“whale” and a “narwhal.” I do not wish to seem inelegant, hut this
unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the
narwhal, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nine-
teenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon
any intelligent public of schoolboys.
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a
great naturalist, published a scientific systemised whale hook, wherein
are several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All
these are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus, or
Greenland whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a
244 MOBY DICK; OR
long experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have
its counterpart in nature.
But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which
he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing
that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your
summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier’s
Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, hut a squash. Of course, he
never had the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have),
hut whence he derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got
it as his scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of
his authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what
sort of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups
and saucers inform us.

As for the sign-painters’ whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
Richard III whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; break-
fasting on three or four sailor tarts, that whale boats full of mari-
is

ners their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.

:

But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all. Most of the scientific drawings have
Consider!
been taken from the stranded fish and these are about as correct as a
;

drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly repre-

sent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars.
Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living levia-
than has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The living
whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in
unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight,
like ^ launched line-of-battle ship ;
and out of that element it is a thing
eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air,
so as to preserve all hismighty swells and undulations. And, not to
speak of the highly presumable difference of contour between a young
sucking whale and a full-ground Platonian Leviathan yet even in the ;

case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship’s deck, such
 THE WHITE WHALE 245

is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that

his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at
all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that
his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy
Bentham’s skeleton, which is preserved in the library of one of his
executor’s, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian
old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics;
yet nothing of this kind could he inferred from any leviathan’s artic-
ulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, themere skeleton
of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded
animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelops
it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part
of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously dis-
played in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the
bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four
regular hone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But
all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human
fingers in an artificial covering. “However recklessly the whale may
sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one day, “he can never be
truly said to handle us without mittens.”
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the
world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait
may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with
any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way
of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like and the only ;

mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living con'
tour, is by going a-whaling yourself but by so doing, you run no small
;

risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to

me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this
Leviathan.
246 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER LV
OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES, AND THE
TRUE PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES

In connection with the monstrous pictures of whales,, I am strongly

tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them
which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern, espe-
cially in Pliny, Purchas, Hakluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass
that matter by.
I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale:
Colnett’s, Huggins’s, Frederick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. In the pre-
vious chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins’s is
far better than theirs ;
but, by great odds, Beale’s is the best. All
Beale’s drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure
in the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second
chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no
doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlour men,
is admirably correct and lifelike in its general effect. Some of the
Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in
contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault
though.
Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but
they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression.
He has but one picture of' whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency,
because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can
derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his
living hunters.
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be
anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and
taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent
attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble
Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath
the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the
air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of
the boat is* partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the
 THE WHITE WHALE 247

monster’s spine ;
and standing in that prow*, for that one single incom-
putable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the in-
censed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping as from if
a precipice: The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and
true. The half emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea the wooden ;

poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads of the
swimming crew are scattered about the whale in. contrasting expressions
of affright ;
while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down
upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical
details of this whale, but let that pass ;
since for the life of me, I could
not draw so good a one.
In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside
the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale that rolls his
black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rockslide from the Pata-
gonian cliffs. His jets are erect”, full, and black like soot; so that from
so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be
a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are peck-
ing at. the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and macaroni,
which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And
all the while the thick-lipped leviathan, is* rushing through the deep,
leaving tons of tumultous white curds in his wake, and causing the
slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels
of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion;
but behind, in admirable
1

artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea be-

calmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the
inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of
capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-
hole.
Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it

he was either practically conversant with his subject or else marvellously

tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for

painting action. Go and gaze upon the paintings of Europe, and

where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion
on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder
fights his way, pell-mell through the consecutive great battles of France;

where every sWord seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the sue-
248 MOBY DICK; OR
cessive armed kings and emperors dash by, like a charge of crowded
centaurs ? INTot wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these

sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude French for seizing the picturesqueness
of the
of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engrav-
ings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one-tenth of Eng-
and not the thousandth part of that of
land’s experience in the fishery,
the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the
only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the
whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale
draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical
outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale ;
which, so far
as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketch-
ing the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned
‘Eight whaleman, after giving us a stiff full-length of the Greenland
whale, and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhals and porpoises,
treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat-hooks, chopping
knives, and grapnelsand with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwen-
;

hoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six facsim-

iles of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to
the excellent voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so important
a matter was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every
it

crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two
other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself “H. Durand.” One of them, though not precisely adapted to
our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts.
It is a quiet noon scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler
anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the
loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the back-
ground, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is very
fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fisher-
men under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other en-
graving is quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea,
and in the very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Eight Whale along-
side; the vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if
 THE WHITE WHALE 249

to a quay and a;
boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity,
is about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and
lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in
its hole ;
while from the sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands
half erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the
smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke
over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up
with earnest squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the
excited seamen.

CHAPTEE LVI
OF WHALES IN PAINT; IN TEETH; IN WOOD; IN SHEET-IRON;
in stone; in mountains; in stars

On Tower Hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have
seen a crippled beggar (or hedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted
board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg.

There are three whales and three boats and one of the boats (presumed
;

to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched
by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell
me, has that man held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to an
incredulous world. But the time of his justification has now come.
His three whales are as good whales as- were ever published in Wapping,
at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will
find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that
stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make but, with ;

downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Hantucket, and Hew Bedford,
and Sag Harbour, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
whaling scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale
teeth, or ladies busks wrought out of the Eight Whale bone, and other
7

like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little

ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material,
in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of den-
tistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering
Sso MOBY DICK; OR
business. But, in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and,
with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out
anything you please, in the way of a mariner’s fancy.
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a
man to that condition in which God placed him, i. e., what is called
savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois.
I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the
Cannibals ;
and ready at any moment to rebel against him.
How, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian
war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carv-
ing, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.
Lor, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark’s tooth, that miracu-
lous intricacy of wooden network has been achieved; and it has cost
steady years of steady application.
As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With
the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark’s tooth,
of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture,
not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design,
as the Greek savage, Achilles’s shield; and full of barbaric spirit and
suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Hutch savage, Albert Hiirer.
Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs
of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the fore-
castles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much ac-

curacy.
At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales
hung by the tail for knockers to the roadside door. When the porter is
sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking
whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some
old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for
weather-cocks ;
but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all in-

tents and purposes so labelled with “Hands off!” you cannot examine
them closely enough to decide upon their merit.
In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain,

you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Levia-
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 251

than partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them
in a surf of green surges.
Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is con-
tinually girdled by amphitheatrical heights ;
here and there from some
lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of
whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must he a
thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you
wish to return to such a sight again, you must he sure and take the
exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first standpoint, else
so chancelike are such observations of the hills, that your precise, pre-
vious standpoint would require a laborious re-discovery ;
like the Soloma
Islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Men-
danna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.
Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace

out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them;
as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations, saw armies
locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased
Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright
points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Ant-
arctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against
the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Fly-
ing Fish.
With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts, and fasces of harpoons
for spurs, would I could mount that whale and lead the topmost skies,

to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really

lie encamped beyond my mortal sight

CHAPTEE LYII
BRIT

Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast

meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the -Eight
Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us,
so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and
golden wheat.
 ;

252 MOBY DICK; OR

On the second day, numbers of Right who, secure
Whales were seen,

from the attack of a Sperm Whale like the Pequod, with open jaws
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres
of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner
separated from the water that escaped at the lip.

As morning mowers, who by side slowly and seethingly advance

side
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads even so these ;

monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving

1
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea .

But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which
at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mastheads especially
when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black
forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And
as in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance
will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing
them to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil
even so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species
of the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their

immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such

bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with
the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.
Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of
the deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For
though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the
land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general
view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties,
where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition

answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark

alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy
to him.
But though landsmen in general the native inhabitants of the seas
to

have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repel-

1
That part of the sea known among whalemen as the “Brazil Banks”
does not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there
being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable meadow-
like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those
latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.
 THE WHITE WHALE 9 53

ling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita> so

that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his
one superficial western one though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all
;

mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens

and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters;
though hut a moment’s consideration will teach, that however baby-man
may brag of his science and skill and however much, in a flattering
future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for
ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and
pulverise the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make nevertheless, by the
;

continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense
of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a
widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the
wrecked ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not
yet subsided ;
two-thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not
a miracle upon the other ? Preternatural terrors rested upon the He-
brews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground
opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever
sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships

and crews.
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, hut it is
also a fiend to its own offspring ;
worse than the Persian host who mur-
dered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath
spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her
own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks,
and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No
mercy, no power hut its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a
mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns
the globe.
Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures
glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously
hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish
brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the

dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once

 !

254:
MOBY DICK; OR
more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey
upon each on eternal war since the world began.
other, carrying
Consider all this and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile
;

earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find
a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling

ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one
insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, hut encompassed by all the
horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from
that isle, thou canst never return

CHAPTER LVIII

SQUID

Slowly wading through the meadows of hrit, the Pequod still held on
her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air im-

pelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall,

tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild

palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night,
the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.
But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preter-
natural spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant
calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a
golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the
slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on ;
in this pro-
found hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo
from the mainmast head.
In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher
and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed
before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glist-
ening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more
arose, and silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this
Moby Dick ? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on
reappearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man
from his nod, the negro yelled out
— “There! there again! there she
!”
breaches! right ahead! The White Whale, the White Whale
 THE WHITE WHALE 255

Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yardarms, as in swarming-time

the bees rush to the boughs. Bareheaded in the sultry sun, Ahab stood
on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to
wave his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction
indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually, worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect
the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular
whale he pursued ;
however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed
him —whichever way it might have been —no sooner did he distinctly
perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave
orders for lowering.
The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while,
with oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo ! in the
same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting
for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most
wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to
mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a
glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long
arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest
of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.
No perceptible face or front did it have ;
no conceivable token of either
sensation or instinct ;
but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly,
formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck,

still gazing at the agitated waters where had sunk, with a wild voice
it

exclaimed
— “ Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him,
!”
than to have seen thee, thou white ghost
“What was it, sir ?” said Flask.

“The great live squid, which, they say, few whale ships ever beheld,
and returned to their ports to tell of it.”

But Ahab said nothing; turning, his boat, he sailed back to the
vessel ;
the rest as silently following.
Whatever superstitions the Sperm whalemen in general have con-

nected with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it
£56 MOBY DICK; OR
being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it

with portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of

them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very
few of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true
nature and form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the
Sperm Whale his only food. For though other species of whales find
their food, above water, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding,
the Spermaceti Whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below
the surface; and only by interference is it that any one can tell of
what, precisely, that food consists. At times, when closely pursued,
he will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the
squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty
feet in length. They fancy that the monster to which these arms
belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that
the Sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in
order to attack and tear it.

There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of

Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into squid. The
manner in which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and
sinking, with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two
correspond. But much abatement is necessary with respect to the
incredible bulk he assigns it.

By some naturalistswho have vaguely heard rumours of the mys-

terious creature here spoken of, it is included among the class of
cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would
seem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.

CHAPTER LIX
THE LINE

With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well

as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere pre-
sented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-
line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
 THE WHITE WHALE 257

vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary
ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable
to the rope-maker, and more convenient to
also renders the rope itself
the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary
quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which
it must he subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar

in general by no means adds to the rope’s durability or strength,

however much it may give it compactness and gloss.
Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-line; for, though
not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic;
and I will add (since there is an aesthetic in all things), is much more
handsome and becoming to the boat than hemp. Hemp is a dusky,
dark fellow, a sort of Indian ; but Manilla is a golden-haired Circassian
to behold.

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first

sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experi-

ment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred
and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly
equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures
something over two hundred fathoms. Toward the stern of the boat it is
spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still, though,
but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded
“sheaves,” or layers of concentric spiralisations, without any hollow
but the “heart,” or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the
cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running
out, infallibly take somebody’s arm, leg, or entire body off, the ut-
most precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some har-
pooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business,
carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a
block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all

possible wrinkles and twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same
line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage
in this: because these twin-tubs being so small they more readily
fit

into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American
258 MOBY DICK; OR
tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes
a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch
in thickness; for the bottom of the whale boat is like critical ice,
which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very
much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is

clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling

off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side oi the
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.
This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts.
First: 'in order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line
from a neighbouring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so
deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached
to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted
like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though
the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second:
This arrangement is indispensable for common safety’s sake; for
were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat,
and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a
single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop
there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him
into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would
ever find her again.
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the
line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead
there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting
crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as
they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks
or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden
pin or skewer the siz& of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out.
From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and
is then passed inside the boat again ;
and some ten or twenty fathoms
(called box-line) being coiled upon the box, in the bows, it con-
tinues its way to the gunwale still a little farther aft, and is then
 THE WHITE WHALE 259

attached to the short-warp — the rope which immediately is connected

with the harpoon ;
hut previous to that connection, the short-warp
goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid
eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest
snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Kor can any son of mortal
woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies,
and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any
unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible
contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus
circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in
his hones to quiver in him Yet habit strange
like a shaken jelly. —
thing what cannot habit accomplish ?
! —
Gayer sallies, more merry
mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your
mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of
the whale boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses and, like ;

the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men com-
posing the crew pull into jaws of death, with a halter around every
neck, as you may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
those repeated whaling disasters —
some few of which are casually
chronicled —of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by
the line, and lost. Eor, when the line is darting out, to be seated
then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold
whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam,
and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse ;
for you cannot sit

motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking

like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without

the slightest warning, and only by certain self-adjusting buoyancy

and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made
a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself
could never pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
260 MOBY DICK; OR
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm;
and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the
fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose
of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being
brought into actual play — this is a thing which carries more of true
terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say
more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with
halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift,
sudden turn of death, that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-
present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated
in the whale boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of
terror than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.

CHAPTER LX
STUBB KILLS A WHALE

If to Starbuck the apparition of the squid was a thing of portents,

to Queequeg it was quite a different object.
“When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in
the bow of his hoisted boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.”
The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing
special to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell
of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian
Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen
call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises,
dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring
waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the inshore ground off
Peru.
It was my turn to stand at the foremast head ;
and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed
in what seemed an enchanted air. Ho resolution could withstand it;
in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went
out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendu-
lum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 261

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that

the seamen at the main and mizzen-mastheads were already drowsy.
So that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and
for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from
the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent
crests;and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west,
and the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like
vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency
preserved me with a shock I came back to life.
;
And lo close under !

our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling
in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy
back of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror.
But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon
tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the wdiale looked like a portly
burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor
whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter’s wand, the
sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into wakeful-
ness; and more than from all parts of the vessel,
a score of voices
simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the
accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the
sparkling brine into the air.

“Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried Ahab. And obeying his
own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could
handle the spokes.
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale
and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to
the leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few
ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be
alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man
must speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the
gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the
calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we
thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail
forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower swal-
lowed up.
 '

262 MOBY DICK; OR

“There go flukes !” was the cry, an announcement immediately
followed by Stubb’ s producing his match and igniting his pipe, for
now a respite was granted. After the full interval of his sounding
had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the
smoker’s boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb

counted upon the honour of the capture. It was obvious now, that the
whale had at length become aware* of his pursuers. All silence

or cautiousness was therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped,

and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb
cheered on his crew to the assault.
Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his
jeopardy, he was going “head out”; that part obliquely projecting
from the mad yeast which he brewed 1 .

“Start her, start her, my men! Don’t hurry yourselves; take

plenty of time —but start her; start her like thunderclaps, that’s all,”

cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. “Start her, now;
give ’em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my
boy— start her, all ;
but keep cool, keep cool —cucumbers is the
word— easy, easy —only start her like grim death and grinning
and
devils, raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves,
boys— that’s all. Start her!”
“Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising
some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained
boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading
stroke which the eager Indian gave.
But were answered by others quite as wild. “Kee-
his wild screams
hee Kee-hee!” yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his
!

seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.

“Ka-la Koo-loo!” howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over

1
It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the
entire interior of the sperm whale’s enormous head consists. Though appar-
ently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him. So
that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when going at
his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front
of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that
by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform him-
self from a bluff-bowed, sluggish galliot into a sharp-pointed New York pilot
boat.
 •

THE WHITE WHALE 263

a mouthful of Grenadier’s steak. And thus with oars and yells the
keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still

encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke
from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till
the welcome cry was heard —
“Stand up, Tashtego give it to him
!”
!

—
The harpoon was hurled. “Stem all!” The oarsmen backed water;
the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one
of their wrists. was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb
It
had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead,
whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue
smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his
pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also,
just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and
through both of Stubb’s hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares
of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally
dropped. It was like holding an enemy’s sharp two-edged sword by
the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your
clutch.
“Wet the line! wet the line!” cried Stuhb to the tub oarsmen
(him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed the sea-
water into it 1 More turns were taken, so that the line began holding
.

its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark
all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places stem for stern — —
a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.
From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper
part of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring,

you would have thought the craft had two keels —one cleaving the

water, the other the air — as the boat churned on through both opposing
elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows ;
a ceaseless

whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within,
even but of a little finger, the vibratiUg, cracking craft canted over
her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed: each man
with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed
1 Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated, that,
in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running-line with wate^
in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for that purpose.
Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
264 MOBY DICK; OR
to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering-oar crouching
almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole
Atlantics and Pacifies seemed passed as they shot on their way, till

at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.

“Haul in —haul in!” cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing

round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to
him, while yet the boat was. being towed on. Soon ranging up by
his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted
dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat
alternately sterning out of the way of the whale’s horrible wallow,
and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks
down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood,
which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The
slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its

reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red
men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonisingly
shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff
from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling
in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straight-
ened it again and again by a few rapid blows against the gunwale,
then again and again sent it into the whale.
—
“Pull up pull up!” he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning
whale relaxed in his wrath. “Pull up !
—
close to !” and the boat ranged
along the fish’s flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly
churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully
churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some
gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was
fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he
sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for,
starting from this trance into that unspeakable thing called his “flurry,”
the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself
in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft in-
stantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from
that frenzied twilight into the clear air of the day.
Ancj. now abating in his flurry, the whale once mofe rolled opt
 THE WHITE WHALE 265

into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and con-
tracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonised respirations.
At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the
purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back
again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His
heart had burst!
“He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo.
“Yes; both pipes smoked out!” and withdrawing his own from
his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and,
for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

CHAPTER LXI
THE DART

A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale boat
pushes from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as tem-
off

porary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the

foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. How it needs a
strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in

what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the
distance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and ex-
hausted the chase, the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar mean-
while to the uttermost; indeed, he is expected to set an example of
superhuman by incredible rowing, but
activity to the rest, not only

by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations; and what it is to -keep

shouting at the top of one’s compass, while all the other muscles are
strained and hall started —what that is none know but those who have
tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very recklessly

at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state, then, with
his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the ex-
cited cry
— “Stand up, and give it to him !” He now has to drop and
secure his oar, turn round on his centre half-way, seize his harpoon
from the crotch, and with what little strength may remain, he essays
to pitch it somehow into the whale. Ho wonder, taking the whole fleet
266 MOBY DICK; OR
of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five
are successful : no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly
cursed and disrated ;
no wonder that some of them actually burst their
wonder that some Sperm whalemen are
blood-vessels in the boat; no
absent four years with four barrels no wonder that to many ship ;

owners, whaling is but a losing concern ;

for it is the harpooneer that
makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how
can you expect to find it there when most wanted!
Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant,
that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer
likewise start to running fore and aft to the imminent jeopardy of
themselves and every one else. It is then they change places and the ;

headsman, the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper station
in the bows of the boat.
Now, I care notwho maintains the contrary, but all this is both
foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows
from first to last ;
he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no
rowing whatever should be expected of him except under circumstances
obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve
a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the
harpooneer that has caused them.
To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of
this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from
out of toil.

CHAPTER LXII
THE CROTCH

Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So,
in productive subjects, grow the chapters.
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent men-
tion. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in
 THE WHITE WHALE 267

length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale

near the how, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden
extremity of the harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly
projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand
to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as a back-
woodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is customary to have two
harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first and
second irons.
But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected
with the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale ;
so that if, in the coming
drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It
is a doubling of the chances. But it very often happens that owing to
the instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiv-
ing the first iron, it becomes impossible for the harpooneer, however
lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the second iron into him.
Nevertheless, as the second iron is already connected with the line,
and the weapon must, at all events, he antici-
line is running, hence that
patingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere; else the
most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the
water, it accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box-line
(mentioned in a preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances,
prudently practicable. But this critical act is not always unattended
with the saddest and most fatal casualties.
Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it henceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror, skit-

tishly curveting about both boa/t and whale, entangling the lines,

or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions.

Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is fairly

captured and a corpse.

Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all en-

gaging one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale when owing ;

to these qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents

of such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be

simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is
supplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first one
 s s

268 MOBY DICK; OR

be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are
faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several most
important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be painted.

CHAPTER LXIII

stubb's supper

Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was
a calm; forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow
so,

business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen

men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs
and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish
corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long

intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness

of the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or
whatever they call it, in China, four or five labourers on the footpath
will draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but
this grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-
lead in bulk.
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod’
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw
Ahab dropping one more lanterns over the bulwarks. Va-
of several
cantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual
orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to
a seaman, went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again
until morning.
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
evinced his customary activity, to call it so ;
yet now that the creature
was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience* or despair, seemed
working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that
Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales
were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand
monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought from the
sound on the Pequod’ decks, that all hands were preparing to cast
anchor in the deep ;
for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck,
 THE WHITE WHALE 269

and thrust rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links,
the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head
to the stem, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies with its

black hull to the vessel’s, and seen through the darkness of the night,
which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two —ship and whaje
— seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines
1
while the other remains standing .

moody Ahab was now all quiescence,

If at least so far as could be
known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, be-
trayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an un-
wonted bustle was he in, that the staid Starbuck, his official superior,
quietly resigned to him for the time the sole management of affairs.

One small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb was soon made
strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat in-

temperately fond of the whale as a flavourish thing to his palate.

“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go,
!”
and cut me one from his small
Here be known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a
it

general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the
enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least before realising

the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these
Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular part of
the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb comprising the tapering extrem-
;

ity of the body.

About midnight that steak was cut and cooked and lighted by two ;

lanterns of Sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at

1
A item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
little
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,
is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively
heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death,
causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot
got at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty
is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float
at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured
to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the
other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is
readily made to follow suit: and being slipped along the body, is at last
locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with
its broad flukes or lobes.
 ;

270 MOBY DICK; OR

the capstan-head, as if the capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb
the only banqueter on whale’s flesh that night. Mingling their mum-
blings with his own and thousands of sharks,
mastications, thousands
swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness.
The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp
slapping of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the
sleepers’ hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as
before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and
turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces
of the whale of the bigness of a human head. This particular feat
of the shark seems all but miraculous. How, at such an apparently
unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical
mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all things. The
mark they thus leave on the whale may best be likened to the hollow
made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of sea-fight, a.

sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like

hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to
bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them ;
and though, while
the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving
each other’s life meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the
sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving
away under the meat and though, were you to turn
table at the dead ;

the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same
thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties
and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships
crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in
case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently
buried ;
and though one or two other like instances might be set down,
touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most
socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no con-
ceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless
numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead
Sperm whale, moored by night to a whale ship at sea. If you have
never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety
of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.
 THE WHITE WHALE 271

But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that
was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking
of his own epicurean lips.

“Cook, cook !
—where’s that old Fleece ?” he cried at length, widen-
ing his legs still further, as if to form a mote secure base for his sup-
per ;
and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing
with his lance; “cook, you cook! — sail this way, cook!”
The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously
roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came
shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was
something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well
scoured like his other pans ;
this old Fleece, as they called him, came
shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which,
after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops this old ;

Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the world of command,

came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb’s sideboard; when,
with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane,
he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways
inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.
“Cook,” said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
mouth, “don’t you think this steak is rather overdone? You’ve been
beating this steak too much, cook ;
it’s too tender'. Don’t I always say
that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? -There are those sharks
now over the side, don’t you see they prefer it tough and rare ? What
a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to ’em; tell ’em
they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but
they must keep quiet. Hang me, if I can hear my voice. Away,
cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern,” snatching one
from his sideboard; “now then, go and preach to ’em!”
Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the
deck to the bulwarks and then, with one hand dropping his light low
;

over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the
other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the
side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb,
softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.

“Fellow-critters: I’se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat
 — ”

272 MOBY DICK; OR

dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin’ ob de lip!
Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings,
but by Gor you must stop dat dam racket
!

“Cook,” here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sud-

—
den slap on the shoulder, “Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn’t
swear that way when your preaching. That’s no way to convert sin-
ners, cook!”
“Who dat? Den preach to him yourself,” sullenly turning to go.
“No, cook; go on, go on.”
“Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters”:
“Right !” exclaimed Stubb approvingly ; “coax ’em to it ;
try that,”
and Fleece continued.
“Dough you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay
to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness
— ’top dat dam slappin’
ob de tail! How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam
slappin’ and bitin’ dare?”
“Cook,” cried Stubb, collaring him, “I won’t have that swearing.
Talk to ’em gentlemanly.”
Once more the sermon proceeded.
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for;
dat is natur, and can’t be helped but to gobern dat wicket natur, dat
;

is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you,

why den you be angel for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well
;

gobemed. Now, look here, bred’ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a-help-
ing yourselves from dat whale. Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your
neighbour’s mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat
whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat
whale belong to some one else. I know some o’ you has berry brig
mout, brigger dan oders but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small
;

bellies; so dat the brigness ob de mout is not to swaller wid, but to

bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t get into de
scrouge to help demselves.”
“Well done, old Fleece!” cried Stubb, “that’s Christianity; go on.”
“No use goin’ on ;
de dam willians will keep a scourgin’ and slappin’
each oder, Massa Stubb ;
dey don’t hear one word ;
no use a-preachin’
to such dam g’uttons as you call ’em, till dare bellies is full, and dare
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 273

bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get ’em full, dey won’t hear
you den; for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and
can’t hear not’ing at all, no more, for eber and eber.”
“Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the bless-
ing, Fleece, and I’ll away to my supper.”
Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his
shrill voice, and cried
“Cussed Kick up de damndest row as ever you
fellow-critters!
can fill your dam bellies ’till they bust and den die.”
; —
“How, cook,” said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; “stand
just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular
attention.”
“All ’dention,” said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in
the desired position.
“Well,” said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile ;
“I shall now
go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you,
cook ?”
“What dat do wid de ’teak?” said the old black testily.
“Silence! How old are you, cook?”
“ ’Bout ninety, dey say,” he gloomily muttered.

“And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years,
cook, and don’t know yet how to cook a whale-steak?” rapidly bolting
another mouthful at the last word, so that that morsel seemed a contin-
uation of the question. “Where were you born, cook?”
“ ’Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin’ ober de Roanoke.”

“Born in a ferry-boat! That’s queer, too. But I want to know

what country you were bora in, cook ?”
“Didn’t I say de Roanoke country ?” he cried sharply.
“Ho, you didn’t, cook; but I’ll tell you what I’m coming to, cook.
You must go home and be born over again; you don’t know how to
cook a whale-steak yet.”
“Bress my soul, if I cook nodder one,” he growled angrily, turning
round to depart.
“Come back, cook — hand me those tongs —now take
;
here, ;
that bit

of steak there, and me

tell you thinkif steak cooked that as it should

be ? Take it, I say” —holding the tongs towards him

—“take it, and
taste it.”
 —

274 MOBY DICK; OR

Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro
muttered, “Best cooked ’teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy.”
“Cook,” said Stubb, squaring himself once more; “do you belong
to the church?”
“Passed one once in Cape Down,” said the old man sullenly.

“And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape Town,
where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers
as his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come
here, and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?” said
Stubb. “Where do you expect to go to, cook ?”
“Go bed berry soon,” he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
to
“Avast! heave-to! I mean when you die, cook. It’s an awful
question. Now what’s your answer?”
“When dis old brack man dies,” said the negro slowly, changing his
whole air and demeanour, “he hisself won’t go nowhere but some hressed ;

angel will come and fetch him.”

“Fetch him — and fetch him where?”
“Up dere,” said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head,
and keeping it there very solemnly.
you expect
‘“So, then, to go up into our maintop, do you, cook, when
you are dead?”
“Didn’t say dat t’all,” said Fleece, again in the sulks.
“You said up you? and now look yourself, and see
there, didn’t
where your tongs are pointing. Drop your tongs, cook, and heal?
my orders. Do ye hear ? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t’other
a’top of your heart, when I’m giving my orders, cook. What! that
—
your heart, there? that’s your gizzard! Aloft! aloft! that’s it —
now you have it. Hold it there now, and pay attention.”
“All ’dention,” said the old black, with both hands placed as desired,
vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at
one and the same time.
“Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very had,
that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible ;
you see that, don’t
you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for
my private table here, the capstan, I’ll tell you what to do so as not to
spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live
 THE WHITE WHALE 275

coal to it with the other ;

that done, dish it ;
d’ye hear ? And now to-
morrow, cook, when we are cutting-in the fish, be sure you stand by to
get the tips of his fins have them put in pickle.
; As for the ends of
the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now, you may go.”
But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.
“Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch.
D’ye hear ? away you sail, then — Halloa stop make a how before you
! !

go —Avast heaving again ! Whale halls for breakfast —don’t forget.”

“Wish, by Gor whale eat him, ’stead of him eat whale. I’m bressed
!

if he ain’t more a shark dan Massa Shark hisself,” muttered the old

man, limping away: with which sage ejaculation he went to his ham-
mock.

CHAPTER LXIY
THE WHALE AS A DISH

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp,
and like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems
so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history
and philosophy of it.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right
Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
prices there. Also, that in Henry vmth’s time, a certain cook of the
court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce
to be eaten with barbecued porpoises, which, you remember, are a
species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine
eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls,
and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle halls
or veal balls. The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them.
They had a great porpoise grant from the crown.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all

hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him;

but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred
feet long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced
of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales ;
but the Esqui-
276 MOBY DICK; OR
maux are not so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales,
and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of
their most famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants,
as being exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me
that certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Green-
land by a whaling vessel — that these men actually lived for several
months on the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left ashore
after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps
are called “fritters” which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown
;

and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives’

doughnuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have such an eatable look
that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands off.

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilised dish, is his

exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to

be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating

as the buffalo’s (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid
pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that
is; like the transparent, half-jellied white meat of a cocoanut in the
third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for
butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have
method of absorbing a
it into some other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long
try-watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip
their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile.
Many a good supper have I thus made.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine
dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two
plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two
large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a
most delectable mess, in flavour somewhat resembling calves’ head,
which is quite a dish among some epicures and every one knows that ;

some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon

calves’ brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as
to be able to tell a calf’s head from their own heads; which, indeed,
requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a
young buck with an intelligent-looking calf’s head before him, is some-
how one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of
reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu, Brute!” expression.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 277

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unc-

tuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence
that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before men-
tioned, i. e., that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea,
and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever
murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung;
and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have
been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the
meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds star-
ing up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not the sight take
a tooth out of the cannibals jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he ? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my
civilised and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is
that handle made of? —what but the bones of the brother of the very
ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after de-
vouring that fat goose ? With a feather of the same fowl. And with
what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of
Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars ? It is only within the
last month or two that society passed a resolution to patronise
nothing but steel pens.

CHAPTEB LXV
THE SHARK MASSACRE

When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long

and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general

thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting

him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not
very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. There-
fore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a’lee;
and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the

reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept ;

that is,

two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall paount

tlie deck to see that all goes well,

 ;

278 MOBY DICK; OR

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will

not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather

round the moored carcass, that were he left so for six hours, say, on
a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning.
In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so
largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably
diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades,
a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to
tickle them into still But
was not thus in the
greater activity. it

present case with the Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any man
unaccustomed have looked over her side that night,
to such sights, to
would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese,
and those sharks the maggots in it.
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor- watch after his supper
was concluded and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle sea-
;

man came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks
for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lower-
ing three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid
sea, thesetwo mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an
1
incesssant murdering of the sharks by striking the keen steel deep
,

into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy
confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not
always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of
the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only
at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round,
and own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over
bit their
again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound.
Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and
ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality

1
The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel ; is
about the bigness of a man’s spread hand; and in general shape corresponds
to the garden implement after which it is named only its sides are perfectly
;

flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon
is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is occasionally
honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty
feet long, is inserted for a handle.
 THE WHITE WHALE 279

seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be
called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck
for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Quee-
queg’s hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his mur-
derous jaw.

CHAPTER LXVI
-

CUTTING-IN

It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed Ex-officio !

professors of Sabbath-breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod

was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You
would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the
sea gods.
In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponder-
ous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and
which no single man can possibly lift — this vast bunch of grapes was
swayed up maintop and firmly lashed to the lower masthead,
to the
the strongest point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end 6f the
hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted
to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung
over the whale to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one
;

hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the
side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades,

began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just
above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad, semi-circular
line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body of
the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in one
dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship careens

over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads of an old
house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted
mastheads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while
every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave
from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a
great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and
the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged
280 MOBY DICK; OR
semi-circular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber

envelops the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it

stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped
by spiralising it. For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass
continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, and as
the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the
“scarf,” simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the
mates ;
and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very

time bejng hoisted higher and higher aloft till

act itself, it is all the
its upper end grazes the maintop; the men at the windlass then cease

heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass

sways to and fro as if letdown from the sky, and every one present
must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears
and pitch him headlong overboard.
One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen
weapon and watching his chance he dexter-
called a boarding-sword,
ously slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying
mass. Into this hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle
is then hooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to pre-

pare for what follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman,

warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at
the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging slices, severs
it completely in twain ;
so that while the short lower part is still fast,
the long upper strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all

ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, and
while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the
whale, the other is slowing slackened away, and down goes the first

strip through the main hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished

parlour called the blubber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundry
nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were a
great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds ;
the
two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously both whale and wind-;

lass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber room gentlemen coiling,
the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasion-
ally, by way of assuaging the general friction,
 THE WHITE WHALE 281

CHAPTER LXVII
THE BLANKET

I have given no small attention to that not nnvexed subject, the skin
of the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced
whalemen and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion
afloat,

remains unchanged hut it is only an opinion.

;

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale ? Already
you know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the
consistence of firm, close-grained beef, hut tougher, more elastic and
compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in
thickness.
Now, however preposterous it may
seem to talk of any creature’s
first

skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point

of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because
you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale’s
body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of
any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that he but the skin ? True,
from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with
your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat resem-
bling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and
soft as satin ;
that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contracts
and thickens, hut becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several
such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whalebooks. It is trans-
parent, as I said before and being laid upon the printed page, I have
;

sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying in-

fluence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their
own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at here is this.

That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests

the entire body of the whale, is not so much to he regarded as the skin of
the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply
ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is

thinner and more tender than the skin of the new-born child. But no
more of this.
Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this
skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the hulk of
 — ;

282 MOBY DICK; OR

one hundred barrels of oil ;
and, when it is considered that, in quantity,
or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three-fourths,
and not the entire substance of the coat some idea may hence be had
;

of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere

integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. 'Reckoning ten barrels
to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters
of the stuff of the whale’s skin.
In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among
the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over
obliquely crossed and recrossed with numerous straight marks in thick
array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But
thesemarks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance
above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it as if they were en-
graved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the
quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but
afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical
that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids
hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present con-
nection. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one
Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing
the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades
on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too,

the mystic marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the

Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other

phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not
seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great
part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude
scratches, altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that
those New
England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to
bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs
I should say, that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm
Whale in this particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in
the whale are probably made by hostile contact with other whales;
for I have most remarked them in the large, full grown bulls of the
species.
A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber
of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stripped from him in
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 283

long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, tbis one is very
happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his
blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian
poncho slipped over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by
reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled
to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and
tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shud-
dering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout?
True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean
waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish,

whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves

under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before
an inn fire whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood.
;

Freeze his blood and he dies. How wonderful is it then —except after
explanation — that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as
indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found
at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where,
when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months after-
wards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly

isfound glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has

been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer
than that of a Borneo negro in summer.
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong in-

dividual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue
of interior spaciousness. Oh, man admire and model thyself
! after the
whale ! Ho thou, too, remain warm among ice. Ho thou, too, live

in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy
blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like

the great whale, retain, O man ! in all seasons a temperature of thine

own.
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things ! Of erec-

tions, how few are domed like St. Peter’s ! of creatures, how few vast

as the whale
 !

284 MOBY DICK; OR

CHAPTEK LXVIII
THE FUNERAL

“Haul in the chains ! Let the carcase go astern !”

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body
of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed
in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal.

Slowly it more and more away, the water round it tom and
floats

splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with repacious
flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting pon-

iards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats farther
and farther from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seems
square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous
din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous
sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the
fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great
mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral The sea-vultures !

all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or

speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I
ween, if peradventure he had needed it ;
but upon the banquet of his
funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vulturism of earth
from which not the mightiest whale is free.

Hor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-
war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscur-
ing the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating
in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it ;
straightway the
whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log
— shoals, rocks and breakers hereabouts beware! And for years
afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly
sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there
when a stick was held. There’s your law of precedents; there’s your
utility of traditions ;
there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old
beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the
air!
 THE WHITE WHALE 285

Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror
to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerful panic to the
world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts
than the Cock Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who
believe in them.

CHAPTER LXIX
THE SPHINX

It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping

the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the
Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced
whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a
neck ;
on the contrary, where his head ‘and body seem to join, there, in
that very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the
surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening be-
tween him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a dis-
coloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in
mind, under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many
too, that

feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneaneous manner, without

so much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus
made, he must skillfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts,

and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into
the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s boast, that he demanded
but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale ?
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a
cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale
it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full-

grown leviathan this is impossible; for the Sperm Whale’s head em-
braces nearly one-third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend
such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this
were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers’
scales.

The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the
 ;

286 MOBY DICK; OR

head was hoisted against the ship’s side —about half-way out of the
sea, so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native ele-
ment. And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it,

by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower masthead,

and every yardarm on that side projecting like a crane over the waves;
there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod’s waist like the
giant Holofemes’s from the girdle of Judith.
When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the ^seamen
went below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous
but now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow
lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves
upon the sea.

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused
to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took
Stubb’s long spade — still remaining there after the whale’s decapita-
tion —and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass,
placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaning
over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
It was a black and hooded head ;
and hanging there in the midst of
so intense a calm, seemed the Sphinx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou
it

vast and venerable heap,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished

with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers,

thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon wdiich the upper sun now
gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. .Where unrecorded
names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot where in her ;

murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of

the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most fa-
miliar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went hast slept ;

by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives
to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from
their flaming .ship heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave
;

true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st
the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck;
for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw ;
and his
 s s — !

THE WHITE WHALE 287

murderers still on unharmed—while swift lightnings

sailed shivered
the neighbouring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to
outstretched, longing arms.
“Sail ho !” cried a triumphant* voice from the mainmast head.
“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
himself, while whole thunderclouds swept aside from his brow. “That
upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man
lively cry
Where away ?”
“Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her
breeze to us!”
“Better and better, man. Would now
Paul would come along
St.

that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and

O soul of man how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies
!

not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, hut has its cunning
duplicate in mind.”

CHAPTER LXX
the jeroboam’s story

Hahd and breeze blew on; hut the breeze came faster
in hand, ship
than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.
By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and manned mast-
heads proved her a whale ship. But as she was so far to windward,
and shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground,
the Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to
see what response would he made.
Here he it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships
of the American Whale Fleet have such a private signal; all which
signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective
vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the
whale commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean,
even at considerable distances and with no small facility.
The Pequod' signal was at last responded to by the strangers
setting her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam* of Nan-
tucket. Squaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under
the Pequod' lee, and lowered a boat ;
it soon drew nigh ;
hut, as the side-
 s

288 MOBY DICK; OR

ladder was being rigged by Starbuck’s order to accommodate the visit-

ing captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat’s
stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It
turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board,
and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod'
company. For, though himself and boat’s crew remained untainted,
and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea
and air rolling and flowing between; yet conscientiously adhering
to the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come
into direct contact with the Pequod.
But by no means prevent all communication. Preserving
this did
an interval of some few yards between itself and the ships, the Jero-
boam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel
to the Pequod , as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this

time it blew very fresh), with her maintop sail aback; though, indeed,
at timesby the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be
pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her
proper bearings again. and other like interruptions
Subject to this,

now and then, a conversation was sustained between the two parties;
but at intervals not without still another interruption of a very differ-
ent sort.
Pulling an oar in* the was a man of singular
Jeroboams boat,
appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual notabil-
ities make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man,
sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yel-
low hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically cut coat of a faded walnut
tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were' rolled
up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.
So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed
— “That’s he! that’s he! —
the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho's
company told us of!” Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the
Jeroboam and a certain man among her crew, some time previous
,

when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account and
what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in
question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody
in the Jeroboam. His story was this:
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Hesk-
 THE WHITE WHALE 289

yeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,

secret meetings, having several times descended from heaven by the
way of a trap-door, announcing the -speedy opening of the seventh
vial, which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of con-

taining gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum.

A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna
for Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he as-
sumed a steady, common-sense and offered himself as a
exterior,
green-hand candidate for the Jeroboams whaling voyage. They en-
gaged him but straightway upon the ship’s getting out of sight of land,
;

his insanity broke out in a‘ freshet. He announced himself as the

archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard.
He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the de-
liverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica. The
unflinching earnestness with which he declared these things; —the
dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited imagination, and all the
preternatural terrors’ of real delirium, united to invest this Gabriel in
th3 minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of
sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a man,
however, was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he
refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous captain
would fain have been rid of him; but apprised that that individual’s
intention was ter land him in the first convenient port, the archangel
—
forthwith opened all his seals and vials devoting the ship and all
hands to unconditional perdition, in case this intention was carried
out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew, that
at last in a* body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel was
sent from the ship^ not a man of them would remain. He was there-
fore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel
to be any way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it came
to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The
consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing
for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had broken out
he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the plague, as he
called it, was his sole command; nor should it be stayed but accord-
ing to his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed,
 ;

290 MOBY DICK; OR

and some of them fawned before him in obedience to his instructions,
;

sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god. Such things

may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true. Nor
is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless
self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power of
deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it was time to return

to the Pequod.
“I fear not thy epidemic, man,” said Ahab from the bulwarks, to
Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat’s stern; “come on board.”
But now Gabriel started to his feet.
“Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious ! Beware of the
horrible plague!”
”
“Gabriel, Gabriel !” cried Captain Mayhew ;
“thou must either
But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its

seethings drowned all speech.

“Hast thou seen the White Whale?” demanded Ahab, when the
boat drifted back.
“Think, think of thy whale boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of
the horrible tail!”
“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that ”
But again the boat tore ahead
as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while
a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occa-
sional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime,
the hoisted sperm whale’s head jogged about very violently, and
Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than
his self-styled archangel nature seemed to warrant.
When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions
from Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea
that seemed leagued with him.
seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon
It
speaking a whale ship, her people were reliably apprised of the ex-
istence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily suck-
ing in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain
against attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen
in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less
 THE WHITE WHALE 291

a being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the
Bible. But when, some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly
sighted from the mastheads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour
to encounter him; and the captain himself being not unwilling to let
him have the opportunity despite all the archangel’s denunciations
and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his
boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and
many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting
one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-
head, was tossing one arm in frantic^ gestures, and hurling forth
prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity.
Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat’s bow, and
with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclama-
tions upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised
lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fan-
ning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the
oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life,

was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent,
fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of
the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any of the oarsmen’s head; but
the mate for ever sank.
(It is well to parenthesise here, that of the fatal accidents in the
Sperm Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.
Sometimes nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;
oftener the boat’s bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the
headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body.
But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than
one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence
is discernible; the man being stark dead.)
The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly
descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek —“The vial! the

vial !” Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further
hunting of the whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with
added influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had
specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general
prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit
292 MOBY, DICK; OR
one of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a name-
less terror to the ship.

Mayhew having concluded the narration, Ahab put such questions to

him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether
he intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer.
To which Ahab answered —“Aye.” Straightway, then, Gabriel once
more started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently
exclaimed, with downward pointed finger
— “Think, think of the
blasphemer — dead, and down there !
—beware of the blasphemer’s
end!”
Ahab stolidly turned asi^e; then said to Mayhew, “Captain, I
have just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of
thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.”
Every whale ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four
oceans. Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are
only received after attaining an age of two and three years or more.
Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely
tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in
consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a
letter,Death himself might well have been the post-boy.
“Canst not read it?” cried Ahab. “Give it me, man. Aye, aye,
it’s but a dim scrawl; —what’s this?” As he was studying it out,
'Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly
split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it

to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ship.

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “Mr. Har yes, Mr. —
—
Harry (a woman’s pinny hand,—the man’s wife, I’ll wager) Aye —
—Mr. Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam ; — why, it’s Macey, and he’s
dead!”
“Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,” sighed Mayhew;
“but let me have it.”

“Hay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou are soon going
that way.”
“Curse throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by
 THE WHITE WHALE 293

now to receive it” ;

and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s
hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards
the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from
rowing ;
the boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern ;
so that, as if
by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand.
He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the
letter on it, sent it thus loaded hack into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s
feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out his comrades to give way with
their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away
from the Pequod.
As, after this interlude, the seaman resumed their work upon the
jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to
this wild affair.

CHAPTER LXXI
THE MONKEY-ROPE

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,

there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. How
hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There
is no staying in any one place for at one and the same time everything
;

has to be done everywhere. It is much

same with him who en- the
deavours the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way
a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the
whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole
there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and
weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was in-

serted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was,

as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s hack for the special
purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require

that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or
stripping operation is concluded. The whale, he it observed, lies

almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated

upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the
poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale, and half in the
water, as the vast mass revolves like a treadmill beneath him.
294 MOBY DICK; OR
On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in, the Highland costume
—a shirt and socks — in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to un-
common advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him,
as will presently be seen.
Being the savage’s bowman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-
oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful
duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble
upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys hold-
ing a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep
side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is tech-

nically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip

of canvas belted round his waist.
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before
we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
both ends fast to Queequeg’ s broad canvas belt and fast to my narrow
; ;

leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time,
were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then
both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord,
it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese
ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother,
nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the
hempen bond entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,
that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to per-
ceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint-stock com-
pany of two that my free will had received a mortal wound and that
; ;

another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into un-

merited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort
of interregnum in Providence ;
for its even-handed equity never could
have sanctioned so gross an injustice. And yet still further pon-
dering —while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and
the ship, which would threaten jam him— to further pondering,
still

I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation
of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or
other, has thisSiamese connection with a plurality of other mortals.
If your banker breaks, you snap if your apothecary by mistake sends
;
 THE WHITE WHALE 295

you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by ex-
ceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous
other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’ s monkey-rope heed-
fully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near
sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I
would, I only had the management of one end of it 1 .

I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between
the whale and the ship —
where he would occasionally fall, from the
incessant rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only
jamming jeopardy he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre
made upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly apd more
keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from
the carcase —
the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a
beehive.
And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed
them aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible
were it not that, attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise
miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.
Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a
ravenous finger in the deemed but wise to look sharp to them.
pie, it is

Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then

jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what
—
seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark he was provided with still an-
other protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages,
Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of
keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as
they could reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very dis-
interested and benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg’s best

happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and

from the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half
hidden by the blood-mudded water, those indiscreet spades of theirs
would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail. But poor Queequeg,
1
The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod
that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improve-
ment upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb,
in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee
for the faithfulness and vigilance pf his monkey-rope holder,
 ! ——
:

296 MOBY DICK; OR

I suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook
poor Queequeg, I suppose only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life
into the hands of his gods.
“Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother,’ ’ thought I, as

I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea
“what matters it, after all ? Are you not the previous image of each
and all of us men in this whaling world ? That unsounded ocean you
gasp in,, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, yuur friends;
and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and
peril, poor lad.”
But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For
now, as with blue lips and bloodshot eyes the exhausted savage at last
climbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trem-
bling over the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent,
consolatory glance hands him —what ? Some hot Cognac ? No hands !

him, ye gods ! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water

“Ginger? Do I smell ginger?” suspiciously asked Stubb, coming
near. “Yes, this must be ginger,” peering into the as yet untasted
cup. Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly* walked
towards the astonished steward slowly saying, “Ginger? ginger? and
will you have the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the
virtue of ginger ? Ginger ? is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-
Boy, to kindle a Are in this shivering cannibal? Ginger! —what the
devil is ginger ? — sea-coal ? —firewood — ? lucif er matches ? —tinder ?

gun-powder ? —what the devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup
to our poorQueequeg here ?
“There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this
business,” he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had
just come from forward. “Will you look at that kannakin sir; smell
of it, if you please.” Then watching the mate’s countenance, he added
“The steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and
jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward
an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bel-
lows by which he blows back the breath into a half-drowned man ?”
“I trust not,” said Starbuck ;
“it is poor stuff enough.”
“Aye, aye, steward,” cried Stubb, “we’ll teach you to drug a har-
 ©C1K G92S7
1

AND RIGHT IN AMONG THOSE SHARKS WAS QUEEQUEG \

WHO OFTEN PUSHED THEM ASIDE
WITH HIS FLOUNDERING FEET.

1 / \DtL
 THE WHITE WHALE 297

pooneer ;
none of your apothecary’s medicine here you want to poison ;

us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives and want to
murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye ?”
“It was not me,” cried Dough-Boy, “it was Aunt Charity that
brought the ginger on hoard; and bade me never give the harpoon-
eers any spirits, but only this ginger-jub — so she called it.”
“Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with
ye to the lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong,
Mr. Starbuck. It is the captain’s orders —grog for the harpooneer on
a whale.”
“Enough,” replied Starbuck, “only don’t hit him again, hut ”

“Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or some-
thing of that sort; and this fellow’s a weasel. What were you about
saying, sir?”
“Only this :
go down with him and get what thou wantest thyself.”
When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and
a sort of tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits,
and was handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity’s gift,

and that was freely given to the waves.

CHAP TEE LXXII

STUBB AND FLASK KILL A RIGHT WHALE; AND THEN HAVE A
TALK OVER HIM

It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale’s
prodigious head hanging to the Pequod’s side. But we must let it
continue hanging there awhile till we can get a chance to attend to it.

For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for
the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had grad-
ually drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,

gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Bight Whales, a species of the

Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
anvwhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the cap-
ture of those inferior creatures ;
and though the Pequod was not com-
298 MOBY DICK; OR
missioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers
of them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a
Sperm Whale had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the sur-
prise of all, the announcement was made that a Right Whale should be
captured that day, if opportunity offered.
Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and
two boats, Stubb’s and Flask’s, were detached in pursuit. Pulling
farther and farther away, they at last became almost invisible to the men
at the masthead. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap
of tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft that

one or both 'the boats must be fast.

An and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of

interval passed
being dragged right towards the ship by the towing whale. So close
did the monster come to the hull, that at first it seemed as if he
meant it malice; but suddenly going down in a maelstrom, within
three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared from view, as if

diving under the keel. “Cut, cut!” was the cry from the ship to

the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on the point of being brought
with a deadly dash against the vessel’s side. But having plenty of
line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding very rapidly, they
paid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulled with all

their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the
struggle was intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the
tightened line in one direction, and still plied their oars in another,
the contending strain threatened to take them under. But it was
only a few feet advance they sought to gain. And thjey stuck to it

till they did gain it; when instantly, a swift tremor was felt run-
ning like lightning along the keel, as the strained line, scraping be-
neath the ship, suddenly rose to view under her bows, snapping and
quivering; and so flinging off its drippings, that the drops fell like
bits of broken glass on the water, while the whale beyond also rose to
sight, and once more the boats were free to fly. But the fagged
whale abated his speed, and blindly altering his course, went round
the stem of the ship towing the two boats after him, so that they per-
formed a complete circuit.
Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
 THE WHITE WHALE 299

flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for
lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while
the multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm
Whale’s body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily
drinking at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new
bursting fountains that poured from smitten rock.
At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit,
he turned upon his hack a corpse.
While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his
flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing,
some conversation ensued between them.
“I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard,”
said Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do
with so ignoble a leviathan.
“Wants with it?” said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat’s
bow, “did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm
Whale’s head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time
a Right Whale’s on the larboard; did you ever hear, Stubb, that that
ship can never afterwards capsize ?”
“Why not ?”
“I don’t know, hut I heard that gamboge ghost of a

Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all about ship’s

charms. But I sometimes think he’ll charm the ship to no good

at last. I don’t half like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever
notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake’s head,
Stubb?”
“Sink him ! I never look at him at all ;
but if ever I get a chance
of a dark night,and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one
—
by; look down there, Flask” pointing into the sea with a peculiar
—
motion of both hands “Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah
to be the devil in disguise. Do you believe that cock-and-bull story

about his having been stowed away on hoard ship? He’s the devil,
I say. The reason why you don’t see his tail, is because he tucks it
up out of sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess.
—
D n him! now that I think of it, he’s always wanting oakum to
stuff into the toes of his boots.”
 ’

300 MOBY DICK; OR

“He sleeps in his boots, don’t he? He hasn’t got any hammock;
but I’ve seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging.”
“Ho doubt, and it’s because of his cursed tail; he coils it down,
do ye see, in the eye of the rigging.”
“What’s the old man have so much to do with him for ?”
“Striking up a swop or a bargain, I suppose.”
“Bargain ? —about what ?”

“Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale,
and the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swop
away his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then
he’ll surrender Moby Dick.”
“Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?”
“I don’t know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the
old flagship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and gentle-
manlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he
was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, switch-

ing his hoofs, up and says, ‘I want John.’ ‘What for?’ says the old
governor. ‘What business is that of yours?’ says the devil, getting
mad, — ‘I want to use him.’ ‘Take him,’ says the governor —and by
the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn’t give John the Asiatic cholera
before he got through with him, I’ll eat this whale in one mouthful.
But look sharp — ain’t you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead,
and let’s get the whale alongside.”
“I think I remember some such story as you were telling,” said
Flask, when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their
burden towards the ship “but I can’t remember where.”
;

“Three Spaniards Adventures of those three bloody-minded

!

soldadoes ? Did ye read it there, Flask ? I guess ye did.”

“Ho; never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell

me, Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just
now, was the same you say is now on board the FequodV
•“Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn’t the
devil live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did
you ever see any parson wearing mourning for the devil? And if
the devil has a latch-key to get into the admiral’s cabin, don’t you
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 301

suppose lie can crawl into a port-hole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask.”
“How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb ?”
“Do you see that mainmast there?” pointing to the ship; “well,
that’s the figure one ;
now take all the hoops in the Pequod’s hold,
and string ’em along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you
see; well, that wouldn’t begin to be Fedallah’s age. Nor all the
coopers in creation couldn’t show hoops enough to make oughts
enough.”
“But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that
you meant to give Fedallah a you got a good chance.
sea-toss, if

Now, if he’s so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is
going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard
tell me that ?”
“Give him a good ducking, anyhow.”
“But he’d crawl back.”
“Duck him again; and keep ducking him.”
“Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though yes, —
—
and drown you what then ?”
“I should like to see him try it I’d give him such a pair of black
;

eyes that he wouldn’t dare to show his face in the admiral’s cabin again
for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives,
and hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn
the devil, Flask; do you suppose I’m afraid of the devil? Who’s
afraid of him, except the old governor who daren’t catch him and
put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kid-
napping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people
the devil kidnapped he’d roast for him. There’s a governor!”
“Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab ?”
“Do I suppose it? You’ll know it before long, Flask. But I am
going now to keep a sharp lookout on him; and if I see anything
very suspicious going on, I’ll just take him by the nape of his neck,
and say —Look here, Beelzebub, you don’t do it; and if he makes any
fuss, by the Lord, I’ll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take
it to the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that
his tail will —
come short off at the stump do you see; and then, I
rather guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion,
302 MOBY DICK; OR
he’ll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail be-

tween his legs.”

“And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?”
“Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home; — what
else?”
“Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along,

Stubb ?”

“Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship.”

The boats were tow the whale on the larboard side,
hailed, to
where fluke-chains and other necessaries were already prepared for
securing him.
“Didn’t I you so?” said Flask; “yes, you’ll soon
tell see this

right whale’s head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti’s.”

In good time, Flask’s saying proved true. As before, the Pequod
steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the
counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel though sorely ;

strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in
Locke’s head, you go over that way but now, on the other side, hoist in
;

Kant’s and you come back again but in very poor plight.
;
Thus, some
minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these
thunderheads overboard, and then you will float light and right.
In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside
the ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as
in the case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head
is cut off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately

removed and hoisted on deck, with all the well-known black bone
attached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothing like this, in
the present case, had been done. The carcasses of both whales
had dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled
a mule carrying a pair of overburdening panniers.
Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale’s head,
and ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines
in his own .hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee
occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee’s shadow was there at all
it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab’s. As the crew
 THE WHITE WHALE 303

toiled on, Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concern-

ing all these passing things.

•CHAPTER LXXIII
THE SPERM WHAXe’s HEAD CONTRASTED VIEW

Here, now, are two great whales laying their heads together; let us
join them, and lay together our own.
Of Sperm Whale and the
the grand order of folio leviathans, the
Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only
whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present
the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the ex-
ternal difference between them is mainly observable in their heads;
and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's
side; and as we may freely go from one to the other, by merely step-
ping across the deck: —where, I should like to know, will you obtain
a better chance to study practical cetology than here ?

In the first you are struck by the general contrast between

place,
these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there
is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale’s which the

Right Whale’s sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm

Whale’s head. As you beholdyou involuntarily yield the im-
it,

mense superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the

present instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and
salt colour of his head at the summit, giving token of advance age

and large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically

call a “grey-headed whale.”
Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads —namely, the
two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Ear back on the side
of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale’s jaw, if
you narrowly search, you will at least see a lashless eye, which you
would fancy to be a young colt’s eye; so out of all proportion is it

to the magnitude of the head.

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale’s eyes, it
304 MOBY DICK; OR
is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no

more than he can one exactly In a word, the position of the

astern.
whale’s eyes corresponds to that of a man’s ears; and you may fancy
for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey
objects through your ears. You would find that you could only com-
mand some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-
line of sight; and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe
were walking straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day,
you would not be able to see him, any more than if he were stealing
upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to
speak but, at the same time also, two fronts (side-fronts) for what
;
:

is it that —
makes the front of a man what, indeed, but his eyes ?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the
eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so
as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar po-
sition of the whale’s eyes, effectually divided as they are by many
cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great moun-
tain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly
separate the impressions which each independent organ imparts. The
whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and an-
other distinct picture on that side while all between must be profound
;

darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to

look out on the world from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for
his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are separately
inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing the view.
This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing always to be borne in
mind in the fishery ;
and to be remembered by the reader in some sub-
sequent scenes.
A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning
this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be con-
tent with a hint. So long as a man’s eyes are open in the light,
the act of seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechan-
ically seeing whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any
one’s experience will teach him, that though he can take in an ^dis-
criminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible for
him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two things —however
 THE WHITE WHALE 305

large or however small — one and the same instant

at of time; never
mind if they by side and touch each other. But if you now
lie side

come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a circle of

profound darkness then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner
;

as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly ex-
cluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it, then, with
the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously
act; hut is his brain so much more comprehensive, combining, and
subtle than man’s, that he can at the same moment of time at-

tentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of him, and
the other in an exactly opposite direction ? If he can, then is it as
marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to
go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid.
Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison.
It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that
the extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some
whales when beset by three or four boats ;
the timidity and liability to
queer frights, so common to such whales ;
I think that all this in-
directly proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which
their divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must in-

volve them.
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are
an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads
for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external
leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill,
so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With
respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed
between the sperm whale and the While the ear of the former
right.

has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly

covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from
without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an
ear which is smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as
the lens of Hershel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the
porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or
306 MOBY DICK; OR
sharper of hearing ? Not at all — Why then do you try to “enlarge”
your mind ? Subtilise it.

Let us now with whatever and steam-engines we have at hand,

levers
cant over the sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up then, as- ;

cending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth and ;

were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with a
lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of
his stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us
where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth!
from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white
membrane, glossy as bridal satins.
But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which
seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge
at one end instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it over-
head, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and
such alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom
these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to
behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, float-
ing there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long,
hanging straight down at right angles with his body, for all the world
like a ship’s jibboom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited;
out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges
of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of
plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-
jaws upon him.
—
In most cases this lower jaw being easily unhinged by a practised
artist— is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extract-

ing the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard, white whale-
bone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, in-
cluding canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.
With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were
—
an anchor and when the proper time comes some few days after the
;

other work —
Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished
dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Quee-
queg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a
tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan
 THE WHITE WHALE 307

oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild woodlands. There are gener-
ally forty-two teeth in all
;
in old whales, much worn down, but unde-
cayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards
sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building houses.

CHAPTER LXXIV
THE EIGHT WHALES’s HEAD CONTRASTED VIEW

Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right
Whale’s head.
As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may he com-
pared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so
broadly rounded) ;
so, at a broad view, the Right Whale’s head bears
a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two
hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a
shoemaker’s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of
the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be
lodged, she and all her progeny.
But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume differ-
ent aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its sum-
mit and look at these two /-shaped spout-holes, you would take the whole
head for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in
its sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange,
crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass —
this green, bar-

nacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the “crown,” and the South-
ern fishers the “bonnet” of the Right Whale fixing your eyes solely on
;

this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak, with a

bird’s nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live crabs
that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur
to you unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term
;

“crown” also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great in-
terest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a diademed king

of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for him in this
marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky-
looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip!
308 MOBY DICK; OR
what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter’s
measurements, about twenty feet long and five feet deep, a sulk and
pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.
The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an
important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earth-
quakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery
threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word, were I at
Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam.
Good Lord is this the road that Jonah went ? The roof is about twelve
!

feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular
ridgepole there ;
while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides present us with
those wondrous, half-vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say
three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the
head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere
been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with
hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in
whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when open-mouthed he goes
through the seas of brit in feeding-time. In the central blinds of bone,
as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks,
curves, hollows, and whereby some whalemen calculate the crea-
ridges,
ture’s age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the cer-
tainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savour
of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant
a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem
reasonable.
In old times, there seems to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the won-
drous “whiskers” inside mouth 1 another, “hogs’
of the whale’s ;

bristles”; a third old gentleman in Hakluyt uses the following ele-

gant language: “There are about two hundred and fifty fins grow-
ing on each side of his upper chop, which reach over his tongue on
each side of his mouth.”
1
This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or
rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper
part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes those tufts impart a
rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance.
 THE WHITE WHALE 309

As every one knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,”

“blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and
other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand
has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne’s time that the
bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And
as those ancient dames moved aboutthough in the jaws of the
gaily,
whale, as you may say even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtless-
;

ness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the
umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,
standing in the Bight Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. See-
ing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would
you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing
upon its thousands pipes For a carpet to the organ we have
? a rug of
the softest Turkey — the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor
of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in
hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a
passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler ;
that is, it will yield
you about that amount of oil.
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
—
with that the Sperm Whale and the Bight Whale have almost en-
tirely different heads. To sum up, then: in the Bight Whale’s there
is no great well of sperm ;
no ivory teeth at all ;
no long, slender man-
dible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale’s. Hor in the Sperm
Whale are there any of those blinds of hone ;
no huge lower lip ;
and
scarcely anything of a tongue. Again the Bight Whale has two ex-

ternal spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.

Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they
yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the
other will not be very long in following.
Can you catch the expression of Sperm Whale’s there? It is the

same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead
seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-
like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But
mark the other head’s expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed
by accident against the vessel’s side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw.
310 MOBY DICK; OR
Does not whole head seem to speak of an enormus practical
this
resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been
a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up
Spinoza in his latter years.

CHAPTER LXXV
THE BATTERING-RAM

Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I would have
you — as a sensible physiologist, simply —particularly remark its front
aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you in-

vestigate it now with some un-

the sole view of forming to yourself
exaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power
may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must either
satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain
an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events,

perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.

You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm
Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane
to the water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes
considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the
long socket which receives the boon>like lower jaw; you observe
that the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way,
indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin.
Moreover, you observe that the whale has no external nose; and that
— —
what nose he has his spout-hole is on the top of his head; you ob-
serve that his eyes and ears are at the side of his head, nearly one-
third of his entire length from the front. Wherefore, you must now
have perceived that the front of the Sperm Wh'ale’s head is a dead,
blind wall without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort
whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the
extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head is
there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty
feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial development.
So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad. Finally,
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 311

though, as will soon he revealed, its contents partly comprise the most
delicate oil; yet, you are now to be appraised of the nature of the
substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.
In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber
wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so
with the head ;
but with this difference : about the head this envelope,
though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man
who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest
lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from
it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with
horses’ hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.

Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded

Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks,
what do the sailors do ? They do not suspend between them, at the
point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood.
No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped
in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured
takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes
and iron crowbars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious
fact I drive at. But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically
occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming
bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction and as ;

the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision in him;

considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now
depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims
with high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed
it

elasticity of its envelope considering the unique interior of his head

;

it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-

celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown
and unsuspected connection with the outer air, so as to be suscep-
tible to atmospheric distention and contraction. If this be so, fancy

the irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and

destructive of all elements contributes.
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, unin-

jurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within there swims behind ;

it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be

adequately estimated as
312 MOBY DICK; OR
piled wood is—by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as tbe
smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the
specialtiesand concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this
expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more incon-
siderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant
incredulity, and be ready by this that though the Sperm
to abide ;

Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the
Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your
eyebrow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander
giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials
then? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess’s
veil at Lais?

CHAPTER LXXVI
THE GREAT HEIDELBURGH TUN

How comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright,

you must know something of the curious internal structure of the
thing operated upon.
Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you may on
an inclined plane sideways divide it into two quoins 1 whereof the ,

lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the
upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones: its broad forward
end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale.
At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper
quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were
naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance.
The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honey-
comb of oil, formed by the crossing and re-crossing, into ten thousand
infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole
extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the

1
Quoin not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical mathe-
is
matics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a solid
which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep
inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides.
 THE WHITE WHALE 313

great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous

great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale’s vast plaited
forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical
adornment of his wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Hiedelhurgh
was always replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the
Rhenish valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most
precious of all his oily vintages ;
namely, the highly prized spermaceti,
in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this
precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature.
Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the
air, after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful
crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just forming
in water. A large whale’s case generally yields about five hundred
gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances, considerable
of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably
lost in the ticklish business of securing what you can.

I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh
Tun was coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could
not possibly have compared with the silken pearl coloured membrane,
like the lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the
Sperm Whale’s case.

It will have been seen that the Heidelhurg Tun of the Sperm
Whale embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head;
and since — as has been elsewhere set forth —the head embraces one-
third of the whole length of the creature, then setting that length
down at eighty feet for a good-sized whale, you have more than twenty-
six feet for the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and
down against a ship’s side.
As in decapitating the whale, the operator’s instrument is brought
close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the
spermaceti magazine; he has therefore to he uncommonly heedful,
lest a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wast-

ingly let out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of

the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and retained

in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen com-

binations on one side make quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter.
314 MOBY DICK; OR
Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous
and — in this particular instance —almost fatal operation whereby the
Sperm Whale’s great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.

CHAPTER LXXYII
CISTERN AND BUCKETS

Ximble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his

erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm,
to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted tun. He has
carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two
parts, travelling through a single sheaved block. Securing this block,
so that it hangs down from the yardarm, he swings one end of the
rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then,
hand over hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the
air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There — still

high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously

cries —he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to
prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade being
sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin
breaking into the tun. In this business he proceeds very heedfully,
like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find
where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is *

over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been

attached to one end of the whip while the other end, being stretched
:

across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last
now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another
person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the
bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the tun, till it en-
tirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip,
up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairymaid’s pail of
new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted
vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a
large tub. Then re-mounting aloft, it again goes through the same
round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end,
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 315

Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and
deeper into the tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have
gone
down.
Now, the people of the Pequod had been haling some time in this
way several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm when all
;
;

at once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego

that wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a mo-
ment his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the
head; or whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and
cozy; or whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so,
without stating his particular reason; how it was exactly, there is no
telling now;on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket
but,
—
came suckingly up my God! poor Tashtego like the twin recipro- —
cating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head foremost down into this
great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling went
clean out of sight
“Man overboard !” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation
first came to his senses. “Swing the bucket this way !” and putting
one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on
the whip itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head,
almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom.
Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they
saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the
surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous
idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing
by those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.
At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clear-

ing the whip —which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles
—a was heard; and to the unspeakable horror
sharp, cracking noise
of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out,
and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the
drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one
remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed
every instant to be on the point of giving way; an event still more
from the violent motions of the head.
likely
“Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with
316 MOBY DICK; OR
one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should
drop, he would remain suspended; the negro having cleared the
still

foul line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, mean-
ing that the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted
out.
“In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “are you ramming home a
cartridge there ? —Avast ! How will that help him ;

!”
j
amming that
iron-bound bucket on top of his head ? Avast, will ye
“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.
Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous
mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table Rock into the whirl-
pool ;
the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from- it, down her
to far
glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half-swinging now —
over the sailor’s heads, and now over the water —Daggoo, through a
thick mist of spray,was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous
tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down
to the But hardly had the blinding vapour cleared
bottom of the sea !

away, when a naked figure with a boarding-sword in its hand, was for
one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a
loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the
rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted
every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the
sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a
boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.
“Ha ha !” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging
!

perch overhead; and looking farther off from the side, we saw an
arm thrust upright from the blue waves a sight strange to see, as an
;

arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.

— —
“Both! both! it is both!” cried Daggoo again with a joyful
shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with
one hand, and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian.
Drawn into the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck;
but Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very
brisk.
Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving
 THE WHITE WHALE 317

after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had
made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there;
then, dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and
upwards, and so hauled out our poor Tash by the head. He averred,,
that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well
knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great
trouble ;
—
he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss,
had wrought a somerset upon the Indian so that with the next trial, he
;

—
came forth in the good old way head foremost. As for the great head
itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Quee-
queg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully
accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently
hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten.
I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure
to seem incredible some landsmen, though they themselves may
to
have either seen or heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore;
an accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too
than the Indian’s, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb
of the Sperm Whale’s well.

But, peradventure, be sagaciously urged, how is this ? We

it may
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the
lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink
in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have
thee there. Hot at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell

in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving
—
but the dense tendinous wall of the well a double-welded, ham-
little

mered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea
water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the
tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present instance
materially counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining un-
detached from it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed,
affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile dexterities
on the run, as you may say.
How, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very
precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of
sis MOBY DICK; OR
fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner
chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end
—
can readily be recalled the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter,
who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceed-
ing store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he
died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s
honey head, and sweetly perished there ?

CHAPTER LXXVIII
THE PRAIRIE

To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no physiognomist or phrenologist
has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hope-
ful as for Lavater to have scrutinised the wrinkles on the Rock of
Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the
Dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater

not only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies
the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish ;
and dwells in detail upon
the modifications of expression discernible therein. Hor have Gall
and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching
the phrenological characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore,
though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application of
these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavour. I
try all things; I achieve what I can.
Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous
creature. He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central
and most conspicuous of the features and since it perhaps most mod-
;

ifies and finally controls their combined expression; hence it would

seem that its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very

largely affect the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gar-
dening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed
almost indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be
physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of
 THE WHITE WHALE 319

the nose. Dash the nose from Phidias’s marble Jove, and what a
sorry remainder ! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magni-
tude, all his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which
in the sculptured Jove was hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay,
it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been im-
pertinent. As on your .physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast
head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never in-
sulted by the reflection that he has a nose to he pulled. A pestilent
conceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding even when behold-
ing the mightiest royalty on his throne.
In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical
view to he had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his
head. This aspect is sublime.
In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with
the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the hull
has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain
defiles, the elephant’s brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mys-
tical brow is by the German emperors
as that great golden seal affixed
to their decrees. It signifies
—
“God: done this day by my hand.”
But in most creatures, nay, in man himself, very often the brow is
but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are
the foreheads which like Shakespeare’s or Melanchthon’s rise so high,
and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless
mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead’s wrinkles, you
seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, as the
Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. But in the great
Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the
brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front
view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in
beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one
point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes,
or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one
ears,,

broad firmament of a forehead, plaited with riddles; dumbly lowering

with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does

this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed, its grandeur
320 MOBY DICK; OR
does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that
horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead’s middle, which,
in man, is Lavater’s mark of genius.
But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale
ever written a book, spoken a speech No, his great genius is declared
?

in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared ki

his pyramidical silence* And this reminds me
had the great
that
Sperm Whale been known to the yoMng Orient World, he would have
been deified by their childmagian thoughts. They deified the croc-
odile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm
Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be
incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical
nation shall lure back to their birthright, the merry May-day gods
of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky;
in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove’s high seat,
the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But
there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s
and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science,
is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty
languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder
and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read
the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow
before you. Bead if you can.

CHAP TEE LXXIX

THE NUT

If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenolo-

gist his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to
.square.
In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty
feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull
is as the side view of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout
on a level base. But in life — as we have elsewhere seen — this inclined
 THE WHITE WHALE B2i

plane is angularly and almost squared by the enormous

filled up,
superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the
skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under the
long floor of this crater — in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches
in length and as many in depth— reposes the mere handful of this
monster’s brain. The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent
forehead in life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like the
innermost citadel within the amplified fortifications of Quebec.
So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, that I have known some
whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any other
brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic yards
of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and con-
volutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with
the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part of him as the
seat of his intelligence.
It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan,
in the creature’s living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for
his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any.
The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the
common world.
If you unload spermy heaps and then take a rear
his skull of its
view of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its
resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and
from the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull

(scale down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men’s skulls,

and you would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking
the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase
—
you would say This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration.
And by those negations, considered along with the affirmative fact
of his prodigious bulk and power, you can best form to yourself
the truest, though not the most exhilarating conception of what the
most exalted potency is.

But from the comparative dimensions of the whale’s proper

if

brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have

another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any quad-
ruped’s spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae
322 MOBY DICK; OR
to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental re-

semblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the

vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious ex-

ternal resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to per-
ceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of
a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying,
in a sort of basso-relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I
consider that the phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not
pushing their investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal
canal; for I believe that much of a man’s character will be found
betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your
skull, whoever’ you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a
full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious
staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.
Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His
cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck vertebra; and in that
vertebra the bottom of the measure ten inches
spinal canal will
across, being eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the
base downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the
canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large
capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with much the same
strangely fibrous substance — the spinal cord — as the brain ;
and directly
communicates with the brain. And what is still more, for many
feet after emerging from the brain’s cavity, the spinal cord remains
of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. Under
all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey and map
out the whale’s spine phrenologically ? For, viewed in this light,
the wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than
compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal
cord.
But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists,
I would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in referenec to
the Sperm Whale’s hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises
over one of the larger vertebras, and is, therefore, in some sort, the
outer convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should
call this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the
 ,

THE WHITE WHALE 323

Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will
yet have reason to know.

CHAPTEK LXXX
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIH

The pedestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau
Derick de Deer, master, of Bremen.
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch
and Germans are now among the least but here and there at very wide
;

intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with

their flag in the Pacific,
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her
respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod , she rounded
to, and dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, im-
patiently standing in the bows instead of the stern.
“What has he hand there V cried Starbuck, pointing to some-
in his ’

thing wavingly held by the German. “Impossible! —

a lamp-feeder!”
“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;
he’s coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don’t you see
that big tin can there alongside of him? —
that’s his boiling water.

Oh he’s all right, is the Yarman.”

!

“Go along with you,” cried Flask. “It’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-

can. He’s out of oil, and has come a-beggin.”

However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil
on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict
the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes
•such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick
de Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at

allheeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo the
German soon envinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale;
immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oilcan,
with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at
night in profound darkness — his last drop of Bremen oil being gone,
324 MOBY DICK; OR
and not a single flying-fish vet captured to supply the deficiency ;
con-

cluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is
technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving
the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
His necessities supplied, Derick departed ;
but he had not gained
his ship’s side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from
the mastheads of both vessels ;
and so eager for the chase was Derick,
that without pausing to put his oilcan and lamp-feeder aboard, he
slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
How, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three
German boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start
of the Pequod’s keels. There were eight whales, an average pod.
Aware of their danger, they were going all abreast with great speed
straight before the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many
spans of horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though con-
tinually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.

Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a
huge, humped old which by his comparatively slow progress, as
bull,,

well as by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed

afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale

belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it .is not

customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social, never-
theless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water must
have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad
muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile
currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming
forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn
shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which
seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, *
causing the
waters behind him to upbubble.
“Who’s got some paregoric?” said Stubb; “he has the stomach-
ache, I’m afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-
ache. Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It’s
the first wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did
foul
ever whale yaw so before ? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.”
As an overladen Indianman bearing down the Hindostan coast with
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 325

a deck load of frightened horses, careens* buries, rolls, and wallows

on her way so did this old
whale heave his aged bulk, and now and
;

then partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause
of his deviouswake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.
Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it,
itwere hard to say.
“Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for that wounded
arm,” cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. “Give way,
or the German will have him.”
With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for
this one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the
most valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other
whales were going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy
pursuit for the time. At this juncture the Pequod’s keels had shot
by the three German boats last lowered ;
but from the great start he had
had, Derick’s boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by
his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being
already so nigh- to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron
before they could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick,
he seemed quite confident that this would be the case, and occasionally
with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.

“The ungracious and ungrateful dog!” cried Starbuck; “he mocks

and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes
ago!” —then in his old intense whisper
—“Give way, greyhounds!
!”
Dog to it

“I tell ye what it is, men,” — cried Stubb to his crew

— “it’s against

my religion to get mad; but I’d like to eat that villainous Yarman
pull —won’t ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye
love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come,
why don’t some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who’s that been drop-
—
ping an* anchor overboard we don’t budge an inch we’re becalmed. —
Halloa, here’s grass growing in the boat’s bottom and by the Lord, —
the mast there’s budding. This won’t do, boys. Look at that Yar-
man ! The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not ?”
<‘Oh ! see the suds he makes !” pried Fl^sk, dancing up and down;
 —

326 MOBY DICK; OR

“What a —hump oh, do pile on the beef —lays like a log! Oh! my
lads, do spring— slap-jacks and quohogs for supper, you know, my
lads —baked clams —
and muffins oh, do, do, spring he’s a hundred —
barreller — don’t lose him now— don’t, oh, don't! — see that Yarman
oh! won’t ye pull for your duff, my lads —such a sog! such a sogger!
Don’t ye love sperm? There goes three thousand dollars, men!
a bank !
— a whole bank ! The Bank of England Oh, do, do, do !
!
—
What’s that Yarman about now?”
At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder
at the advancing boats, and also his oilcan; perhaps with the double
view of retarding his rival’s way, and at the same time economically
accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward
toss.

“The unmannerly Dutch dogger!” cried Stubb. “Pull now, men,

like fifty thousand line-of-battleship loads of red-haired devils. What
d’ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-
twenty pieces for the honour of old Gay-Head ? What d’ye say ?”
“I say, pull like god-dam,” —cried the Indian.
Eiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the
Pequod's three boats now began ranging almost abreast ;
and, so
disposed, momentarily neared him.
In that fine, loose, chivalrous
attitude of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three
mates stood up proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with
an exhilarating cry of, “There she slides, now ! Hurrah for the white-
!”
ash breeze! Down with the Yarman ! Sail over him
But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all
their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had
not a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught
the blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was
striving to free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick’s
boat was nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a
mighty rage; — that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask.
With a shout, and slantingly
they took a mortal start forwards,
ranged up on the German’s quarter. An instant more, and all four
boats were diagonally in the whale’s immediate wake, while stretch-
ing from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 327

It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening The whale

sight.
was now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a con-
tinual tormented jet ;
while his one poor fin beat his side in an
agony of fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawled in his:
faltering flight, and still at every billow that he broke he spasmod-
ically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one
beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making
affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical
hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make
known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea was
chained up and enchanted in him he had no voice, save that chok-
;

ing respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him
unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis
jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man
who so pitied.
Seeing now few moments more would give the
that but a very
Pequod’s boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his
game, Derick chose to hazard what to him -must have seemed a most
unusually long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.
But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all
three tigers —
Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo instinctively sprang to their —
feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their

barbs and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three
;

Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapours of foam and

white fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale’s head-
long rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force, that both
Derick and his baffled harpooneer spilled out, and sailed over by the
three flying keels.
“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting a passing
glance upon them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently — all

right — —
saw some sharks astern St. Bernard’s dogs, you know
I
relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now.
—
Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah! Here we go like three tin kettles
at the tail of a mad cougar! This puts me mind fastening
in of to

an elephant in a tilbury on a plain—makes the wheelspokes fly, boys,

when you fasten to him that way; and there’s danger of being pitched
328 MOBY DICK; OR
out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah this is the way a fellow
!

feels —
when he’s going to Davy Jones all a rush down an endless in-
clined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!”
But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp,
he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew
round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in
them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sound-

ing would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might,
they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till
—
at last owing to the perpendicular strain from the head-line chocks
of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the
blue —the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water,
while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing
to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of
expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But
though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this

“holding-on,” as it is called; this hooking up by the keen barbs of

his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Levia-
than into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes.
Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether
this course is always the best ;
for it is but reasonable to presume,
that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the more he is

exhausted; because, owing to the enormous surface of him — a in

full-grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet —the
pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing
atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here, above
ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on
his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean ! It must at least
equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated
it at the rate of twenty line-of-battleships, with all their guns, and
stores, and men on board.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any
sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its

depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that
silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 329

and wrenching in agony Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were

!

visible at the hows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads
the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight-
day clock ? Suspended ? and to what ? To three bits of boards. Is this
the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said —“Canst thou
fill his skin with barbed irons ? or his head with fish-spears ? The
sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart,
nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot
make him flee, darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shak-
ing of a spear !” This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfil-
ments should follow the prophets. For with the strength of a
thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan has run his head under the
mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod’s fish-spears
In that sloping afternoon sunlight,, the shadows that the three boats
sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and
broad enough to shade half Xerxes’ army. Who can tell how ap-
palling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms
flitting over his head!
“Stand by, men; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three lines sud-
denly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them,
as by magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that
every oarsmen felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved
in great part from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave
a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd
of white bears are scared from it into the sea.
“Haul in! Haul in!” cried Starbuck again; “he’s rising.”
The lines of which, hardly an instant before, not one handbreath
could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung hack all

dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two
ship’s lengths of the hunters.
His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most
land animals there are certain valves or floodgates in many of their
veins, whereby, when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least

instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale;

one of whose peculiarities it is to have an entire non-valvular structure
of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as
 ;

330 MOBY DICK; OR

a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial
system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure
of water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said
to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity
of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains,
that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period
even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-
springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the
boats pulled upon and perilously drew over his swaying
this whale,
flukes,, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by

steady jets from the newly made wounds, which kept continually
playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals,
however rapid, sending its affrightened moisture into the air. From
this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him had
thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was un-
touched.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper
part of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was
plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes
had been, were beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the
knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points
which the whale’s eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs,
horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old
age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and
be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-
makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that
preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his

blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely discoloured bunch or

protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.
“A nice spot,” cried Flask; “just let me prick him there once.”
“Avast!” cried Starbuck; “there’s no need of that!”
But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart
an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into
more than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood,
with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and
their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask’s
 THE WHITE WHALE 331

boat and marring the bows. It was his death-stroke. For, by this
time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away
from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently
flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like
a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a
log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As
when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some
mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings, the spray-
—
column lowers and lowers to the ground so the last, long, dying
spout of the whale.
Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the
body showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled.
Immediately, by Starbuck’s orders, lines were secured to it at different
points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale
being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords. By very
heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was trans-
ferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffest
fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially upheld, the body
would at once sink to the bottom.
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the
spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded
in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described. But
as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies
of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and
no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there
must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case
fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious
was the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far
from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had
darted that stone lance ? And when ? It might have been darted
by some Nor’-West Indian long before America was discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this mon-
strous cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to
further discoveries, by the ship’s being unprecedentedly dragged over
sideways to the sea, owing immensely increasing tend-
to the body’s

ency to sink. However, Starbuck, .who had the ordering of affairs,

332 MOBY DICK; OR
hung on to it to the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that
when at length the ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in
locking arms with the body; then, when the command was given
to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon the

timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that

it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in the
Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like
walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and
gasped. Many and cabins
of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks
were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain
hand-spikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable
fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timber-heads; and so low
had the whale now submerged ends could not be at
settled that the
all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed
added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going
over.
“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye ?” cried Stubb to the body ;
“don’t be in
such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do some-
thing or go for it. Ho use prying there; avast, I say with your
handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer-book and a pen-knife, and
cut the big chains.”
“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s
heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began
slashing at the largest flukes-chains. But a few strokes, full of
sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest.

With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the
carcase sank.
How, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great
buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the sur-
face. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-
hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their bones
heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so

sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But

it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with
 THE WHITE WHALE 333

noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the and May of

warm flush
life, with all their panting lard about them even these brawny buoyant
;

heroes do sometimes sink.

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any ether species. Where one of that sort goes down,
twenty Bight Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt
imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the
Bight Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more
than a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free.
But there are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several
days, the sunken whale rises again, more buoyant than in life. But
the reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells
to a prodigious magnitude ;
becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-

of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whal-
ing, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Bight
Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty
of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to
look for it when it shall have ascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the was heard
body that a cry
from the Pequod’s mastheads, announcing that the J ungfrau was again
lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Bin-
Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its

incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s spout is

so similar to the Sperm Whale’s,

by unskilful fishermen it is often
that
mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now
in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all
sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared

far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

Oh many
! are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.

CHAPTEB LXXXI
THE HONOUR AND GLORY OF WHALING

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the

true method.
 ;

334 MOBY DICK; OR

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches
up to the very springhead of it, so much the more am I impressed with
its great honourableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so
many great demigods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way

or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the re-
flection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so em-
blazoned a fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and
to the eternal honour of our calling be it said, that the first whale at-
tacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those
were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to
succour the distressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders. Every one
knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda ;
how the lovely An-
dromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast,
and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the
prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and
delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic ex-
ploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; in-

asmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let

no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa,
on the Syrian coast, in one of the pagan temples, there stood for many
ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city’s legends and all the
inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Per-
seus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was
carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively
important in this story, was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
is this: it

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda indeed, by some —

—
supposed to be indirectly derived from it is that famous story of St.
George and the Dragon which dragon I maintain to have been a whale
;

for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled
together, and often stand for each other. “Thou art as a lion of the
waters, and as a dragon of sea,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly mean-
ing a whale in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself.
;

Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St.
George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of
doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 335

snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them
to march boldly up to a whale.
Let not the modem paintings of this scene mislead us; for though
the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted
on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance
of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists
and considering that as in Perseus’ case, St. George’s whale might
have crawled up out of the sea on the beach and considering that the
;

animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or
sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether in-
compatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest drafts of the
scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan
himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this
whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philis-
tines, Dagon by name who being planted
;
before the ark of Israel, his
horse’s head and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only
the stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own
noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England;
and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in
the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights
of that honourable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever
had to do with a whale like their great patron), them never eye a
let

Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred
trousers we are much better entitled to St. George’s decoration than
they.
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious for though according to the Greek mythologies, that
:

—
antique Crockett and Kit Carson that brawny doer of rejoicing good
deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether
that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It
nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed,
from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary
whaleman at any rate the whale caught him,
;
if he did not the whale.
I claim him for one of our clan.
But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Her-
 ;

336 MOBY DICK; OR

cules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa certainly
they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the
prophet ?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the

whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for
like royal kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity
in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous Oriental
story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread
Vishnu, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos gives ;

us this divine Vishnu himself for our Lord; Vishnu, who, by the —
first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified

the whale. When Brahm, or the God of gods, saith the Shaster, re-
solved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he
gave birth to Vishnu, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mys-
tical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to
Vishnu before beginning the and which therefore must have
creation,
contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects,
these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the water; so Vishnu became
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,
rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnu a whaleman, then?
even as a man who rides a horse is horseman ?
called a
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, J onah, and Vishnu there’s a member-
!

roll, for you ! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like that ?

CHAPTER LXXXII
JONAH HISTORICALLY REGARDED

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale
in the preceding chapter. Now
some Nantucketers rather distrust
this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some
sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox
pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the
whale, and Arion and the dolphin and yet their doubting those tradi-
;

tions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.
 ,

THE WHITE WHALE 337

One old Sag-Harbour whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the

Hebrew story was this: He had one of — those quaint old-fashioned
Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which
represented Jonah’s whale with two spouts in his head^-a peculiarity
only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale,
and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have
this saying, “A penny roll would choke him”; his swallow is so very
small. But, to this, Bishop J ebb’s anticipative answer is ready. It is
not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in
the whale’s belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth.
And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the
Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a couple of whist tables, and
comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have
ensconced himself in a hollow tooth ;
but, on second thoughts, the Right
Whale is toothless.

Another reason which Sag-Harbour (he went by that name) urged

for his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something ob-
scurely in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric
juices. But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a Ger-
man Jonah must have taken refuge in the float-
exegetist supposed that
—
ing body of a dead whale even as the French soldiers in the Russian
campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them.
Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators, that
when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straight-
way effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a
whale for a figure-head and, I would add, possibly called The Whale,
;

as some nowadays christened the Shark, the Gull and the

crafts are
Eagle. Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have
opined that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant
—
a life-preserver an inflated bag of wind which the endangered —
prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-
Harbour, therefore, seems worsted all around. But he had still another
reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right J onah
:

was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three
days he was vomited up somewhere within three days’ journey of Nin-
eveh, a city on the Tigris, ’very much more than three days’ journey
338 MOBY DICK; OR
across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast. How is

that ?

But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within
that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him
round by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the
passage through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another
passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would
involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not
to speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shal-
low for any whale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah’s weath-
ering the Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honour
of the discovery of that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its

reputed discoverer, and so make modern history a liar.

But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbour only evinced
his foolish pride of reason — a thing more reprehensible in him,
still

seeing that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from
the sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride,
and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. Por
by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah’s going to
Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magni-
fication of the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this day,
the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story
of Jonah. And some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old
Harris’s Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honour Gf
Jonah, in which mosque was a miraculous lamp that burned without
any oil.

CHAPTER LXXXIII
PITCHPOLING

To make them run easily and swiftly the axles of carriages are
anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an
analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it
to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly
be of no contemptible advantage ; considering that oil and water are
 THE WHITE WHALE 339

hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to
make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing
his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau
disappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation crawl-
;

ing under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the
unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from
the craft’s bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to
some particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the
event.
Towards noon whales were raised but so soon as the ship sailed down
;

to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered

flight, as of Cleopatra’s barges from Actium.

Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb’s was foremost. By great

exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the
stricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal
flight with added Such unintermitted strainings upon the
fleetness.

planted iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became

imperative to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose him. But to
haul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he swam so fast and fu-
rious. What then remained?
Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and
countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced,
none exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling.
Small sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like it.

It is only indispensable with an inveterate running whale; its grand

fact and feature is the wonderful distance to which the long lance is ac-

curately darted from a violently rocking, jerking boat, under extreme

headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten or
twelve feet in length ;
the staff is much slighter than that of the harpoon,

and also of a lighter material — pine. It is furnished with a small

rope called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled

back to the hand after darting.
But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though
the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it

is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently successful, on

account of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as
 !

340 MOBY DICK; OR

compared with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks.
As a general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before
any pitchpoling comes into play.
Look now at Stubb a man who from
;
his humorous, deliberate cool-

ness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified

to excel in pitchpoling.Look at him he stands upright in the tossed
;

bow of the flying boat; wrapped in fleecy foam, the towing whale is
forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or
thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly
gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end
in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance
full before his waistband’s middle, he levels it at the whale; when,
covering him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand,
thereby elevating the point weapon stands fairly balanced upon
till the
his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He reminds you somewhat of a jug-
gler, balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid,
nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the
foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of
sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
“That drove the spigot out of him!” cries Stubb. “ ’Tis July’s im-
mortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine to-day! Would now it
were old Orleans whisky, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela
Then, Tashtego, lad, I’d have ye hold a cannakin to the jet, and we’d
drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we’d brew choice punch in
the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff
the living stuff!”
Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is re-

peated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skil-

ful leash. The agonised whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is
slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and
mutely watches the monster die.

CHAPTER LIXXIV
THE FOUNTAIN

That for six thousand years —and no one knows how many millions
 THE WHITE WHALE 341

of ages before —the great whales should have been spouting all over the
sea, and sprinkling and mystifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
many sprinkling or mystifying pots and that for some centuries back,
;

thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the

whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings that all this should —
be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter
minutes past one o’clock v. m. of this sixteenth day of December, a. d.
1850), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are,
after all, really water, or nothing but vapour — this is surely a note-
worthy thing.
Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is

combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or

a cod might live a century, and never once raise his head above the
surface. But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him
regular lungs, like a human being’s, the whale can only live by inhaling
the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity
for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any de-
gree breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm
Whale’s mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface; and
what is still more, his windpipe has no connection with his mouth. No,
he breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the top of his
head.
If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function indispen-
sable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain ele-

ment, which being subsequently brought into contact with the blood
imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I shall
err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.
Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be aerated
with one breath, he might than seal up his nostrils and not fetch another
for a considerable time. That is to say, he would then live without
breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the case
with the whale, who by intervals, his full
systematically lives,

hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath,
or so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air for remember, he ;

has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of
 ;

342 MOBY DICK; OR

his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth
when he quits the surface, are
of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels,
completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or
more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of
him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries
vitality in
a surplus supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary
stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable
and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true,
seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inex-
plicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings out, as
the fishermen phrase what I mean. If unmolested, upon
it. This is

rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a
period of time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings.
Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires
seventy breaths then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have
;

his seventy breaths over again, to a minute. How, if after he fetches

a few breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always
dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air. And not
till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay
out his full term below. Remark, however, that in different indi-
viduals these rates are different; but in any one they are alike.
How, why should the whale thus insist upon having his spoutings
out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere descending for
good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the whale’s ris-
ing exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by
hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a
thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Hot so much thy skill,
then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to
thee!
In man, breathing is incessantly going on —one breath only serv-
ing for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he
has to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he
will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one-seventh or Sun-
day of his time.
It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-
hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 343

water, then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his
sense of smell seems obliterated in him for the only thing about
;

him that at all answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and
being so clogged with two elements, it could not be expected to have
the J>ower of smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout
whether it be water or whether it —
be vapour no absolute cer-
tainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is, neverthe-
less, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what
does he want of them ? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the
sea.

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his

—
spouting canal, and as that long canal like the Grand Erie Canal
is furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the down-

ward upward exclusion of water, therefore the

retention of air or the
whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he
so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again
what has the whale to say ? Seldom have I known any profound being
that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out
something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is
such an excellent listener!
Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as
it is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along, hor-
izontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little
to one side ;
this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down
in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether
this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout
of the Sperm Whale’s is the mere vapour of the exhaled breath, or
whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the
mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the
mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it can-
not be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water
through the spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing
would seem to be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water.
But the Sperm Whale’s food is far beneath the surface, and there
he cannot spout even if he would. Besides, if you regard him
very closely, and time him with your watch, you will find that
 344 MOBY DICK; OR
when unmolested* there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods
of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.
But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject ? Speak
out! You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can
you not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not
so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain
things the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you
might almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is

precisely.
The body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist en-
central
veloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls
from it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get
a close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water
cascading all around him. And if at such time you should think that
you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know
that they are not merely condensed from its vapour; or how do you
know that they are not those identical drops superficially lodged in
the spout-hole fissure, which is counter-sunk into the summit of the
whale’s head? For even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-
day sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary’s
in the desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin of
water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a
cavity in a rock filled up with rain.
Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to he over-curious touching
the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be
peering into and putting his face in it. You cannot go with
it,

your pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even
when coming into slight contact with the outer, vapoury shreds
of the jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart,
from the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I know one, who
coming into still closer contact with the spout, whether- with some
scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled
off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout
is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have
heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly
 THE WHITE WHALE 345

spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the in-
vestigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout
alone.
Still, we can hypothesise, even if we cannot prove and establish.
My hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And
beside other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by consider-
ations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm
Whale. I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it

is an undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near

shores ;
all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and
profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponder-
ous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, Jupiter, Dante, and
so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the
act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on
Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere
long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undula-
tion in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of
my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea
in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an addi-
tional argument for the above supposition.
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster,
to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast,
mild head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his in-

communicable contemplations, and that vapour — as you will some-

times see it — glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its

seal upon his thoughts. For, d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear

air ;
they only irradiate vapour. And so, through -all the thick mist
of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then
shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank
God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few
along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and
intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither
believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with
equal eye.
 —

346 MOBY DICK; OR

CHAPTER LXXXV
THE TAIL

Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the ante-
lope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less

celestial, I celebrate a tail.

Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale’s tail to begin at that

point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it

comprises upon upper surface alone, an area of a least fifty

its

square feet. The compact round body of its root expands into two
broad, firm, fat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an
inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly
overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a
wide vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of beauty
more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes.
At its utmost expansion in the full-grown whale, the tail will con-
siderably exceed twenty feet across.
The entire member seems webbed bed of welded sinews;
a dense
but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:
upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers,
are long and horizontal those of the middle one, very short, and run-
;

ning crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as

much as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of
old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to
the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those
wonderful relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so
much to the great strength of the masonry.
But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not
enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and
woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side
the loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with
them, and largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the
confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated
to a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing
to do it.
 THE WHITE WHALE 347

Nor does this-—its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the

graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates
through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive
their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs
beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything impos-
ingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away
the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the
carved Hercules, and charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman
its

lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was over-
whelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman
triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human
form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal
of the divine love in the Son, the soft,, curled hermaphroditical Italian
pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied ;
these
pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of
any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and
endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar prac-
tical virtues of his teachings.

Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether
wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood
it he in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein
no fairy’s arm can transcend it.

Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin

for progression ;
Second, when used as a mace in battle ;
Third, in
sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.

First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan’s tail acts

in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It

never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To

the whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scrollwise coiled

forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is

thiswhich gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster
when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.
Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only
fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in
his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail.

Iu striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it,

 !

348 MOBY DICK; OR

and the blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the un-
obstructed air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then
simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstand it.

Your only salvation lies in eluding it ;

but if it comes sideways through
the opposing water, then partly owing to the light bouyancy of the
whale boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or a
dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the
most serious result. These submerged side blows are so often re-

ceived in the fishery, that they are accounted mere child’s play.
Someone strips off a frock, and the hole is stopped.
Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the
whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail ;
for in this respect
there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the ele-

phant’s trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of

sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
slowness moves his immense flukes from upon the surface
side to side
of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor’s whisker, woe to that sailor,
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch
Had any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me
this tail
of Darmonodes’ elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and
with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed
their zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale
does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail ;
for I have heard of
yet another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round
his trunk and extracted the dart.
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security
of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast
corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if

it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad
palms of his tail are flirted high into the air ;
then smiting the surface,
the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would think a
great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath
of vapour from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think
that that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the
flukes lie considerably below the level of his back, they are then com-
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 349

pletely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge
into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body
are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they
downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime breach —some-
where else to be described — this peaking of the whale’s flukes is per-
haps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the
bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching
at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan
thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw in the flame Baltic of Hell.
But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in ;
if in
the Dantean, the devils will occur to you ;
if in that of Isaiah, the arch-
angels. Standing at the masthead of my ship during a sunrise that
crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the
east, allheading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in con-
cert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand
embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia,
the home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified
of the African elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing
him the most devout of For according to King Juba, the
all beings.
military elephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with their
trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence.
The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk
of the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two opposite
organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which they respectively
belong. For as the mighty elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan, so,

compared with Leviathan’s tail, his trunk is but the stalk of a lily.
The most direful blow from the elephant’s trunk were as the playful tap
of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and crash of the sperm
whale’s ponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have one after the
other.hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into the air, very
1
much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls .

1
Though comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale
all
and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the elephant
stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to the elephant
nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious similitude; among
these the spout. It is well known that the elephant will often draw up
is
water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it, jet it forth in a stream.
350 MOBY DICK; OR
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my
inability to express it. At times there are gestures in which, though
it,,-

they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable.
In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic
gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to
Freemason signs and symbols that the whale, indeed, by these methods
;

intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting other
motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and
unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how
I may, then, I go but skin deep; I know him and never shall.
not,

But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his
head ? much more, how comprehend his face, when he has none ?

CHAPTER LXXXVI
THE GRAND ARMADA

The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward

from the territories of Burmah, forms the most southerly point of all
Asia. In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands
of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, forms
a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia,
and dividing the long unbroken Indian Ocean from the thickly
studded Oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several
sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales conspicuous among
;

which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the Straits of Sunda,
chiefly, vessels bound to China from the West, emerge into the China

seas.

Those narrow Straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java and stand- ;

ing midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold

green promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little
correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled em-
pire and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and
;

jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that
Oriental sea are enriched, seems significant provision of nature, that
it

such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least

 THE WHITE WHALE 351

bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the

all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are
unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the en-
trances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Un-
like the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage
of lowered topsails from the endless procession of ships before the wind,
which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between
the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes
of the East. But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this,
they do by no means renounce their claim to more solid tribute.
Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among
the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the
vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the
point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements
they have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of
these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the
present day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels,
which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.
With Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
a fair, fresh wind, the
straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea;
and thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented
here and there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine
Islands, and gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whal-
ing season there. By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod
would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising-grounds of the
world, previous to descending upon the Line in the Pacific; where
Ahab, though everywhere else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted
upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the sea he was most known
to frequent; and at a season when he might most reasonably be pre-

sumed to be haunting it.

But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does
his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Hay. For a
long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring,
and needs no sustenance but what’s in himself. So Ahab. Mark this,
too, in the whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff,
to be transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale ship
carries no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their wants.
352 MOBY DICK; OR
She has a whole lake’s contents bottled in her ample hold. She is

ballasted with utilities ;

not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kent-
edge. She carries years’ water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket
water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific,
prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in
casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while
other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again,
touching at a score of ports, the whale ship, in all that interval, may
not have sighted one grain? of soil; her crew having seen no man but
floating seamen like themselves; so that did you carry them the news
that another flood had come, they would only answer “Well, boys,
—
here’s the ark!”
Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured on the western
coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits ofSunda; indeed, as
most of the ground, round about, was generally recognised by the fisher-
men as an excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained
more and more upon Java Head, the lookouts were repeatedly hailed,
and admonished to keep wide awake. But though the green, palmy
cliffs of the land so loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted

nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet
was descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any
game hereabouts, the ship had well-nigh entered the straits, when the
customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle
of singular magnificence saluted us.
But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with
which of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm
Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached com-
panies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in extensive
herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that would almost it

seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and

covenant for mutual assistance and protection. To this aggregation
of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans, may be imputed the
circumstance that even in the best cruising-grounds, you may now
sometimes weeks and months together, without being greeted
sail for

by a single spout; and then be suddenly saluted by what sometimes

seems thousands on thousands.
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 353

Broad on both bows, at the distance of two or three miles, and form-
ing a great semi-circle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a con-
tinuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noon-
day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Bight
Whale, which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft
drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the
Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually
rising and falling away to leeward.
Seen from the Pequod’s deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill
of the sea, this host of vapoury spouts, individually curling up into
the air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze,
showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis,
balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
descried of a
As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the moun-
tains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage
in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the
plain ;
even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward
through the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semi-
and swimming on in one solid but still crescentic centre.
circle,

Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their yet
suspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they, that
chased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only de-
ploy in the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their
number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan,
Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the
worshipped white elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese
So with stunsail piled on stunsail, we sailed along, driving these levia-
thans before us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was heard,
loudly directing attention to something in our wake.
Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our
rear. seemed formed of detached white vapours, rising and falling
It
something like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so com-
pletely come and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally dis-

appearing. Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved

in his pivot-hole, crying, “Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets to
wet the sails ;
—Malays, sir, and after us 1”
 ,

354 MOBY DICK; OR

As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should
fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot
pursuit, tomake up for their over-cautious delay. But when the
swift Pequod with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase;

how very kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding

—
her on to her own chosen pursuit, mere riding-whips and rowels to
her, that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to and fro
paced the deck ;
in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased,
and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such
fancy as the above seemed his. And when he glanced upon the green
walls of the watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, and be-
thought him that through that gate lay the route to his vengeance,
and beheld, how that through that same gate he was now both chasing
and being chased to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd of
remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally
cheering them on with their curses; —when all these conceits had
passed through his brain, Ahab’s brow was left gaunt and ribbed,
like the black sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing it,

without being able to drag the firm thing from its place.

But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and
when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the
Pequod by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra
at last shot
side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the har-

pooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining
upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained
upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake of the whales, at
length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared
them; and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to
the boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful
instinct of the Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that
—
were after them, though as yet a mile in their rear, than they —
rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions, so that their
spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with
redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and
after severals hours’ pulling were almost disposed to renounce the
chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave
 ©QiKieS2SS

© Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

THE MALAYS ARE AFTER ITS
;
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 355

animating token that they were now under the influence of that
at last
strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which when the fishermen per-
1
ceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied . The compact martial
columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swim-
ming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and like King
Porus’ elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going
mad with consternation. In all directions expanding in vast irreg-
ular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their short
thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of panic.
This was still more strangely evinced by those of their number, who,
completely paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged
dismantled ships on the sea. Had these leviathans been but a flock
of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves,
they could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this
occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures.
Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffa-
loes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too,
all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a

theatre’s pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-
skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorse-
lessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any
amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no
folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the
madness of men.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent mo-
tion, yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither ad-

1
To —
gaily , or gallow, is to frighten excessively, to confound with fright.
It is an old Saxon word. It occurs once in Shakespeare
“The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
And make them keep their caves.”
Lear, Act iii. Scene 2.

To common land usages, the word is now completely obsolete. When the
polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is apt to set
it down as one of the whaleman’s self-derived savageries. Much the same
is it with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort, which emigrated to the
New England rocks with the noble brawn of the old English emigrants in the
time of the Commonwealth. Thus, some of the best and farthest English
—
descended words the etymological Howards and Percy
s are now demo- —
cratised, nay plebeianised, so to speak, in the New World.
356 MOBY DICK; OR
vanced nor retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is
customary in those cases, the boats at once separated, each making for
some one lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three
minutes’ time, Queequeg’s harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted
blinding spray in our faces, and then running away with us like light,
steered straight for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on
the part of the whale struck under such circumstances, is in nowise un-
precedented ;
and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated ;
yet
does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery;
for as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic
shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious
throb.
As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer
power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to
him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as
we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our
beset boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striv-
ing to steer through their complicated channels and straits, knowing
not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheer-
ing off from this monster directly across our route in advance; now
edging away from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended over-
head, while all the time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in
hand, pricking out of our way whatever whales he could reach by
short darts, for there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the
oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether
dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the shouting part of the
business. “Out of the way, Commodore !” cried one, to a great drom-
edary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface, and for an instant
threatened to swamp us. “Hard down with your tail, there!” cried
a second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cool-
ing himself with his own fan-like extremity.
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, Originally in-
vented by the Nantucket Indians called “druggs.” Two thick squares
of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross
each other’s grain at right angles ;
a line of considerable length is then
attached to the middle of this block and the other end of the line be-
 THE WHITE WHALE 357

ing looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly

among gallied whales that this drugg is more whales
used. For then,
are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But
sperm whales are not every day encountered while you may, then, you ;

must kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you
must wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure.
Hence it is, that at times like these, the drugg comes into requisition.
Our boat was furnished with three of them. and second were The first

successfully darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly running off,

fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg.
They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. But
upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy
wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat, and in an
instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the
boat’s bottom as the seat slid from under him. On both sides the
sea came in at the wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers
and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for the time.
It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were
it nut that as we advanced into the herd, our whale’s way greatly
diminished; moreover, that as we went
and farther still farther
from the circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed
waning. So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the
towing whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his
parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost
heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into

a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between
the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central expanse
the sea presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced
by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet
moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks
at the heart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance
we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric and saw succes- circles,

sive pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and
round, like multipled spans of horses in a ring and so closely shoulder ;

to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have overarched

the middle ones, and so have gone round on their backs. Owing to the

density of the crowd of reposing whales, more immediately surround-

358 MOBY DICK; OR
ing the embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance of escape was at
present afforded us. We
must watch for a breach in the living wall
that hemmed us in; the wall that had only admitted us in order to
shut us up. Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally
visited by small tame cows and calves; the women and children of
this routed host.
Kow, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving
outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in
any one of those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by
the whole multitude, must have contained at least two or three square
miles. At any rate —though indeed such a test at such a time might
be deceptive — spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that
seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention
this circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had been pur-
posely locked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of
the herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause
of its stopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and
every way innocent and inexperienced; however it may have been,
these smaller whales —
now and then visiting our becalmed boat from
the margin of the lake —
evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confi-
dence, or else a still becharmed panic which it was impossible not to
marvel at. Like household dogs they came snuffing round us, right up
to our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some
spell had suddenly domesticated them. Queequeg patted their fore-
heads; Starbuck scratched their backs with his lance; but fearful of
the consequences, for the time refrained from darting it.
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and
still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, sus-
pended in those watery forms of the nursing mothers
vaults, floated the
of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly
to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable
depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling
will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two
different lives at the time and while yet drawing mortal nourishment,
;

be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence; even —

so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not
 THE WHITE WHALE 359

at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulf weed in their new-born sight.

Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.
One of these little from certain queer tokens seemed
infants, that
hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length,
and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though his body
seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so
lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all
ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s
bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly
retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly ar-
rived from foreign parts.
“Line! line!” cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; “him fast!
him fast !
—Who line him ? Who struck ? —Two- whale ;
one big, one
little!”

“What ails ye, man ?” cried Starbuck.

“Look-e here,” said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when from the tub has reeled out hun-
the stricken whale, that
dreds of fathoms of rope as, after deep sounding, he floats up again,
;

and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling
towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord
of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to
its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural
line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen

one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets
of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw
1
young Leviathan amours in the deep .

And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consterna-

tions and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely

and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely

1
The Sperm whale, as with all other species of the leviathan, but unlike
most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation which
may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a time;
though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and Jacob, a
contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on
each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that.
When by chance these pervious parts of a nursing whale are cut by the
hunter’s lance, the mother’s pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour
the sea for rods. The rnilk is very sweet and rich ; it has been tasted by man,
360 MOBY DICK; OR
revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so,amid the tornadoed
Atlantic of my being, do I -myself still for ever centrally disport in mute
calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round
me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mild-
ness of joy.
Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats, still
engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host or possibly
;

carrying on the war* within the first circle, where 'abundance of room
and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight of
the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro
across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is
sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly pow-
erful and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or
maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-
handled cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back
again. A wounded whale (as we afterwards learned) in this part,
but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carry-
ing along with him half of the harpoon line and in the extraordinary
;

agony of the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles
like the lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga,
carrying dismay wherever he went.
But agonising as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he
seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at
first the intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we
perceived that by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this
whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he
had also run away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free
end of the rope attached to that weapon had permanently caught
the coils of the harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade it-
self had worked loose from his flesh. So that tormented to madness,
he was now churning through the water, violently flailing with his
flexible tail, and tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and
murdering his own comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
 THE WHITE WHALE 361

began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by

half-spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to
heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries van-
ished; in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more
central circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long
calm was departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard and then ;

like to the tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson
breaks up in spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon
their inner centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain.
Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places Starbuck taking the ;

stem.
“Oars! Oars!” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm “gripe —
your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by!
—
Shove him off, you Queequeg the whale there! prick him! hit — —
—
him! Stand up stand up, and stay so! Spring, men pull, men; —
—
never mind their backs scrape them scrape away
!” !
—
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks,
leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by
desperate endeavour we at last shot into a temporary opening ;
then giv-
ing way rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching for another
outlet. After many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly

glided into what had just been one of the outer circles, but now
crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre. This
lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg’ s hat,
who, while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his
hat taken clean from his head by the air-eddy made by the tossing of a
pair of broad flukes close by.
Riotous- and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it

soon resolved what seemed a systematic movement; for hav-

itself into

ing clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless;
but the boats still lingered in their wake to* pick up what drugged
whales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which
Flask had killed and waifed. The waif is a «pennoned pole, two or
three of which are carried by every boat and which, when additional
;

game is at hand, are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead
362 MOBY DICK; OR
whale, both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior
possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near.
The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that
sagacious saying in the Fishery, —
more whales the less fish. Of
the all

the drugged whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to

escape for the time, hut only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen,
by some other craft than the Pequod.

CHAPTEK LXXXVII
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS

The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of

Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause in-
ducing those vast aggregations.
Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as
must have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.

Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts;
those composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none
but young vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated.
In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see
a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm,
evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of
his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming
about over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the
solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this
Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always
of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth,
are not more than one-third of the bulk of an averaged-sized male.
They are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed
half a dozen yards around the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be
denied, that upon the whole they are hereditarily entitled to embon-
point.
It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in
 THE WHITE WHALE 363

leisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for
the full flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned,
perhaps from spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheat-
ing summer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time
they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equator awhile,
they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool season
there, and so evade the other excessive temperature of the year.
When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
suspicious sights are seen, my wary eye on his in-
lord whale keeps a
teresting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan
coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the
ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases
him away High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him
!

are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though

do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario
out of his bed; for, alas, all fish bed in common. As ashore, the
ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers;
just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all

for love. They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking
them together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that war-
ringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured having the
deep scars of these encounters, —furrowed heads, broken teeth, scol-
loped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away
at the first rush of the harem’s lord, then is it very diverting to watch
that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again
and revels there awhile, still in tantalising vicinity to young Lothario,
like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand con-
cubines. Granting other whales to be in sight, the fisherman will
seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks ;
for these Grand Turks
are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small.

As for the sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and
daughters must take care of themselves ;
at least, with only the maternal
help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be
named, my
Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for
the bower; and so being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous
364 MOBY DICK; OR
babies all over the world ;
every baby an exotic. In good time, never-
theless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps increase;
as reflection lends her seldom pauses ;
in short, as a general lassitude
overtakes the sated Turk then a love of ease and virtue supplants the
;

love for maidens our Ottoman enters upon the repentant, admonitory
;

stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary,

sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels
saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his juve-
nile errors.
Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so

is the lord and master of that school technically known as the school-

master. It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably

satirical, that after going to school himself, he should then go abroad
inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title,

schoolmaster, would very naturally seem, derived from the name be-
stowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the man
who first Ottoman whale, must have read the
thus entitled this sort of
memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country
schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and
what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of
his pupils.
The same secludedness and isolation to which the: schoolmaster
whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged
Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale — as a solitary
Leviathan is called —proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-
bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature her-
self and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best
;

of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets.

The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, pre-
viously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For
while those female whales are characteristically timid, young the
males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pug-
nacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to en-
counter excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, some-
;

times met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a
penal gout.
 THE WHITE WHALE 365

The Forty-barr el-bull schools are larger than the harem schools.
Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wicked-
ness,tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that
no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a
riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence
though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately
go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.
Another point of difference between the male and female schools
is still more Say you strike a Forty-barrel-
characteristic of the sexes.
bull, poor devil all his comrades quit him.
! But strike a member of
the harem school, and her companions swim around her with every
token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as them-
selves to fall a prey.

CHAPTEE LXXXVIII
FAST-FISH AND LOOSE-FISH

The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale fish-
ery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.
It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in com-
pany, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally
killed and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly com-
prised many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand
feature. —
For example, after a weary and perilous chase and capture
of a whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent
storm and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler,
;

who, in a calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line.

Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between
the fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal, un-
disputed law applicable to all cases.

Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorised by legislative en-

actment was that of Holland. was decreed by the States-General

It
in a. d. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written
whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators
366 MOBY DICK; OR
and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for
terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian’s Pandects and the By-
laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other
People’s Business. Yes; these laws might be engraved on a Queen
Anne’s farthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so
small are they.
I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.

II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.

But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to ex-

pound it.

First : What is a Fast-Fish ? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,

when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at

all controllable by the occupant or occupants, — a mast, an oar, a nine-

inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same.
Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any other
recognised symbol of possession ;
so long as the party waiting it plainly
evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as their in-
tention so to do.
These are scientific commentaries but the commentaries of the whale-
;

men themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks —the
Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and
honourable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,
where would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
it

possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party.

But others are by no means so scrupulous.
Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated
in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of a
whale in the Northern seas they (plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpoon-
ing the fish but at last, through peril of their lives, were obliged to for-
;

sake not only their lines, but their boat itself. —Furthermore, ultimately
the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up with the whale,
struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it before the very eyes of
the plaintiffs. Yet again: —and when those defendants were remon-
strated with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs’ teeth,
and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done, he
would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained
 ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 367

attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the plain-
tiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale, line, har-
poons, and boat.
Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was
the judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on to
illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case, wherein a
gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife’s viciousness, had at
last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in the course of years,
repenting of that step, he instituted an action to recover possession of
her. He then proceeded to say that, though the gentleman had origi-
nally harpooned the lady, and at once had her fast, and only by reason
of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned her
yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish ;
and therefore
when a subsequent gentleman reharpooned her, the lady then became
that subsequent gentleman’s property, along with whatever harpoon
might have been found sticking in her.
How in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the
whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.
These pleadings, and the counter-pleadings, being duly heard, the
very learned judge in set terms decided, to wit, —That as for the boat,
he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to
save their lives; hut that with regard to the controverted whale har-
poons, and line, they belonged to the defendants ;
the whale, because it

was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and
line because when the fish jnade off with them, it (the fish) acquired a
property in those articles ;
and hence anybody who afterwards took the
fish had a right to them. How the plaintiffs afterwards took the fish
ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs.

A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge

might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the
matter, the two great principles laid down the twin whaling laws
previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in
the above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,
I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human juris-
prudence ;
for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture, the
Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two
props to stand on.
 :

368 MOBY DICK; OR

Is it not a saying in every one’s mouth, Possession is half of the law
that is, regardless of how the thing came* into possession ? But often
possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of
Russian and Republican slaves but Past-Fish, whereof possession
serfs
is the whole of the law ? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow’s
last mite but a Fast-Fish ? What is yonder undetected villain’s marble
mansion with a door-plate for a waif; what is that hut a Fast-Fish?
What is the ruinous discount which Mordeeai, the broker, gets from
poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone’s family
from starvation what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish ? What
;

is the Archbishop of Savesoul’s income of £100,000 seised from the

scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed

labourers; what is that globular £100,000 but a Fast-Fish ? What are
the Duke of Dunder’s hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish?
What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a
Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas
but a Fast-Fish ? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole
of the law?
But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the
kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is inter-

nationally and universally applicable.

What was America 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus
in
struck the Spanish standard by way of waiting it for his royal master
and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the
Turk ? What India to England ? What at last will Mexico be to the
United States ? All Loose-Fish.
What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish?
What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish?
What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of
thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-
Fish! And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish,
too ?
 — ;

THE WHITE WHALE 369

CHAPTER LXXXIX
HEADS! OR TAILS!

“De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam ”

Bracton, l. 8, c. 3.

Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with
the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the
coast of that land, the Ring, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must
have the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail

a division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple ;

there is
no intermediate remainder. How as this law, under a modified form, is

to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects a

strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is
here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle
that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a separate car,
specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place,
in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in force,
I proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within the
last two years.

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some

one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing
and beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off
from the shore. How the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under
the Jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden.
Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal emol-
uments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment
his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so.

Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his

perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of
them.
How when these poor sunburnt mariners bare-footed and with their
trousers rolled high up on had wearily hauled their fat
their eely legs,
fish high and dry, promising themselves a good £150 from the precious

oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and

good with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares
ale

up steps a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman,

370 MOBY DICK; OR
with a copy of Blackstone under his arm and laying it upon the whale’s
head, he says
— “Hands off! this fish, my
;

masters, is a Fast-Fish. I

seise it as the Lord Warden’s.” Upon this the poor mariners in their
respectful consternation — so truly English —knowing not what to say,

fall to vigorously scratching their heads all round ;

meanwhile ruefully
glancing from the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend
the matter, or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with
the copy of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long scratching
about for his ideas, made hold to speak.
“Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden ?”

“The Duke.”
“But the Duke had nothing to do with taking this fish ?”

“It is his.”
“We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expence, and is

all that to go to the Duke’s benefit; we getting nothing at all for our
pains but our blisters ?”
“It is his.”
“Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of
getting a livelihood ?”
“It is his.”
“I thought to relieve my old bedridden mother by part of my share of
this whale.”
“It is his.”
“Won’t the Duke be content with a quarter or a half ?”
“It is his.”
In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of
Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particu-
lar lights, the case might by a hare possibility in some small degree be
deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman
of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to
take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To
which my
Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)
that he had already done so, and received the money, and would be
obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend
gentleman) would decline meddling with other people’s business.
It will readily he seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke
to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs
 THE WHITE WHALE 371

inquire then on what principles the Sovereign is originally invested

with that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plow-
don gives us the reason for it. Says Plowden, the whale so caught
belongs to the King and Queen, “because of its superior excellence.”
And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent
argument in such matters.
In his treaties on “Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an old King’s
Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth “Ye tail is ye :

Queen’s, that ye Queen’s wardrobe may he supplied with ye whalebone.”

Xow this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Green-
land or Bight whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this
same hone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake
for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to
be presented with a tail ? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers the —
whale and the sturgeon both royal property under certain limitations,
;

and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary rev-
enue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter ;
but
by inference it seems to me must be divided in the
that the sturgeon
same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic
head peculiar to that fish, which symbolically regarded, may possibly
be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus
there seems a reason in all things, even in law.

CHAPTEK XC
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE ROSEBUD

“In vain it was to rake for ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan,
insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.”
Sir T. Browne , V. E.

It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when
we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapoury, midday sea, that the many
noses on the Pequod’s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the
three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was
smelt in the sea.
 ;;

372 MOBY DICK; OR

“I will bet something now,” said Stubb, “that somewhere hereabouts
are some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought
they would keel up before long.”
Presently, the vapours in advance slid aside and there in the distance
;

lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must
be alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed F rench colours
from his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-foul that
circled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the
whale alongside must be what the fisherman call a blasted whale, that
is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an un-

appropriated corpse. It may well be conceived, what an unsavoury

odour such a mass must exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the
plague, when the living are incompetent to bury the departed. So in-

tolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that no cupidity could persuade

them to moor alongside of Yet are there those who will still do it
it.

notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from such subjects is of
a very inferior quality, and by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose.
Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the French-
man had a second whale alongside and this second whale seemed even
;

more of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of

those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of
prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies al-

most entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the

proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn
up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun blasted
whales in general.
The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed
he recognised his cuttle spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
knotted round the tail of one of these whales.
“There’s a pretty fellow, now,” he banteringly laughed, standing in
the ship’s bows; “there’s a jackal for ye! I well know that the Crap-
poes of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lower-
ing their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts
yes, and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes
of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they
will get won’t be enough to dip the captain’s wick into aye, we all know ;

these things ;
but look ye, here’s a Crappo that is content with our leav-
 , —

THE WHITE WHALE 373

ings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content too with
scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. Poor
devil ! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let’s make him a present
of a little oil for dear charity’s sake. For what oil he’ll get from that
drugged whale there, wouldn’t be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a
condemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, I’ll agree to get more
oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than he’ll

get from that bundle of bones though, now that I think of it, it may
;

contain something worth a good deal more than oil ;

yes, ambergris. I
wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It’s worth trying.
Yes, I’m in for it” and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
;

By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that
whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with
no hope of escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from
the cabin, Stubb now called his boat’s crew, and pulled off for the

stranger. Drawing across her bow, he perceived that in accordance

with the fanciful French upper part of her stem-piece was
taste, the

carved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and
for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there; the
whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour.
Upon her headboards, in large gilt letters, he read “Bouton-de-Rose ,”
Rosebutton, or Rosebud; and this was the romantic name of this aro-
matic ship.
Though Stubb did not understand the Bouton part of the inscription,
yet the word rose and the bulbous figure-head put together, sufficiently
explained the whole to him.
“A wooden rosebud, eh ?” he cried with his hands to his nose ; “that
!”
will do very well ;
but how like all creation it smells
Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck,
he had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close

to the blasted whale ;

and so talk over it.

Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he bawled
—“Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that
speak English ?”
“Yes,” rejoined a Guernsey man from the bulwarks, who turned out

to be the chief mate.

 — ;

374 MOBY DICK; OR

“Well, then, my Bouton-de-Eosebud, have you seen the White
Whale ?”
“What whale ?”
“The White Whale —a Sperm Whale —Moby Dick, have ye seen
him ?”
“Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche ! White Whale
no.”
“Very good, then; good-bye now, and I’ll call again in a minute.”
Then rapidly pulling hack towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab
leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his
two hands into a trumpet and shouted “No, sir —
No !” IJpon which !

Ahab retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman.

He now perceived that the Guernsey man, who had just got into the
chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of
hag.
“What’s the matter with your nose, there ?” said Stubb. “Broke it ?”
was broken, or that I didn’t have any nose at
“I wish it all,” answered

the Guernsey man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very
much. “But what are you holding yours for ?”
“Oh, nothing! It’s a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day,
ain’t it ? Air rather gardenny, I should say throw us a bunch of posies
;

will ye, Bouton-de-Eose ?”

“What in the devil’s name do you want here ?” roared the Guernsey
man, flying into a sudden passion.
“Oh keep
! cool — cool ? yes, that’s the word why don’t you pack those
;

whales in ice while you’re working at ’em? But joking aside, though
do you know, Eosebud, that it’s all nonsense trying to get oil out of such
whales ? As for that dried up one there, he hasn’t a gill in his whole
carcase.”
“I know that well enough ;
hut d’ye see, the captain here won’t believe
it ;
this is his first voyage ;
he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But
come aboard, and mayhap he’ll believe you, if he won’t me and;
so I’ll
get out of this dirty scrape.”
“Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow,” rejoined
Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer
scene presented itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted,
>vere getting the heavy tackles in readiness for the whales, But they
 THE WHITE WHALE 375

worked rather slow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but
a good humour. All their noses upwardly projected from their faces
like so many jib-booms. How and then pairs of them would drop
their work, and run up to the masthead to get some fresh air. Some
thinking they would catch the plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at
intervals held it to their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of
their pipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-
smoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories.
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding
from the captain’s round-house abaft and looking in that direction saw
;

a fiery face thrust from behind the which was held ajar from
door,
within. This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remon-
strating against the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself to
the captain‘s round-house ( cabinet he called it) to avoid the pest; but
still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times.
Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to
the Guernsey man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger
mate expressed his detestation of his captain as a conceited ignoramus,
who had brought them all into so unsavoury, unprofitable a pickle.
Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey man
had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He there-
fore held his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and con-
fidential with him, so that the two quickly concocted a little plan for
both circumventing and satirising the captain, without his at all dream-
ing of distrusting their sincerity. According to this little plan of theirs,

the Guernsey man, under cover of an interpreter’s office, was to tell

the captain what he pleased, but as coming from Stubb; and as for
Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in him
during the interview.
By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He
was a small and dark, but rather delicate-looking man for a sea-captain,
with large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton
velvet vest with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was
now politely introduced by the Guernsey man, who at once ostenta-
tiously put on the aspect of interpreting between them.
“What shall I say to him first ?” said he.
“Why,” said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals,
 —

376 MOBY DICK; OR

“you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish
to me, though I don’t pretend to be a judge.”
“He Monsieur,” said the Guernsey man, in French, turning
says,
to his captain, “that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel whose cap- ;

tain and chief mate, with six sailors, had all died of fever caught from
a blasted whale they had brought alongside.”
Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.
“W-hat now ?” said the Guernsey man to Stubb.
“Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him
carefully,I’m quite certain that he’s no more fit to command a whale
ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he’s a ba-
boon.”
“He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried
one, is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he
conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish.”

Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded

his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast
loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.
“What now?” said the Guernsey man, when the captain had re-
turned to them.
“Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that —that
in fact, tell him I’ve diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps
somebody else.”

“He says, Monsieur, that he’s very happy to have been of any serv-
ice to us.”
Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful par-
ties (meaning himself and mate) and concluded by inviting Stubb

down into his cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.

“He wants you to take a glass of wine with him,” said the inter-
preter.
“Thank him heartily; but tell him it’s against my principles to
drink with the man I’ve diddled. In fact, tell him I must go.”
“He Monsieur, that his principles won’t admit of his drink-
says,
ing; but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then
Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from
these whales, for calm they won’t drift.”
it’s so
By this time Stubb was over the side, and, getting into his boat,
 THE WHITE WHALE 377

hailed the Guernsey man —that having

to this effect, a long towline
in his boat, he would do what he could to help them by pulling out
the lighter whale of the two from the ship’s side. While the French-
man’s boats then were engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb
benevolently towed away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously
slacking out a most unusually long towline.
Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the
whale; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance,
while the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb’s whale. Whereupon
Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to
give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of
his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced
an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would
almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and
when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like
turning up old Homan tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam.
His boat’s crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping their
chief, and looking as anxious as gold-hunters.
And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and
screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was begin-
ning to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased,
when suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a
faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells
without being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then along
with another, without at all blending with it for a time.
“I have it, I have it,” cried Stubb, with delight, striking, something
in the subterranean regions; “a purse! a purse!”
Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out hand-
fuls of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled
old cheese; very unctuous and savoury withal. You might easily
dent it with your thumb hue between yellow and ash colour.
;
it is of a
And this, good friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce
to any druggist. Some six handfuls were obtained; but more was
unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been
secured were it not for impatient Ahab’s loud command to Stubb to
desist, and come on board, else the ship would bid them good-bye.
378 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER XCI
AMBERGRIS

Now tHis ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as

an commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain
article of
Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on
that subject. Eor at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late
day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a prob-
lem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French
compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct.
For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in
some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon
the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odourless
substance, used for mouthpieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments but ;

ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it

is largely used in perfumery, in pastilles, precious candles, hair pow-

ders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to
Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter’s,
in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to
flavour it.

Whowould think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should
regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a
sick whale Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the
!

cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to
cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three
or four boat-loads of Brandreth’s pills, and then running out of harm’s
way, as labourers do in blasting rocks.
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, cer-
tain hard, round, bony plates which at firstStubb thought might be
sailors’ trouser buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were
nothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that
manner.
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be
found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of
that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorrup-
tion; how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And
 , , ,

THE WHITE WHALE 379

likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that

maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all

things of ill-savour, Cologne water, in its rudimental manufacturing

stages, is the worst.
I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but can-
not owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whale-
men, and which, in the estimation of some already biassed minds, might
be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the
Erenchman’s two whales. volume the slanderous as-
Elsewhere in this
persion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout
a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut.
They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious
stigma originate?
I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Green-
land whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because
those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as

the southern ships have always done ;

but cutting up the fresh blubber
in small bits, thrust it through the bung-holes of large casks, and carry
it home manner; the shortness of the season in those icy seas,
in that
and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, for-
bidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking
into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the
Greenland dock, a savour is given forth somewhat similar to that aris-
ing from excavating an old city graveyard, for the foundation of a
Lying-in Hospital.
I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former
times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenherg, which
latter name is the one used by the learned Eogo Yon Slack, in his great
work on Smells a text-book on that subject. As its name imports
( Smeer fat
berg ;
to put up), this village was founded in order to afford

a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to he tried out, without
being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of

furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full
operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savour. But all this is

quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler which ;

in a voyage of

four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not,
 ;

380 MOBY DICK; OR

perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out ; and in the
state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that
living or dead, if hut decently treated, whales as a species are by no
means creatures of ill odour ;
nor can whalemen be recognised, as the
people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by
the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant,
when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health ;
taking abundance
of exercise ;
always out of doors ;
though, it is true, seldom in the open
air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale’s flukes above water dis-
penses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a
warm parlour. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fra-
grance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous
elephant, with and redolent with myrrh, which
jewelled tusks,
was led out of an Indian town to do honour to Alexander the
Great ?

CHAPTER XCII
THE CASTAWAY

It was hut some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a
most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s
crew; an event most lamentable; which ended in providing the some-
times madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever
accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her
own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats.
Some few hands are reserved called shipkeepers, whose province it is to
work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general
thing, these shipkeepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising
the boats’ crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy,
or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-
keeper. It was Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-
so in the
name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip ye have heard of him before
!

ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so

gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony
 ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 381

and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour,

driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by
nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted,
was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness
peculiar to his tribe; a tribe which ever enjoy all holidays and festivi-
ties with finer, freer relish than any other race. Por blacks, the year’s
calendar should show naught hut three hundred and sixty-five Fourth
of Julys and New Year’s Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this
little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold
yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king’s cabinets. But Pip loved life,
and all life’s peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business
in which he had somehow unaccountably became entrapped, had most
sadly blurred his brightness ;
though, as ere long will be seen, what was
thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly
illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten
times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in
Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s frolic on the green
and at melodious eventide, with his gay ha-ha, had turned the round
horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air
of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond
drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show
you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a
gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some un-
natural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally su-
perb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the
crystal skies, looks like some crown- jewel stolen from the King of Hell.
But let us to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s after-oarsman
chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed
and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervous-
ness ;
but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale
and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb ob-
serving him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his coura-

geousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.

Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale;
and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which
382 MOBY DICK; OR
happened in this instance to be right under poor Pip’s seat. The invol-
untary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in
hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale
line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as
to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water, that
instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly
straightened and presto poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of
; !

the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken
several turns around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt.
He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from his
sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards
Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, “Cut?” Meantime Pip’s blue,
choked face plainly looked, Do, for God’s sake ! All passed in a flash.
In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
“Damn him, cut!” roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip
was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by
yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these ir-
regular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like,
but still half-humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done,
unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was,
Never jump from a boat, Pip, except —but all the rest was indefinite, as
the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the boat , is your
true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap
from the boat , is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if

he should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be

leaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future, Stubb sud-
denly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command,
“Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won’t pick you up if you
jump, mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you;
a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama.
Bear that in mind, and don’t jump any more.” Hereby perhaps Stubb
indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-
making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benev-
olence.
 ©C1K1G92S9

© Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

TASHTEGO STOOD IN THE BOWS. HE WAS FULL OF THE FIRE OF THE HUNT.
•
 THE WHITE WHALE 383

But we are all in the hands of the gods ;

and Pip jumped again. It
was under very similar circumstances to the first performance but
this ;

time he did not breast out the line and hence, when the whale started
;

to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller’s trunk.

Alas Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, boun-
!

teous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching
away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater’s skin hammered out
to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip’s ebon head
showed like a head of cloves. Ho boat-knife was lifted when he fell so
rapidly astern. Stubb’s inexorable back was turned upon him and the ;

whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean

was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip
turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely casta-
way, though the loftiest and the brightest.
How, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the
awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self
in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God who ! can tell it ?

Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea —mark
how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate?
Ho; he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his
wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to
Pip very and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerate-
quickly,
ness towards oarsmen jeopardised through their own timidity, is not
always manifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such
instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a
coward, so called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar
to military navies and armies.
But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
spying whales close to them on one and gave chase; and
side, turned,

Stubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon
his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miser-
ably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but
from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at
least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up,
384 MOBY DICK; OR
but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.

Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of

the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;
and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and
among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the mul-
titudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of
waters heaved the colossal orbs. He
saw God’s foot upon the treadle
of the loom, and spoke it and therefore his shipmates called him mad.
;

So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal

reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is
absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised.
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in
that fishery ; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what
like abandonment befell myself.

CHAPTER XCIII
A SQUEEZE OF THE HAND

That whale of Stubb’s so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the

Pequod’s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations pre-
viously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of the
Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were em-
ployed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the
sperm and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully
;

manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon.

It had cooled and crystallised to such a degree,, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I
found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in
the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into
fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty ! No wonder that in old times this
sperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweet-
ener ! such a softener ! such a delicious mollifier ! After having my
hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began,
as it were, to serpentine and spiralise.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 385

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck ;

after the hitter
exertion at the windlass ;
under a blue tranquil sky ;
the ship under in-
dolent sail, and gliding so serenely along ;
as I bathed my hands among
these soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the
hour ;
as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opu-
lence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontam-
inated aroma, literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets ; I de-
clare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow ;
I forgot
all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my
hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan
superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger
while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or
petulance, or malice, of any sort whatever.
Squeeze ! squeeze ! squeeze ! all the morning long ;
I squeezed
that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm
till a strange sort of insanity came over me and ;
I found myself unwit-
tingly squeezing my co-labourers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for
the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
feeling did this avocation beget ;
that at last I was continually squeezing
up much
their hands,
to say,
— “Ohandmylooking
!dear
into their eyes sentimentally; as
fellow-beings, why should we longer cherish any
as

social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humour or envy! Cbme;

let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into
each other ;
let us squeeze universally into the very milk and sperm of
kindness.”
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever ! For now,
since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in
all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of
attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the
fancy ;
but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-

side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to
squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw
long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of sperma-
ceti.

How, while discoursing of sperm, it behoves to speak of other things

386 MOBY DICK; OR
akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-
works.
First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the taper-
ing part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It

is tough with congealed tendons — a wad of muscles —but still contains

some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first

cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like
blocks of Berkshire marble.
Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts
of the whale’s flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber,
and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It
is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name
imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked
snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and
purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason,
it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole
behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive
a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, sup-
posing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season,
and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine
vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up
in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling
adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion ;
an appellation original
with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is
an ineffably oozy, stringy most frequently found in the tubs
affair,

of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I

hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case
coalescing.
Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to Bight whalemen,
but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It desig-
nates the dark glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the
Greenland or Bight whale, and much of which covers the decks of those
inferior- souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
Hippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale’s vocabu-
lary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman’s nip-
 THE WHITE WHALE 387

per a short, firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part
is

of Leviathan’s tail it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest,

:

is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the
oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blan-
dishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at

once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its
inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle
for the blanket-pieces, when stripped and hoisted from the whale.
When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apart-
ment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one
side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen.
—
They generally go in pairs, a pike-and-gaff-man and a spade-man.
The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate’s boarding-weapon of the same
name. The gaff is something like a boathook. With his gaff, the gaff-
man hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold from slipping, it

as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man

stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable
horse-pieces. The spade is sharp as hone can make it ;
the spade-man’s
feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly

slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes,

or one of his. assistants’, would you be very much astonished? Toes

are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.

CHAPTER XCIV
THE cassock:

Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this

post-mortemising of the whale and had you strolled forward nigh the
;

windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small
curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have
seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee-scuppers. Hot the won-

drous cistern in the whale’s* huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged
lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail none of these would ;

so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, —longer

388 MOBY DICK; OR
than a Kentuckian nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and
is tall,

jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed,

it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that

found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for wor-
shipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the
idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly

set forth in the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings.

Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and
assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners
call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a

grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon

the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark
pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the
pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as
almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the
rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some
three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two
slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily
into The mincer now stands before you invested in the full ca-
it.

nonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this investiture

alone will adequately protect him while employed in the peculiar func-
tions of his office.
That mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
office consists in
pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse,
planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub be-
neath which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a
it, into
rapt orator’s desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicu-
ous pulpit; intent on Bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbish-
1
opric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer !

1
Bible leaves Bible leaves
! This is the invariable cry from the mates
!

to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin
slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is
much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps
improving it in quality.
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 389

CHAPTER XCV
THE TRY-WORKS

Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distin-

guished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the
most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the
completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were
transported to her planks.
The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the
most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar
strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick
and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The
foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly se-
cured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all sides,

and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased with

wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatch-
way. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number,
and each of several barrels’ capacity. When not in use, they are kept
remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and
sand, till they shine within like silver punchbowls. During the night-
watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil them-
selves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them
one man in each pot, side by side —many confidential communications
are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound
mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pe-
quod, with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first

indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies

gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from
any point in precisely the same time.
Removing the fireboard from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of
the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted
with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented
from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir
extending under the entire enclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel
inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water &s
390 MOBY DICK; OR
fast as it There are no external chimneys; they open
evaporates.
direct from the rear wall. And here let ns go back for a moment.
It was about nine o’clock at night that the Pequod’s try-works were
first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee

the business.
“All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You, cook, fire

the works.” This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been
thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here
be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to
be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a
means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being
tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters,
still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters
feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming
misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns
by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his
smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that,
but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild,
Hindoo odour about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal
pyres.
By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from
the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild
ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the
fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and

illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned
to some vengeful deed.So the pith and sulphur-freighted brigs of
the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbours,
with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frig-
ates, and folded them in conflagrations.
The removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide
hatch,
hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes
of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale ship’s stokers. With huge
pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding
pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curl-
ing, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled
 THE WHITE WHALE 391

away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch
of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces.
Opposite the mouth of the works, on the farther side of the wide
wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here
lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red
heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their
tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted
beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth all these
were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works.
As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of
terror told in words of mirth ;
as their uncivilised laughter forked, up-
wards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro,
in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge
pronged forks and dippers as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped,
;

and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell
further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and
scornfully champed the white hone in her mouth, and viciously spat
round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with sav-
ages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into
that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her
monomaniac commander’s soul.
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently
guided the way of this fire ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that inter-

val, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness,
the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes be-
fore me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat
kindred visions in my soul, as soon as I began to yield to that unac-
countable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight
helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)
thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was
horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The jawbone tiller

smote my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum
of sails, just beginning to shake in the wind ;
I thought my eyes were
open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and
mechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all
 ! !

392 MOBY DICK; OR

this, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed
but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle
lamp illumining it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now
and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the im-
pression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much
hound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark,

bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands

grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, some-
how, in some enchanted way, inverted. God! what is the matter My
with me ? thought I. Lo in my brief sleep I had turned myself about,
!

and was fronting the ship’s stern, with my hack to her prow and the
compass. In an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel
from flying up into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How
glad and how grateful the relief from this unnatural hallucination
of the night,, and the fatal contingency of being brought by the lee
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream
with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; ac-
cept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire,

when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the
natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in
the forking flames, the mom will show in far other, at least gentler,
relief ;
the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp — all others but
liars

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor

Rome’s accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of
miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not
the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two-thirds
of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy
than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true —not true, or un-
developed. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man
of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is

the fine-hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” All. This wilful

world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he
who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards,
and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young,
Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-
 THE WHITE WHALE 393

free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;

not that man is fitted to sit down on tombstones, and break the green
damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way
of understanding shall remain’’ (i. e. even while living) “in the con-
gregation of the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert
thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom
that woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Cat-
is

skill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest

gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny
spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge
is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain
eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they
soar.

CHAPTER XCYI
THE LAMP

Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pe quod's fore-
castle,where the off-duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment,
you would have almost thought you were standing in some illumined
shrine of canonised kings and counsellors. There they lay in their tri-
angular oakens vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of
lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in
darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he
seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an
Aladdin’s lamp, and lays him down in it ;
so that in the pitchiest night

the ship’s black hull still houses an illumination.

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of
lamps — often but old bottles and vials, though — to the copper cooler at
the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He
burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore,
unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contriv-
394 MOBY DICK; OR
ances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes

and hunts for his oil, and genuineness,

so as to be sure of its freshness

even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.

CHAPTER XCYII
STOWING DOWN AND CLEAEING UP

Aleeady has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off des-
cried from the masthead how he ;
is chased over the watery moors, and
slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside
and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman
of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great
padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due
time, he is condemned to the pots, and how his spermaceti, oil, and
hone pass unscathed through the But now it remains to conclude
fire.

the last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing singing, —

if I may —the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the
casks and striking them down into the hold, where once again leviathan
returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the surface as
before ;
hut, alas ! never more to rise and blow.
While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the six-
barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this
way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed
round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot
across the slippery deck, like so many land-slides, till at last man-
handled and stayed in their course ;
and all round the hoops, rap, rap,
go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex officio , every
sailor is a cooper.
At length when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great
hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and
down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches
are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.
In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream
with freshets of blood and oil ;
on the sacred quarter-deck enormous
 ! ;

THE WHITE WHALE 395

masses of the whale’s head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie
about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has be-
sooted all the bulwarks ;
the mariners go about suffused with unctuous-
ness; the entire ship seems a great leviathan himself; while on all

hands the din is deafening.

But a day or two
you look about you, and prick your ears
after,
in this self-same ship and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-
;

works, you would all hut swear you trod some silent merchant vessel,
with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured
sperm oil possesses a singular cleansing virtue. This is the reason why
the decks never look so white as just after what they call an affair of
oil. Besides,from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent
lye is readily made and whenever any adhesiveness from the hack of
;

the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminates
it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of
water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is brushed
from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which have
been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The great
hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely hiding the
pots ;
every cask is out of sight ;
all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks
and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of almost the
entire ship’s company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last
concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions;
shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate
deck, fresh and all aglow.
How, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes,

and humorously discourse of parlours, sofas, carpets, and fine cam-

brics; propose to mat the deck; think of having hangings to the top;
object not to making tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle.
To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were
little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly
allude to. Away, and bring us napkins
But mark: aloft there, at the three mastheads, stand three men in-
tent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again
soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease spot
somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest unin-
 ! ;

396 MOBY DICK; OR

terrupted labours, which know no night; continuing straight through
for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled
their wrists with all —
day rowing on the Line, they only step to the
deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and
slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew

by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-
works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred them-
selves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it ;
many
is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean
frocks, are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they
fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again.

Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. Lor

hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s
vast bulk its small but valuable sperm and then, with weary patience,
;

cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in

clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when There she —
—
blows ! the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other
world, and go through young life’s old routine again.
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece,
two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed
with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage —and, foolish as I am,
taught thee, a green simple boy, how to Splice a rope

CHAPTER XCVIII
THE DOUBLOON

Eke now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-
deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast
but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not
been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged
in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand
there strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When he
halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed
needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed
intensity of his purpose ;
and when resuming his walk he again paused
 THE WHITE WHALE 397

before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon
the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firm-
ness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And
some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little
worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher except to sell by
the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in
the Milky Way.
Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out
of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden
sands, the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now
nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper
spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still pre-
served its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless' crew
and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the lifelong
nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering
approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the
sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-
striking end and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all,
;

the mariners revered it as the white whale’s talisman. Sometimes

they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was
to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the
sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes;
sun’s discs and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners wav-
ing, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold
seems almost an added preciousness and enhancing glories,
to derive

by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.

It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy
example of these things. On
round border it bore the letters,
its

REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin

came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath
the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway
 ;

398 MOBY DICK; OR

up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by
those letters you saw the likeness of three Ande’s summits ;
from one
a flame ;
a tower on another ;
on the third a crowing cock ;
while arch-
ing over was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all
all

marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering
the equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was
now pausing.
“There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers,
and all other grand and lofty things; look here, — three peaks, as
proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is

Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too,
is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the

rounder globe, which, like a magician’s glass, to each and every man
in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains,
small gains, for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot
solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but
see ! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox ! and but six months
before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to
storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, ’tis fit that man should live
in pains and die in pangs So be ! it, then ! Here’s stout stuff for woe
to work on. So be it, then.”
“Ho fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must
have left their mouldings there since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck
to himself, leaning against the bulwarks. “The old man seems to
read Belshazzar’s awful writing. I have never marked the coin in-
spectingly. He goes below ; let me read. A dark valley between three
mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some
faint, earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round
and over all our gloom, the Sun of Bighteousness still shines a beacon
and a hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her
mouldy soil; but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance
half-way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at
midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze
for him in vain ! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly
to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.”
 — ;;

THE WHITE WHALE 399

“There now’s the old Mogul,” soliloquised Stubb by the try-works,

“he’s been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and
both with faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine
fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I
have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer’s Hook, I’d not look at it very
long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I
regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyag-
ings your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doub-
;

loons of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan

with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and
quarter joes. What then should there be in this doubloon of the Equa-
tor that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda! let me read it once.
Hallo ! and wonders truly
here’s signs That, now, is what old Bow-
!

ditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanac below calls
ditto. I’ll get the almanac, and as I have heard devils can be raised
with Daboll’s arithmetic, I’ll try my hand at raising a meaning out of
these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar. Here’s
the hook. Let’s see now. Signs and wonders; and the sun, he’s
always among ’em. Hem, hem, hem; here they —here they go
are
all alive: — Aries, or the Bam; Taurus, or the Bull— and Jimimi!
here’s Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels among
’em. Aye, here on the coin he’s just crossing the threshold between
two of twelve sitting-rooms all* in a ring. Book! you lie there; the

fact you books must know your

is, places. You’ll do to give us the bare
words and facts, hut we come in to supply the thoughts. That’s my
small experience, so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch’s
navigator, and Daboll’s arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh ? Pity
if there nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders!
is

There’s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist hark! By Jove, I have —

it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one
round chapter; and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book.
Come, Almanac! To begin: there’s Aries, or the Bam lecherous —
dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull he bumps us the first —
thing; then Gemini, or the Twins — that is, Virtue and Vice; we try
to reach Virtue, when lo ! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back
and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path
 —

400 MOBY DICK; OR

he gives a few and surly dabs with his paw; we escape,
fierce bites

and hail Virgo, the Virgin that’s our first love we marry and think to
! ;

be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales happiness —
weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that,

Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us

in rear we are curing the wound, when, whang comes the arrows all
;

round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck

out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram, Capricomus, or
the Goat ;
he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed when
full tilt, ;

Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his. whole deluge and drowns
us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There’s
a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every
year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft

there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so, alow here, does jolly

Stubb. Oh, jolly’s the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But
stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now,
and let’s hear what he’ll have to say. There ;
he’s before it ;
he’ll out
with something presently. So, so; he’s beginning.”
“I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever
raises a certain, whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what’s
all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars^ that’s true;
and at two cents the cigar, that’s nine hundred and sixty cigars. I
won’t smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here’s nine
hundred and sixty of them ;
so here goes Flask aloft to spy ’em out.”
“Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has
a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of
wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman —the
old hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea.
He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other
side of the mast; why, there’s a horseshoe nailed on that side; and
now he’s back again what does that mean ? Hark he’s muttering
; !

voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen !”

“If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day,
when the sun stands in some one of these signs. I’ve studied signs,
and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by
 THE WHITE WHALE 401

the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then he ?

The horseshoe sign ;

for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what’s
the horseshoe sign? The lion is the horseshoe sign —the roaring and
devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my head shakes to think of thee.”
“There’s another rendering now; hut still one text. All sorts of
men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Quee-
queg — all tattooing —looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What
says the Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing notes; looking at his
thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the
bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the
back country. And by Jove, he’s found something there in the vicin-
ity of his thigh —I guess it’s Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he
don’t know what to make of the doubloon ;
he takes it for an old button
off some king’s trousers. But, aside again! here comes that ghost-
devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes
of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of his ? Ah,
only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself ;
there is a sun on the
coin — fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho more
! and more. This
way comes Pip —poor boy! would he had died, or I; he’s half hor-
rible to me. He too has been watching all of these interpreters —my-
self included —and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthly
idiot face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark !”
“I look, you look, he looks ;
we look, ye look, they look.”
“Upon my soul, he’s been studying Murray’s Grammar Improving !

his mind, poor fellow ! But what’s that he says now hist !” —
“I look, you look, he looks ;
we look, ye look, they look.”
“Why, he’s getting it by heart — hist ! again.”
“I look, you look, he looks ;
we look, ye look, they look.”
“Well, that’s funny.”
“And I, you and he ;
and we, ye, and they, are all bats ;
and I’m a
when I stand a’ top of this pine tree here. Caw!
crow, especially
caw caw caw caw caw
! ! Ain’t I a crow ?
! ! And where’s the scare-
!

crow ? There he stands two hones stuck into a pair of old trousers,
;

and two more poked into the sleeves of an old jacket.”

“Wonder if he means me ? complimentary poor lad —
I could go !
:
— !
—
 !

402 MOBY DICK; OR

hang myself. Any way, for the present, I’ll quit Pip’s vicinity. I
can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he’s too crazy-witty
for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering.”
“Here’s the ship’s navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire
to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what’s the consequence ?
Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught’s nailed
to the mast it’s a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha ! old Ahab
the White Whale; he’ll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in

old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver

ring grown over in it; some old darkey’s wedding-ring. How did it

get there? And so they’ll say one day, when they come to fish up
this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters
for the shabby bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious gold! the
green miser’ll hoard ye soon!”

CHAPTEE XCIX
LEG AND ARM

THE PEQUOD OF NANTUCKET MEETS THE SAMUEL ENDERBY

OF LONDON

“Ship, ahoy Hast seen the White Whale ?”

!

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours,

bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was
standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to
the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s
bow. He was a darkly tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man,
of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung
round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of his
jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat.
“Hast seen the White Whale ?”
“See you this ?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden
it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone terminating in a

wooden head like a mallet.

“Man my boat!” cried Ahab impetuously, and tossing about the oars
near him
—“Stand by to lower
!”
 THE WHITE WHALE 403

In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his
crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the
stranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the ex-
citement of the moment Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg
he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own,
and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical
contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and
shipped in any other vessel at a moment’s warning. Now, it is no very
easy matter for anybody —except those who are almost hourly used to
it, like whalemen — to clamber up a ship’s side from a boat on the open
sea ;
for the great swells now lift the boat highup towards the bulwarks,
and then instantaneously drop it half-way down to the kelson. So, de-
prived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether un-
supplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly
reduced to a clumsy landsman again, hopelessly eyeing the uncertain
changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.
It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circum-
stance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless
mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in the
present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the two offi-

cers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the perpendicular
ladder of nailed cleats there, and swimming towards him a pair of
tastefully ornamented manropes; for at first they did not seem to be-
think them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to
use their sea banisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute,
because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood,
cried out : “I see, I see !
— vast heaving there ! Jump, boys, and swing
over the cutting-tackle.”
As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day
or two previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive
curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end.
This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehended it all,

slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in

the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then

giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to

hoist his own weight, by pulling hand over hand upon one of the run-
 — —I
!

404 MOBY DICK; OR

ning parts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high
bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory

arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced,

and Ahab, putting out and crossing the ivory arm (like
his ivory leg,
two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, “Aye, aye, hearty
let us shake bones together! —
an arm and a leg! an arm that never —
can shrink d’ye see ;
and a leg that never can run. Where didst thou
see the White Whale ? how long ago ?”—
“The White Whale,” said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm
towards the east, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been
a telescope; “there I saw him, on the Line, last season.”
“And he took that arm off, did he ?” asked Ahab, now sliding down
from the capstan, and resting on the Englishman’s shoulder, as he
did so.

“Aye, he was the cause of it, at least ;

and that leg, too ?”
“Spin me the yarn,” said Ahab “how was
;
it ?”

“It was the first time in my life I ever cruised on the Line,” began
the Englishman. “I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time.
Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my
boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that
went milling and milling round so, that my boat’s crew could only
trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently
up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with
a milky-white head and hump, all crow’s feet and wrinkles.”
“It was he, it was he!” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his sus-
pended breath.
“And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.”
“Aye, aye
!”
—they were mine my irons,” cried Ahab exultingly
“but on
“Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good-humouredly.
“Well, this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump,
runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-
line.”
“Aye, I see !
—wanted to part it ;
free the fast-fish — an old trick—
know him.”
“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 405

not know but ;

in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there
somehow; but we know it then; so that when we afterwards
didn’t
pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump instead of !

the other whale’s; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how
matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was —the noblest and
biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life —I resolved to capture him, spite of
the boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the haphazard line
would get was tangled to might draw (for I
loose, or the tooth it
have a devil of a boat’s crew for a pull on a whale-line) seeing all this, ;

I say, I jumped into my first mate’s boat Mr. Mounttop’s here (by —
the way, captain —
Mounttop; Mounttop the captain; as I was say- — —
ing, I jumped into Mounttop’s boat, which, d’ye see, was gunwale and
gunwale with mine then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
great-grandfather have it. But, Lord look you,- sir hearts and souls —
alive, man —
the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat both —
eyes out —
all befogged and bedeadened with black foam the whale’s —
tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a

marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at

midday, with a blinding sun,, all crown-jewels as I was groping, I ;

say, after the second iron to toss it overboard down comes the tail —
like a Lima Tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in
splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck,
as though it was all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible
Sailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a
moment clung to that like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed
me off, and at the same instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards,
went down and the barb of that cursed second iron towing
like a flash ;

along near me caught me here” (clapping his hand just below his
shoulder) “yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to
;

Hell’s flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the
good God, the barb ripped its way along the flesh — clear along the

—
whole length of my arm came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated
;

and that gentleman there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain
Dr. Bunger, ship’s surgeon: Bunger, my lad the captain). Now, —
Bunger, boy, spin your part of the yarn.”
The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out ? had been
 — ;

406 MOBY DICK; OR

all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote
his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round
but sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt,
and patched trousers; and had thus far been dividing his attention
between a marling-spike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the
other, occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the
two crippled captains. But, at the superior’s introduction of him to

Ahab, he politely bowed and straightway went on to do his captain’s

bidding.
“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale surgeon; “and,
”
taking my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy
“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted the one-
armed captain, addressing Ahab; “go on, boy.”
“Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing
hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use —I did all I could
sat up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of
”
diet
“Oh, very severe!” chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly
altering his voice, “drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till

he couldn’t see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half

seas over, about three o’clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat
up with me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great
watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you
dog, laugh out! why don’t ye? You know you’re a precious jolly
rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I’d rather be killed by you than kept
alive by any other man.”
“My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir”
said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab
“is apt to be facetious at times he spins us many clever things of that
;

sort. But I may as well say —

en passant as the French remark
,

that I myself —that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend

clergy — am a strict total abstinence man ;
I never drink ”

“Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s a sort of fits
to him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on go
on with the arm story.”
—
“Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon coolly. “I was about ob-
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 407

serving, sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite

of my best and severest endeavours, the wound kept getting worse and
worse; the truth was, was as ugly a gaping wound as surgeon
sir, it

ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long. I measured it
with the lead-line. In short, it grew black; I knew what was threat-
ened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm
there
—
;
that thing is against all rule” —pointing at it with the marling-
spike “that is the captain’s work, not mine ;
he ordered the carpenter
to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock
some one’s brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He
flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir”
removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-
like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace,
or any token of ever having been a wound — “well, the captain there
will tellyou how that came here he knows.” ;

“Ho, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he was born
—
with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you you Bunger! was there ever
such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die,
you ought to die in pickle, you dog you should be preserved to future
;

ages, you rascal.”

“What became of the White Whale ?” now cried Ahab, who thus far
had been impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Eng-
lishmen.
“Oh,” cried the one-armed captain, “oh, yes! Well; after he
sounded, we didn’t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before
hinted, I didn’t then know what whale it was that had served me such
a trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we
heard about Moby Dick — as some call him —and then I knew it was
he.”
“Didst thou cross his wake again?”
“Twice.”
“But could not fasten ?”
“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do
without this other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite
so much as he swallows.”
“Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left arm for bait
408 MOBY DICK; OR
to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen” —— very gravely and math-
ematically bowing to each captain in succession “do you know, gentle-

men, that the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably con-

structed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to

completely digest even a man’s arm ? And he knows it too. So that
what you take for the White Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness.
For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify
by But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly
feints.

a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives,

once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it
stayed for a twelvemonth or more when I gave him an emetic, and he
;

heaved it up in small tacks, d’ye see. No possible way for him to

digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily
system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and
have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving
decent burial to the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let
the whale have another chance at you shortly, that’s all.”
“No, thank Bunger,” said the English captain; “he’s welcome
ye,
to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then, but
not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered
for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory
in killing him, I know that ;
and there is a ship-load of precious sperm
in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone ;
don’t you think so, captain ?”
—glancing at the ivory leg.
“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let

alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all

a magnet. How long since thou saw’st him last? Which way head-
ing ?”
“Bless my
and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger stoopingly
soul,

walking around Ahab, and like a dog strangely snuffing; “this man’s
—
blood bring the thermometer! —
it’s at the boiling point! his pulse —
makes these planks beat sir !” — —taking a
lancet from his pocket, and
!

drawing near to Ahab’s arm.

“Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks “Man —
the boat! Which way heading?”
“Good God!” cried the English captain, to whom the question was
 THE WHITE WHALE 409

put. “What’s the matter? He was leading east, I think —Is your
captain crazy ?” whispering Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to
take the boat’s steering-oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him, commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.
In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla
men were springing to their oars. In vain the English captain hailed
him. With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his
own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.

CHAPTER C
THE DECANTER

Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she
hailedfrom London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,
merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of
Enderby & Sons a house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes
;

not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in
point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our
Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous
fishdocuments do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out
the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;
though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant
Coflins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets
pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic:
not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers
were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilised steel the great
Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people
of the whole globe who so harpooned him.
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,
and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape
Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale boat of
any sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky
one; and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious
sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other ships, English
 —

410 MOBY DICK; OR

and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific
were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the inde-
fatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his sons how
—
many, their mother only knows and under their immediate auspices,
and partly, I think, at their expense, the British Government was in-
duced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of dis-

covery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval post-captain the

Rattler made and did some service how much
a rattling voyage of it, ;

does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted
out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a testing cruise to
the remote waters of Japan. That ship well called the Syren — —
made was thus that the great
a noble experimental cruise; and it

Japanese Whaling-Ground first became generally known. The Syren

in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nan-
tucketer.
All honour to the Enderbys, therefore, whose house, I think, exists
to the present day ;
though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago
have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.
The ship named after him was worthy of the honour, being a very
fast sailor and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at mid-
night somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down
in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps
—every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And
that fine gam I had — long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks
with his ivory heel — it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality
of that ship ;
and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember
me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip ? Did I say we had flip ? Yes,
and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the
squall came (for it’s squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands
visitors and all —
were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that
we had to swing each other aloft in bow-lines ;
and we ignorantly furled
the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed
fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. How-
ever the masts did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled
down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, though the savage
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 411

salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted
and pickled it to my taste.

The beef was fine —tough, but with body in it. They said it was
bull-beef; others, that itwas dromedary beef; but I do not know, for
certain, how that was. They had dumplings too small, but substantial,
;

symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that

you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were swal-
lowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching
out of you like billiard-balls. The bread —but that couldn’t be helped
besides, it was an anti-scorbutic ;
in short, the bread contained the only
fresh fare they had. But was not very light, and
the forecastle it was
very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all
in all,
taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook’s
boilers, including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say,
the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine
flip and strong; crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-
band.
But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other
English whalers I know of —not all —were such famous,
though hospit-
able ships ;
that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and
the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laugh-
ing? I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English
whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all

sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.

The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,
Zealanders and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still ex-
tant in the fishery ;
and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touch-
ing plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English
merchant ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.
Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal
and natural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have
some special origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further
elucidated.
During my researches in the Levia.thanie histories, I stumbled upon
an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I
 :

412 MOBY DICK; OR

knew must be about whalers. The title was, Dan Coopman, where-
fore I concluded that this must be the invaluablememoirs of some
Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its
cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the
production of one “Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snod-
head, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German
in the college of Santa Claus and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the
work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble
— this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me
that “Dan Coopman” did not mean “The Cooper,” but “The Mer-
chant.” In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated
of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained a
very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter
it was, headed “Smeer,” or “Fat,” that I found a long detailed list

of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whale-
men; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribed
the following

400.000 lbs. of beef.

60.000 lbs. Friesland pork.
150.000 lbs. of stock fish.

550.000 lbs. of biscuit.

12.000 lbs. of soft bread.
2,800 firkins of butter.
20.000 lbs. Texel and Leyden cheese.
144.000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article).
550 ankers of Geneva.
10,800 barrels of beer.

Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in

the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes,
barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this
beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were in-
cidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic ap-
plication; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my
own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by
 THE WHITE WHALE 413

every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen

whale In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and
fishery.
Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to
their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous
by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their
game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux
country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of
train oil.

The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. How, as

those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of
that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen,
including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not
much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their
fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I
say, we have man, for a twelve weeks’
precisely two barrels of beer per
allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin.
—
How, whether these gin and beer harpooneers so fuddled as one might
—
fancy them to have been were the right sort of men to stand up in a
boat’s head,and take good aim at flying whales this would seem some-
;

what improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But
this was very far Horth, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with
the constitution. Upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer
would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the masthead and boozy
in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Hantucket and Hew
Bedford.
But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch
whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the
English whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say
they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better
out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this
empties the decanter.
414 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER Cl

A BOWER IN THE ARSAQIDES

Hitherto, in descriptive treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly

dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect or separately and in detail
;

upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and

thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behoves me now to un-
button him still and untrussing the points of his hose, un-
further,
buckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the
joints of his innermost hones, set him before you in his ultimatum;
that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.
But how now, Ishmael ? How is it, that you, a mere oarsmen in the
fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the
whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lec-
tures on the anatomy of the Cetacea and by help of the windlass, hold
;

up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can

you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook
dishes a roast-pig ? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto
been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah
alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the
rafters, ridgepole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-
work of leviathan and belike of the tallow-vats, dairyrooms, butteries,
;

and cheeseries in his bowels.

I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed
with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged
to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for
his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and
for the heads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without
using my boat hatchet, and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and
reading all the contents of that young cub ?
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan
in their gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge
I am indebted to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one
of the Arsacides. Eor being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to
the trading-ship Bey of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Ar-
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 415

sacidean holidays with the Lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa
at Pupella ;
a seaside glen not very far distant from what our sailors
called Bamboo-Town, his capital.
Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being
gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought
together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his
people could invent ;
chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices, chis-
elled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes ;
and all these
distributed among whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted,
tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.
Chief among these was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
latter
unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his
head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings
seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped
of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the hones become dust dry in the
sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen,
where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.
The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with
Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics in the ;
skull, the priests kept
up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again
sent forth vapoury spout; while, suspended from a bough, the ter-
its

rific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword
that so affrighted Damocles.
It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy
Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the
industrious earth beneath was as a weaver’s loom, with a gorgeous carpet
on whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and
it,

the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden
branches all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses the message-carrying
; ;

air; all these unceasingly Through the lacings of the

were active.

leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied
verdure. Oh, busy weaver unseen weaver pause one word
!
!
— !
— !

whither flows the fabric ? what palace may it deck ? wherefore all these

ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver! —stay thy hand! —but one

single word with thee! Ha y —the shuttle flies —the figures float

from forth the loom ;

the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides
 —

416 MOBY DICK; OR

away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deaf-
ened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we too,

who look on the loom are deafened and only when we escape it shall
;

we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in
all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among
the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the
walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies
been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din
of the great world’s loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood,
the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging — a gigantic idler!
Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and
hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver ;
him-
self all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener,
fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death
trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him

curly-headed glories.
Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and
saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where
the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel
as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the
priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro
I paced before this skeleton —brushed the vines aside —broke
through the ribs — and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered,
eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours.
But soon my line was out; and following it back, I emerged
from the
opening where I entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was
there but bones.
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the
skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me
taking the altitude of the final rib. “How now!” they shouted;
“Dar’st thou measure this our god ! That’s for us.” “Aye, priests
well, how long do you make him, then ?” But hereupon a fierce con-
test rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each
other’s sconces with their yard-sticks — the great skull echoed —and
seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements.
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 417

These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first,

be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied

measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you
can refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum,
they me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that coun-
tell

try, where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales.
Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in Hew
Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call “the only perfect speci-
men of a Greenland or Right Whale in the United States.” Moreover,
at a place in Yorkshire, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir
Clifford Constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale,
but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my
friend King Tranquo’s.
In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons be-
longed, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir
Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir
Clifford’s whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great
chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, bony cavitiesin all his
—
spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan and swing all day upon his
lower jaw. Locks are to he put upon some of his trap-doors and shut-
ters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of
keys at his side.

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied
verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my
wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of pre-
serving spch valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space,
and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a
—
poem I was then composing at least, what untattooed parts might re-
—
main I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed,
should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
418 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER CII

MEASUREMENT OF TIIE WHALERS SKELETON

In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain state-
ment, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we
are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.
According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly
base upon Captain Seoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest
size Greenland whale of sixty feet in length ;
according to my careful
calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between
eighty-five and ninety and something less than forty
feet in length,
feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least
ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would con-
siderably out weigh the combined population of a whole village of one
thousand one hundred inhabitants.
Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should he put to
this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman’s imagination?
Having already ways put before you his skull, spout-
in various
hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall
now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of
his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very
large a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far
the most complicated part and as nothing is to be repeated concerning
;

it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under

your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion
of the general structure we are about to view.
In length, the Sperm Whale’s skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-
two feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must
have been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about
one fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two
feet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet; leaving some fifty

feet of plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something

less than a third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs
which once enclosed his vitals.

To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,

extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 419

the embryo hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only
some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is other-
wise, for the time, but a long, disconnected timber.
The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck,
was nearly six feet long ;
the second, third, and fourth were each suc-
cessively longer, you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the
till

middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches. From that
part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned
five feet and some inches. In general thickness they all bore a seemly
correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the most arched.
In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay
foot-path bridges over small streams.
In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of
the whale is by no means the mould of this invested form. The
largest of the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that
part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. How, the great-
est depth of the invested body of this particular whale must have
been at least sixteen feet; whereas the corresponding rib measured but
little more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the
true notion of the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some
way, where I now saw but a naked spine, all that had been once
wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and
bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered
joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes,
an utter blank
How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man
to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring
over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. Ho.
Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddvings
of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the
fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with
a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. Ho speedy enterprise.
But now it’s done, it looks much like Pompey’s Pillar.
There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are
not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks
420 MOBY DICK; OR
on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The
largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and
in depth more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away
into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a
white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, hut
they had been by some little cannibal urchins, the priest’s children,
lost

who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the
spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple
child’s play.

CHAPTEE CIII

THE FOSSIL WHALE

From mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme

his
whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you,
you could not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated
of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle
to tail, and the yards he measured about the waist ;
only think of the
gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great
cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlopdeck of a line-

of-battle ship.
Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behoves
me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not
overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him
out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described
him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it
now remains to magnify him in an archseological, fossiliferous, and
antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the
Leviathan — to an ant or a flea —such portly terms might justly be
deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the
text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under
the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that
whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these
dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson,
expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous lexicog-
 THE WHITE WHALE 421

rapher’s uncommon personal bulk more iitted him to compile a lexi-

con to be used by a whale author like me.
One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,
though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing
of this Leviathan ? Unconsciously my chirography expands into pla-
card capitals. Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater
for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of
penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make
me faint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to
include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of
whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all

the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole

universe. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and
liberal theme! We
expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book,
you must choose a mighty theme. Ho great and enduring volume
can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my
credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time
I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals
and wells, wine-vaults, cellars,and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by
way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the
earlier geological strata there are found fossils of monsters now almost
completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are called
the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate inter-
cepted links, between the antechronical creatures, and those whose re-

mote posterity are said to have entered the Ark. All the Fossil Whales
hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last
preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them pre-
cisely answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet
sufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking
rank as Cetacean fossils.

Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their

bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals,

been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in Eng-

land, in Scotland, and in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Ala-
bama. Among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull.
 ;

422 MOBY DICK; OR

which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris,
a short street opening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries
and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in
Napoleon’s time. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have be-
longed to some utterly unknown Leviathanic species.

But by far the most wonderful of all cetacean relics was the almost
complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842,
on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken
credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the
fallen angels.The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and
bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen
bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English anatomist,
it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a de-
parted species — a significant illustration of the fact, again and again
repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but
little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen rechrist-
ened the monster Zeuglodon —
and in his paper read before the Lon-
;

don Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most ex-
traordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out
of existence.
When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,
jaws, rigs, and vertebrae, all characterised by partial resemblances to
the existing breeds of sea-monsters ;
but at the same time bearing on the
other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antechronical Levia-
thans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that
wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun for time be- ;

gan with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain
dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities when wedged bas- ;

tions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics and in all the ;

25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an inhabitable hand’s

breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale’s;
and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the
Andes and the Himalayas. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan ?
Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaohs. Methuselah
seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am
horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeak-
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 423

able terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must
need exist after all human ages are over.
But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
ancient bust ;
but upon Egyptian tables, whose antiquity seems to claim
for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable
print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah,
some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling
a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins,
and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe

of the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore

was there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon
was cradled.
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiq-
uity of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down
by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.
“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Bafters and
Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a mon-
strous size are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common
People imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the
temple, no Whale can pass it without immediate death. But the
truth of the Matter is, that on either side of the Temple, there are
Bocks that shoot two Miles into the Sea, and wound the Whales when
they light upon ’em. They keep a Whale’s Bib of an incredible
length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with its convex
part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be reached
by a Man upon a Camel’s Back. This Bib is said to have layn there
a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians affirm, that a

Prophet who prophesy’d of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and

some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth
by the Whale at the Base of the Temple.”
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be
a Nantucketer, and a Whaleman, you will silently worship there.
 —:

424 MOBY DICK; OR

CHAPTER CIV
DOES THE WHALERS MAGNITUDE DIMINISH ? WILL HE PERISH ?

Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us

from the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired,
whether, in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated
from the original bulk of his sires.
But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the
present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are
found in the Tertiary system (embracing distinct geological period
prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those
belonging to its latter formation exceed in size those of its earlier ones.
Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the
Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than
seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen,
that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a
large-sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen’s author-
ity, that Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long
at the time of capture.
But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are
an advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods
may it not he, that since Adam’s time they have degenerated?
Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts
of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally.
For Pliny tells us of whales that embraced acres of living hulk, and
Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length
Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days
of Banks and Solander, Cook’s naturalists, we find a Danish member
of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales
(Reydon-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty
yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the
French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the very
beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one
hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work
was published so late as A.D. 1825.
But will any whaleman believe these stories ? Ho. The Whale of
 THE WHITE WHALE 425

to-day is as big as his ancestors in Pliny’s time. And if ever I go

where Pliny is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold
to tell him Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the
so.

-Egypti an mummies that were buried thousands of years before even

Pliny was born, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modern
Kentuckian in and while the cattle and other animals
his socks;
sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative
proportions in which they are drawn just as plainly prove that the
high-bred stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far
exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh’s fat kine; in the face of
all this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone should
have degenerated.
But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient
lookouts at the mastheads of the whale ships, now penetrating even
through Behring’s Straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and
lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted
along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can
long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he
must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale,
like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the
final puff.

Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of

buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands
the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and
scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous
river capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar
an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem
furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy
extinction.
But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short

a period ago —not a good lifetime — the census of the buffalo in Illinois

exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present
day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region and though ;

the cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man ;

yet the

far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglor-

ious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the
426 MOBY DICK; OR
Sperm Whale for forty-eight months think they have done extremely
well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish.

Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and
trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset suns still

rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of moccasined

men, for the same number of months, mounted on horses instead of
sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, hut forty thousand and
more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be statistically stated.
Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former
years (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in
small pods were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in con-
sequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more
remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales,
influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense
caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and
pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious
seems the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone whales no
longer haunt many grounds in former years abounding with them,
hence that species also is declining. For they are only being driven
from promontory to cape ;
and if one coast is no longer enlivened with
their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been very
recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.
Furthermore concerning these
: last mentioned Leviathans, they have
two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever re-
main impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the
frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the
savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at
last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate
glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes ;
and
in acharmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit
from man.
But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for
one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that
this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battal-

ions. But though for some time past a number of these whales, not
 THE WHITE WHALE 427

less than 13,000, have been -annually slain on the nor* -west coast by
the Americans alone yet there are considerations which render even
;

this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in

this matter.
Natural as it issomewhat incredulous concerning the pop-
to he
ulousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall
we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one
hunting the King of Siam took 4000 elephants; that in those regions
elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes.
And there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have
now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by
Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East — if they still

survive there in great numbers, much more may the great whale out-
last all hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate which is pre-
in,
cisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa,
New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined.
Moreover: we are from the presumed great longev-
to consider, that
ity of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,
therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult generations
must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some
idea of, by imagining all the graveyards, cemeteries, and family vaults
of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and
children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this count-
less host to the present human population of the globe.
Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in
his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the
seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site
of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s
flood he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again
flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale
will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial

flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

428 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER CV
ahab's leg

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the

Samuel Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small
violence to his own person. He had alighted with such energy
upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splinter-
ing shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-
hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command
to the steersman (it was, as ever, something about his not steering in-

flexibly enough) ;
then, the already shaken ivory received such an ad-
ditional twist and wrench that though it still remained entire, and
to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trust-
worthy.
And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his
pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the
condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. Eor it
had not been very long prior to the Pequod’s sailing from Han tucket,
that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and
insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimagi-
nable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that
it had stakewise smitten, and all but pierced his groin ;
nor was it with-
out extreme difficulty that the agonising wound was entirely cured.
Hor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that
all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue
of a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most
poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as
the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all
miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally,
thought Ahab ;
since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further
than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. Eor, not to hint of this: that
it an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some
is

natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the
other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childless-
ness of all hell’s despair ;
whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still

fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs

 s

THE WHITE WHALE 429

beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an in-
equality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while
even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying
pettiness lurking in them, but at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystic
significance, and, in some men, an archangel grandeur; so do their
diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the
genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the
sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that in the face of all the
glad, haymaking suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest moons, we
must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever
glad. The ineffaceable, sad birthmark in the brow of man, is but the
stamp of sorrow in the singers.
Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might
more properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many
other particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery
to some, why it was, that for a certain period both before and after
the sailing of the Pequod he had hidden himself away with such
,

Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought

speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead.
Captain Peleg’s bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means
adequate; though, indeed, as touching all Ahab’s deeper part, every
revelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory
light. But in the end it all came out; this one matter did, at least.

That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness.

And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore,
who, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned approach
to him ;
to that timid circle the above hinted casualty —remaining, as it

did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab —invested itself with terrors,

not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that,

through their zeal for him, they had all conspired, so far as in them lay,

to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others ;

and hence it was,
that not till a considerable interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon
the Pequod* decks.
But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the
air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not
with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain,
practical procedures ; —
he called the carpenter.
430 MOBY DICK; OR
And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him with-
out delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates him
to see

supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale)
which had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a
careful selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured.
This done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg completed
that night; and to provide all the fittings for it, independent of those
pertaining to the distrusted one in use. Moreover the ship’s forge was
ordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and,
to accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at

once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.

CHAPTER CVI
THE CARPENTER

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons and take high

of Saturn,
abstracted man alone, and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe.
But from the same point take mankind in mass, and for the most
part they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and
hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnish-
ing an example of the high, humane abstraction, the Pequod’s carpen-
ter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this stage.
Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belong-
ing to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical ex-
tent, alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to
his own; the carpenter’s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching
trunk of all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do
with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to
him of the generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was
singularly efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies,
continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years’
voyage, in uncivilised and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his
readiness in ordinary duties: — repairing stove boats, sprung spars, re-
forming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull’s-eyes in the
deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous
 THE WHITE WHALE 431

matters more directly pertaining to his special business; he was more-

over unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both
useful and capricious.
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so mani-
fold, was his vice-bench; a long, rude, ponderous table furnished with

several vices of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all
times except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely
lashed athwartships against the rear of the try-works.
A belaying-pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole:
the carpenter claps it and straightway
into one of his every-ready vices,
files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board,
and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of right- whale bone,
and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-
looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter
concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermilion stars to be
painted upon the blade of his every oar. Screwing each oar in his big
vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation.
A sailor takes a fancy to wear sharkbone earrings the carpenter: drills

his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and
clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the
poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation;
whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him
to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent
and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he
deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans.
But while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished, and
with such liveliness of expertness in him, too, all this would seem
to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not pre-
cisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a cer-
tain impersonal stolidity as it were ;
impersonal, I say ; for it so shaded

off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with
the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which,
while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its
peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals.
Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it ap-
 , ;

432 MOBY DICK; OR

peared, an all-ramifying heartlessness ;
—yet was it oddly daslied at
times, with an old, crutch-like antediluvian, wheezing humorousness,
not unstreaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness ;
such
as might have served to pass the time during the midnight watch on
the bearded forecastle of Noah’s ark. Was it that this old carpenter
had been a lifelong wanderer, whose much rolling to and fro not only
had gathered no moss, hut what is more, had rubbed off whatever
small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him ? He
was a stripped abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised
as a new-born babe; living without premeditated reference to this
world or the next. You might almost say, that this strange uncom-
promisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his nu-
merous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by in-
stinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any inter-

mixture of all of these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf

and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator;
his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into
the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but
still highly useful multum in parvo Sheffield contrivances, assuming
the exterior —though a little swelled — of a common pocket-knife; but
containing, not only blades of various sizes, but also screw-drivers,
corkscrews, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers, counter-sinkers.
So, if his superiors wanted to use the carpenter for a screw-driver,
all they had to do was to open that part of him, and the screw

was fast; or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they
were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omni-tooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was after no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have
all,

a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow

anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksil-
ver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was
and there it had abided for now some sixty years or more. And
this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him this ;

it was, that kept him a great part of the time soliloquising; but only
like an unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquises; or
rather, his body was a sentry-box and this soliloquiser on guard there,
and talking all the time to keep himself awake.
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 433

CHAPTER CYII
AHAB AND THE CARPENTER

THE DECK FIRST NIGHT WATCH

( Carpenter standing before bis vice-bench , and by the light of two
lanterns busily filing the ivory-joist for the leg , which joist is firmly
fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory , leather straps , pads, screws, and *

various tools of all sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red
flame of the forge is seen, where the blacksmith is at work.
“Drat the file, and drat the hone! That is hard which should be soft,
and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws
and shinbones. Let’s try another. Aye, now, this works better
(sneezes). Halloa, this bone dust is (sneezes) —why it’s (sneezes )
yes it’s (sneezes) — bless my soul, it won’t let me speak! This is what
an old fellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree,
and you don’t get this dust; amputate a live hone, and you don’t get
it (sneezes). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and let’s
have that ferule and buckle-screw; I’ll be ready for them presently.
Lucky now (sneezes) there’s no knee-joint to make; that might puzzle
a little ;
but a mere shinbone —why it’s easy as making hop-poles only ;

I should like to put a good finish on. Time, time if I but only had
;

the time, I could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever (sneezes)
scraped to a lady in a parlour. Those buckskin legs and calves of legs
I’ve seen in shop windows wouldn’t compare at all. They soak water,
they do and of course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (sneezes)
;

with washes and lotions, just like live legs. There before I saw it off, ;

now, I must call his old Mogulship, and see whether the length will be
all right; too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that’s the heel; we are
in luck ; here he comes, or it’s somebody else, that’s certain.”

ahab (advancing).

(During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing at times.)

“Well, man-maker!”
“Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the
length. Let me measure, sir.”
434 MOBY DICK; OR
“Measured for a leg! good. Well, it’s not the first time. About
it! There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast
here, carpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.”
“Oh, sir, it will break hones —beware, beware !”

“No fear ;
I like a good grip I like to feel something in this slippery
—
;

world that can hold, man. What’s Prometheus about there? the
blacksmith, I mean —what’s he about?
“He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.”
“Right. It’s a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He
!”
makes a fierce red flame there

“Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.”
“Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing,
that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men,, they say, should
have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what’s
made in fire must properly belong to fire and so hell’s probable. How
;

the soot flies This must he the remainder the Greek made the Afri-
!

cans of. Carpenter, when he’s through with that buckle, tell him to forge
a pair of steel shoulder-blades; there’s a pedlar abroad with a crush-
ing pack.”
“Sir?”
“Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I’ll order a complete man
after a desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks ;
then,
chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel ;
then, legs with roots to ’em,
to stay in one place ;
then, arms three feet through the wrist ;
no heart
at all, brass forehead,and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains and ;

let me see —
shall I order eyes to see outwards ? Ho, but put a skylight
on top of his head to illuminate inwards. There, take the order, and
away.”
“How, what’s he speaking about, and who’s he speaking to, I should
like to know ? Shall I keep standing here ?” (aside).
“ ’Tis
but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here’s one.
Ho, no, no I must have a lantern.”
;

“Ho, ho! That’s it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my
turn.”
“What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man ?
Thrusted light i§ worse than presented pistols,”
 THE WHITE WHALE 435

“I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.”

—
“Carpenter? why that’s but no; a very tidy, and, I may say, —
an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpen-
ter ; —
or wouldst thou rather work in clay V 9

“Sir ? — Clay ? clay, sir ? That’s mud ;

we leave clay to ditchers,
sir.”
y
“T^e fellow’s impious What art thou sneezing about ?”
!

“Bone is rather dusty, sir.”

“Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself
under living people’s noses.”
“Sir? — Oh! ah! —I guess so; —yes— oh, dear!”
“Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good
workmanlike workman, eh ? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well
for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall
nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that
is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst
thou not drive that old Adam away ?”
“Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have
heard something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted
man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be
still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so,

sir ?”

“It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine
once was ;
so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to
the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there to a

hair, do I. Is’t a riddle ?”

“I should humbly call it a poser, sir.”

“Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, think-

ing thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing pre-

cisely where thou now standest ;
aye, and standing there in thy spite ?

In thy most solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers?
Hold, don’t speak! And if I still feel the smart of my crushed leg,

though it be now so long dissolved; then, why mayest not thou, car-
penter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, and without a body ? Hah !”
“Good Lord ! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over
again ;
I think I didn’t carry a small figure, sir.”
 ;!

436 MOBY DICK; OR

“Look ye, pudding-heads should never- grant premises —How long
before the leg is done?”
“Perhaps an hour, sir.”

“Bungle away and bring it to me ( turns to go ). Oh,

at it then,
Life, here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this
blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal interin-
debtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as
air ;
and I’m down in the whole world’s books. I am so rich, I could

have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction

of the Roman empire (which was the world’s) ;

and yet I owe for the
flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens ! I’ll get a crucible, and

into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra.
So.”

carpenter ( resuming his work).

“Well, well, well ! Stuhb knows him best of

and Stubb always all,

says he’s queer says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer
;

he’s queer, says Stubb; he’s queer —

queer, queer; and keeps dinning
it into Mr. Starbuck all the time queer, sir —
queer, queer, very queer.—
And here’s his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here’s his bedfellow!
has a stick of whale’s jawbone for a wife! And this is his leg; he’ll
stand on this. What was that now about one leg standing in three
places,and all three places standing in one hell —how was that ? Oh
I don’t wonder he looked so scornful at me! I am a sort of strange-
thoughted sometimes, they say; but that’s only haphazard-like. Then,
a short, little old body like me, should never undertake to wade out into
deep waters with tall, heron-built captains; the water chucks you un-
der the chin pretty quick, and there’s a great cry for lifeboats. And
here’s the heron’s leg! long and slim, sure enough! How, for most
folks one pair of legs lasts a lifetime, and that must be because they
use them mercifully, as a tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly
old coach-horses. But Ahab; oh, he’s a hard driver. Look, driven
one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and now wears out
bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you, Smut! bear a hand there
with those screws, and let’s finish it! What a leg this is! It looks
like a real live leg, filed down to nothing but the core ;
he’ll be standing
 THE WHITE WHALE 437

on this to-morrow ;
he’ll he taking altitudes on it. Halloa ! I almost
forgot the little oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the
latitude. So, so ;
chisel, file, and sand-paper, now !”

CHAPTER CVIII

AHAB AND STARBUCK IN THE CABIN

According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and
lo!no inconsiderable oil came up with the water the casks below must ;

have sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck
went down into the cabin to report this unfavourable affair 1 .

How, from the south and west the Pequod was drawing nigh to
Formosa and the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical
outlets from the China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found
Ahab with a general chart of the Oriental archipelagoes spread before
him; and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts
of the Japanese islands —
Hiphon, Mastmai, and Sikoke. With his
snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table,
and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous
old man, with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow,
and tracing his old courses again.
“Who’s there?” hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning
round to it. “On deck! Begone!”
“Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking,
sir. We must up Burtons and break out.”
“Up Burton and break out? How that we are nearing Japan;
heave-to here for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops ?”
“Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make
good in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth
saving, sir.”
“So it is, so it is ;
if we get it.”

1
In Sperm- whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it
is a regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench
the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals is removed

by the ship’s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept damply tight,
while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the mariners readily
detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo.
438 MOBY DICK; OR
“I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.”
“And was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone
I Let !

it leak! I’m all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full
of leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that’s a
far worse plight than the Pequod’s, man. Yet I don’t stop to plug
my leak ; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull ;
or how hope to
plug it, even if found, in this life’s howling gale ? Starbuck ! I’ll not
have the Burtons hoisted.”
“What will the owners say, sir ?”
“Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons.
What cares Ahab ? Owners, owners ? Thou art always prating to
me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my
conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its com-
mander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship’s keel On deck!” —
“Captain Ahab,” said the reddening mate, moving further into the
cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it al-
most seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward
manifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrust-
ful of itself “a better man than I might well pass over in thee what
;

he would quickly enough resent in a younger man ay, and in a happier, ;

Captain Ahab.”
“Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of
me? —On deck!”
“Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir — to be for-
bearing! Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto,
Captain Ahab?”
Ahab musket from the rack (forming part of most
seized a loaded
South Sea men’s cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,
exclaimed: “There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one
Captain that is lord over the Pequod — On deck!”
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks,
you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of
the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and
as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: “Thou hast
outraged, not insulted me, sir but for that I ask thee not
; to beware of
Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; be-
ware of thyself, old man,”
 ©C1K1G9290

© Dadd, Mead & Company, Inc.

*
'there one god that is lord over the earth, and one captain that
is is lord over
THE PEQUOD ON DECK !”

I
*
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 439

“He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys most careful bravery that !” ;

murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. “What’s that he said

—
Ahab beware of Ahab there’s something there!” Then unconsciously
using the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in
the little cabin ;
but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed,
and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.
“Thou good a fellow, Starbuck,” he said lowly to the
art but too
mate; then raising his voice to the crew: “Furl the t’gallant-sails,
and close-reef the topsails, fore and aft back the mainyard up Burton,
; ;

and break out in the mainhold.”

It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting
Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in
him or mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperi-
;

ously forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however tran-

sient, in the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his
orders were executed ;
and the Burtons were hoisted.

CHAPTER CIX
QUEEQUEG IN' HIS COFFIN

Upon was found that the casks last struck into the hold
searching, it

were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it
being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the
slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts and from that black midnight;

sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they
go ;
$nd and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost
so ancient,
puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone
cask containing coins of Captain Xoah with copies of the posted pla-
cards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce

after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and
iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were
hard and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were
to get about ;

treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an
air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless stu-
dent with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did
not visit them then.
 — ;

440 MOBY DICK; OR

blow, at this timewas that my poor pagan companion, and fast
it

bosom friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him
nigh to his endless end.
Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown
dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to he captain, the

higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as
harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, hut
as we have elsewhere seen —mount his dead back in a rolling sea ;
and
finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all
day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clum-
siest casks and see to their stowage. To he short, among whalemen, the
harpooneers are the holders, so called.
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you
should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him
there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was
crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted
lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow
proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of
his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever ;
and
at last, after some days’ suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to
the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away
in those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of
him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and
his cheekbones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing
fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and
mildly hut deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous
testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be
weakened. And on the water, which, as they grow fainter,
like circles
expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of
Eternity. An awe that cannot he named would steal over you as you
sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his
face as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. Eor
whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into
words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels
all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author

from the dead could adequately tell. So that let us say it again —
no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those
 THE WHITE WHALE 441

whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Quee-
queg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea
seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean’s invisible
floodtide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven.
Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg him-
self, what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious fa-
vour he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when
the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nan-
tucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like
the rich war-wood of his native isle and upon inquiry, he had learned
;

that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark
canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him;
for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming
a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be
floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe
that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their
own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so
form the white breakers of the milky way — after saying this, he added,
that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, ac-

cording to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-
devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket,
all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale
boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel ;
though that involved but
uncertain steering, and much leeway adown
dim ages. the
Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the car-
penter was at once commanded to do Queequeg’ s bidding, whatever it
might include. There was some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber
aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the
aboriginal groves of the Lackaday Islands, and from these dark planks
the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter
apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the
indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle
and took Queequeg’ s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking
Queequeg’ s person as he shifted the rule.
“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Is-

land sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and

442 MOBY DICK; OR
general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length
the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting
two notches as its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks
and his tools, and to work.
When was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted,
the last nail
he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, enquiring
whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s
consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought
to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals,
some dying men are the most tyrannical ;
and certainly, since they will
shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be
indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin
with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden
stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin
along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request,
also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within : a flask of fresh
water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped
up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up
for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed,
that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay with-
out moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out
his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo
between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to he placed
over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there
lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in
view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he murmured, at last, and
signed to be replaced in his hammock.
But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slyly hovering near by
all this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings,

took him by the hand in the other, holding his tambourine.

;

“Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving?
where go ye now ? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles
where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little
 —;

THE WHITE WHALE 443

errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who’s now been missing long: I
think he’s in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him;
for hemust be very sad for look he’s left his tambourine behind
;
!
;

I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! How, Queequeg,, die; and I’ll beat
ye your dying march.”
“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that
in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their
wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken
in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor
Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers
of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?
Hark! he speaks again: but more wildly now.”
“Form two and two! Let’s make a General of him! Ho, where’s
his harpoon ? —
Lay it across here Pig-a-dig, dig, dig huzza Oh, ! !

for a game-cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies
—
game! mind ye that; Queequeg dies game! take ye good heed of —
that Queequeg dies game
;
I say game, game, game but base little
!
;
!

Pip, he died a coward; died all a-shiver;-— out upon Pip! Hark ye:
if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he’s a runaway a coward, a coward, ;

a coward Tell them he jumped from a whale boat

! I’d never beat !

my tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once
more dying here. Ho, no shame upon all cowards shame upon
! —
them! Let ’em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a whale boat.
Shame! shame!”
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream.
Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock. ’

But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death
now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied;
soon there seemed no need of the carpenter’s box and thereupon, when :

some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that

th« cause of his sudden convalescence was this at a critical moment,
:
—
he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone;
and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet,
he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter
of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, Certainly. In
 —;

444 MOBY. DICK; OR

a word, was Queequeg’ s conceit that if a man made up his mind
it

to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing hut a whale, or a
gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

How, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civi-

lised ;
that while a sick, civilised man may be six months convalescing,
generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half well again in a day.
So, in good time my
Queequeg gained strength and at length after sit-
;

ting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous
appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs,
gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little hit, and then springing
into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced
himself fit for a fight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his cotfin for a sea-chest ;
and
emptying into it his canvas them in order there.
hag of clothes, set
Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of gro-
tesque figures and drawings and it seemed that hereby he was striving,
;

in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body.
And had been the work of a departed prophet and seer
this tattooing
of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his
body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical
treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own
proper person was a riddle to unfold ;
a wondrous work in one volume
but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live
heart heat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined
in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they
were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it

must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his,
when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg
“Oh, devilish tantalisation of the gods !”

CHAPTER CX
THE PACIFIC

When gliding by the Bashee Isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea ;
were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear
Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my
 THE WHITE WHALE 445

youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a

thousand leagues of blue.
There one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose
is

gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath;

like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried
evangelist, St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures,
wide-rolling, watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four conti-
nents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly for ;

here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnam-

bulisms, reveries ;
all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dream-

ing, still ;
tossing like slumberers in their beds ;
the ever-rolling waves
butmade so by their restlessness.
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific once beheld,
must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters
of the world, the Indian Ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The
same waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but
yesterday planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded
but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while
all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, un-

known Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysteri-

ous, divine Pacific zones the world’s whole bulk about; makes all coasts
one bay to it seems the tide-beating heart, of earth. Lifted by those
;

eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your
head to Pan.
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain, as standing like an
iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizzen rigging, with one
nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee Isles
(in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the
other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that
sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming.
Launched at length upon these almost final waters, and gliding to-
wards the Japanese cruising-ground, the old man’s purpose intensified
itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vice the Delta of his fore- ;

head’s veins swelled like overladen brooks ;

in his very sleep, his ring-
ing cry ran through the vaulted hull, “Stem all! the White Whale
!”
spouts thick blood
446 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER CXI
THE BLACKSMITH

Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned

in these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits
shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith,
had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after concluding
his contributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it on deck,
fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast being now almost incessantly
;

invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do some

little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their various
weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an
eager circle, all waiting to he served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads,
harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty move-
ment, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man’s was a patient ham-
mer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petu-
lance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn ;
bowing over still

further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were

life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of
his heart. And so it was. —Most miserable!
A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight hut painful ap-
pearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage ex-
cited the curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their
persisted questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to
pass that every one now knew the shameful story of his wretched
fate.

Belated and not innocently, one hitter winter’s midnight, on the

road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidlv
felt the deadly numbness stealing over him and sought refuge in a
leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities
of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out
the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastro-
phied fifth act of the grief of his life’s drama.
He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedlv
encountered that thing in sorrow’s technicals called ruin. He had
been an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 447

house and garden ;

embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife,
and three blithe, ruddy children every Sunday went to a cheerful-
;

looking church, planted in a grove. But one night, under cover of

darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a
desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed them all of
everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did igno-
rantly conduct this burglar into his family’s heart. It was the Bottle
Conjuror ! Upon the opening of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend,
and shrivelled up his home. Uow, for prudent, most wise, and eco-
nomic reasons, the blacksmith’s shop was in the basement of his dwell-
ing, but with a separate entrance to it so that always had the young and
;

loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but with

vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed old hus-
band’s hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the
floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery; and

so, to stout Labour’s lullaby, the blacksmith’s infants were rocked to

slumber.
Oh, woe on woe ! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be
timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full
ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief,
and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their
after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death
plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily
toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family,, and left the

worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should
make him easier to harvest.
Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every
day grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew
fainter than the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tear-
less eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children;

the bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was
sold the mother dived down into the long churchyard grass her chil-
; ;

dren twice followed her thither and the houseless, familyless old man
;

staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his

grey head a scorn to flaxen curls
Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but
Death is only a launching into the reign of the strange Untried; it
 !

448 MOBY DICK; OR

is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote,
the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing
eyes of such men, who still have them some interior compunc-
left in

tions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean

alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors,
and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite
Pacifies, the thousand mermaids sing to them
—
“Come hither, broken-
hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death;
here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither
bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhor-
ring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put
up thy gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither,, till we
marry thee!”
Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and
by fall of eve, the blacksmith’s soul responded, Aye, I come! And
so Perth went a-whaling.

CHAPTER CXII
THE FORGE

With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling sharkskin apron, about

midday, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter
placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in
the coals, and with the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab
came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag.
While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till
at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering
it upon the anvil —
the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hover-
ing flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.
“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they are always
flying in thy wake birds of good omen,, too, but not to all
; look here, ;
—
—
they burn; but thou thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”
“Because I am Captain Ahab,” answered Perth,
scorched all over,

resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily

canst thou scorch a scar.”
 — — — ;

THE WHITE WHALE 449

“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely
woeful In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery
to me.
in others that is not mad. Thou shouldst go mad, blacksmith; say,
why dost thou not go mad? How canst thou endure without being
mad ? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou canst not go mad ?
What wert thou making there ?”
“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.”
“And canst thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such
hard usage as it had?”
“I think so,, sir.”
“And . I suppose thou canst smooth almost any seams and dents
never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”
“Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”
“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and lean-
ing with both hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here here —can
ye smooth out a seam like this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across
his ribbed brow; “if thou couldst, blacksmith, glad enough would I
lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between
my eyes. Answer ! Canst thou smooth this seam ?”

“Oh ! that is the one, sir ! Said I not all seams and dents but one ?”

“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable ;

for
though thou only see’st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into
the bone of my skull that is all wrinkles! But, away with child’s
play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!” jingling the
leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. “I, too, want a harpoon

made one
;
that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth ;
some-
thing that will s"tick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There’s the
stuff,” flinging the pouch upon the anvil. “Look ye, blacksmith, these

are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.”

“Horse-shoe stubbs, Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then,
sir ?

the best and stubbomest stuff we blacksmiths ever work.”

“I know it, old man these stubbs will weld together like glue from
;

the melted bones of murderers. Quick ! forge me the harpoon. And

forge hie first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and
hammer these twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line.
Quick ! I’ll blow the fire.”

When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by
450 MOBY DICK; OR
one, by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron
bolt. “A flaw!” rejecting the last one. “Work that over again,
Perth.”
This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one,
when Ahab stayed and said he would weld his own iron. As,
his hand,
then, with regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth
passing to him the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard
pressed forge shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed
and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking
silently,

some curse or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he
slid aside.

“What’s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for ?” muttered

Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. “That Parsee smells fire like a
fusee ;
and smells of it himself, like a hot musket’s powder-pan.”
At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat ;
and as
Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near
by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab’s bent face.
“Wouldst thou brand me, Perth?” wincing for a moment with the
pain “have I been but forging my own branding iron, then ?”
;

“Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not
this harpoon for the White Whale ?”

“For the white-fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make
—
them, thyself, man. Here are my razors the best of steel here, and ;

make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea.”

For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would
fain not use them.
“Take them, man, I have no need for them for I now neither shave,;

sup, nor pray till but here to work!” —

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the
shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron and as the blacksmith ;

was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he
cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.
—
“Ho, no no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper.
Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans!
Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb ?” holding it high
up. A cluster of dark nods replied, “Yes.” Three punctures were
 THE WHITE WHALE «i
made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then
tempered.
“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaholi !” deliri-

ously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the

baptismal blood.
Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of
hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the
socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some
fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension.
Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harpstring, then
eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed
“Good! and now for the seizings.”
At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread
yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon the ;

pole was then driven hard up into the socket from the lower end the
;

rope was traced half-way along the pole’s length, and firmly secured so,
with intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope like the —
—
Three Fates remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away
with the weapon the sound of his ivory leg and the sound of the hick-
;

ory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered
his cabin, a light unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was
heard. Oh, Pip thy wretched laugh, thy idle, unresting eye all thy
!
;

strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of

the melancholy ship, and mocked it!

CHAPTER CXIII

THE GILDER

Penetrating furthur and further into the heart of the J apanese cruis-

ing ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in
mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours
on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or
sailing, orpaddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or.
seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising though with but small
;

success for their pains.

 —

452 MOBY DICK; OR

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth,
slow heaving swells ;
seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe and so
;

sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearthstone
cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy
quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the
ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and
would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a
remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale boat the rover softly feels
a certain filial confident, land-like feeling toward the sea; that he re-
gards it as so much flowery earth ;
and the distant ship revealing only
the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through
high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie:
as when the western emigrants’ show their erected
horses only
. ears, while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing
verdure.
The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hillsides; as over these
there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied
children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when
the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your
most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, inter-
penetrate, and form one seamless whole.
Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as

temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did

seem to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath
upon them prove but tarnishing.
Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul;
in ye, though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,
in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover and ;

for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal
on them. Would to God would last. But the
these blessed calms
mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof calms :

crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady un-

retracing progress in this life ;
we do not advance through fixed grada-
tions, and at the last one pause: —through infancy’s unconscious spell,

boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence, doubt (the common doom),

then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering
 — , —

THE WHITE WHALE 453

repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again: and
are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final har-
bour, whence we unmoor no more ?
In what rapt ether sails the world
of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s
father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded
mothers die in bearing them; the secret of our paternity lies in their
grave, and we must there to learn it.
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into
that same golden sea, Starhuck lowly murmured:
“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s
eye! — Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping can-
nibal ways. Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep
; ;

down and do believe.”

And Stuhb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same
golden light:
“I am Stubh, and Stubb has his history ;
hut here Stuhb takes oaths
that he has always been jolly!”

CHAPTER CXIV
THE PEQTJOD MEETS THE BACHELOR

And enough were the sights and the sounds that came hearing
jolly
down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab’s harpoon had been
welded.
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor which had just wedged in
her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now,
in glad holiday apparel was joyously, though somewhat
vain-gloriously,

sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground,

previ-

ous to pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red
bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat
was suspended,
bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was
seen the
Signals, ensigns, and
long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain.
jacks of all colours were flying from her rigging,
on every side. Side-
in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels
of
ways lashed
sperm; abcive. which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slepder
 ,

454 MOBY DICK; OR

breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was
a brazen lamp.
As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most
surprising success; more wonderful, for that while cruising in
all the
the same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without
securing a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been
given away to make room for the far more valuable sperm, but addi-
tional supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had
met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the captain’s and
officers’ state-rooms. Even had been knocked into
the cabin table itself
kindling-wood and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-
;

butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the
sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them;
it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his
largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare
coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets
of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was filled with
sperm, except the captain’s pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved
to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire
satisfaction.
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod
the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle ;
and
drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round
her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like poke or
stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke
of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates
and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped
with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an orna-
mented boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast,
three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory,
were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship’s
company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from
which the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost
thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastile, such wild cries
they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled
into the sea.
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 455

ship’s elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was

full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual di-
version.
And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and
black,, with a stubborn gloom and as the two ships crossed each other’s
—one
;

wakes all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings
as to things to come— -their two captains in themselves impersonated
the whole striking contrast of the scene.
“Come aboard, come aboard !” cried the gay Bachelor's commander,
lifting a glassand a bottle in the air.
“Hast seen the White Whale ?” gritted Ahab in reply.
“Ho; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,” said the
other good-humouredly. “Come aboard !”
“Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?”
“Hot enough to speak of —two islanders, that’s all; —
but come
aboard, old hearty, come along. I’ll soon take that black from your
brow. Come along, will ye (merry’s the play) ;
a full ship and home-
ward-bound.”
“How wondrous familiar is a fool !” muttered Ahab ;
then aloud,
“Thou and homeward bound, thou say’st; well, then,
art a full ship
call me an empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I
will mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!”
And went cheerily before the breeze, the
thus, while the one ship
other stubbornly fought against it and so the two vessels parted the
; ;

crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the
receding Bachelor but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze
for the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the
taffrail,eyed the homeward-bound craft he took from his pocket a small
vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed thereby
bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was filled

with Hantucket soundings.

CHAPTER CXV
THE DYING WHALE

Hot seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favourites
456 MOBY DICK; OR
sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the
rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging So seemed
sails fill out.
it with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bache-
lor, whales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.

It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the
crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky,
sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and
such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air,

that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys
of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor,
had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had
stemed from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from
off

the now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all
—
sperm whales dying the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring
— that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to
Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.
“He turns and turns him to it, how — slowly, but how steadfastly,
his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions.
He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!
—Oh that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring
4

sights. Look here, far waterlocked beyond all hum of human weal
!
;

or woe; in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions

no rocks furnish tablets where for long Chinese ages, the billows have
;

still rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the

Niger’s unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith;
but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it

heads some other way.

“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast
builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unver-
dured seas ;
thou art an thou queen,' and too truly speakest to
infidel,

me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its

after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head,
and then gone round again, without a lesson to me.
“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,
—
rainbowed jet! that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In
vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening
 THE WHITE WHALE «7
sun, that only calls forth life, hut gives it not again. Yet dost thou,
darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy un-
namable imminglings float beneath me here I am buoyed by breaths of
;

once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.

“Then hail, for ever hail, 0 sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea though
;

hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers I”

CHAPTER CXYI
THE WHALE WATCH

The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to
windward one, less distant, to leeward one ahead one astern. These
; ; ;

last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one
could not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay
by its side all night and that boat was Ahab’s.
;

The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s spouthole;
and the lantern hanging from its top cast a troubled flickering glare
upon the black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves,
which gently chafed the whale’s broad flank, like soft surf upon a
beach.
Ahab and all his boat’s crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who
crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played
round the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails.
A sound moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven
like the
ghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.
Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and
hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in
a flooded world. “I have dreamed it again,” said he.
“Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse
nor coffin can be thine ?”
“And who are hearsed that die on the sea ?”
“But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two
hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea the first not made by ;

mortal hands and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in
;

America.”
458 MOBY DICK; OR
“Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee: — a hearse and its plumes
floating over the ocean with the waves for the pallbearers. H*a ! Such
a sight we shall not soon see.”
“Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man.”
“And what was that saying about thyself?”
“Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot.”
—
“And when thou art so gone before if that ever befall then ere —
I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still? Was it —
not so ? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot ! I have
here two pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it.”

“Take another pledge, old man,” said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted
—
up like fire-flies in the gloom “Hemp only can kill thee.”
—
“The gallows, ye mean I am immortal then, on land and on sea,”
cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;
—
“Immortal on land and on
sea!”
Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came. on, and
the slumbering crew arose from the boat’s bottom, and ere noon the
dead whale was brought to the ship.

CHAPTER CXVII
THE QUADRANT

The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when
Ahab, coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helms-
man would ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners
quickly run to the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes
centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon ;
impatient for the order to point
the ship’s prow for the equator. In good time the order came. It
was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the hows of his high-
hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun
to determine his latitude.
How, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing
focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks
lacquered clouds there are none the horizon floats and this nakedness
; ; ;
 ;:

THE WHITE WHALE 459

of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendours of God's throne.
Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with coloured
glasses, through
which to take sight of that solar fire. So, swinging his
seated form
to the roll of the ship, and with his
astrological-looking instrument
placed to his eye, he remained in that posture for
some moments to
catch the precise instant when the sun should gain
the precise meridian.
Meantime, while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee was
kneeling beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face thrown
up
like Ahab’s, was eyeing the same sun with him; only
the lids of his
eyes half hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly
passionlessness. At length the desired observation was taken; and
with his pencil upon his ivory Ahab soon calculated what his
leg,
latitude must be at that precise instant. Then falling into a moment's
reverie, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to him-
self: “Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest me
truly where I am —but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall
he ? Or where some other thing besides me is this mo-
canst thou tell

ment living ? Where is Moby Dick ? This instant thou must be eye-
ing him. These eyes of mine look into the very eye that is even now
beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even now equally be-
holding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun !"

Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its

numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered:

“Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores,
and Captains the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might but
; ;

what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou
thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee
no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water
or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon and yet with thy impo- ;

tence thou insultest the sun ! Science ! Curse thee, thou vain toy
and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven,
whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now
scorched with thy light, 0 sun ! Level by nature to this earth’s hori-
zon are the glances of man's eyes ;
not shot from the crown of his head,
as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou
quadrant !" dashing it to the deck, “no longer will I guide my earthly

way by thee ;
the level ship's compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by
 ;

460 MOBY DICK; OR

log and by line ;
these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the
sea. Aye,” lighting from the boat to the deck, “thus I trample on
thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and
destroy thee!”
As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live
and dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and
a fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself — these passed over
the mute, motionless Parsee’s face. Unobserved he rose and glided
away; while, awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the sea-
men clustered together on the. forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing
the deck, shouted out
—
“To the braces! Up helm! square in!” —
In an instant the yards swung round and as the ship half wheeled
;

upon her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon
her long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one
sufficient steed.

Standing between the knight-head Starbuck watched the Pequod’s

tumultuous way, and Ahab’s also, as he went lurching along the deck.
“I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full
of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down,
down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of
!”
thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes
—
“Aye,” cried Stubb, “but sea-coal ashes mind ye that, Mr. Star-
—
buck sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well I heard Ahab ;

mutter, ‘Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine
swears that I must play them and no others/ And damn me, Ahab,
but thou actest right live in the game, and die in it 1”
;

CHAPTER CXVIII
THE CANDLES

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal
crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent
but basket the deadliest thunders :
gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that
never swept the tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these
resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all
 —— —— !
!

THE WHITE WHALE 461

storms, the Typhoon. from out that cloud-

It will sometimes burst
less sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.

Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was tom of her canvas, and
bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly
ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the
thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts
fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the tem-
pest had left for its after-sport.
Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck;
at every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional
disaster might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb
and Flask were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lash-
ing of the boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted
to the very top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab’s) did
not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the reeling
ship’s high tottering side, stove in the boat’s bottom at the stern, and
left it again, all dripping through like a sieve.

“Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,” said Stubb, regarding the
wreck, “but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can’t fight it.

You see,Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it
leaps, all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring But as !

for me, all the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But
never mind it’s all in fun so the old song says” ;
;
: (sings).

Oh! jolly is the gale,

And a joker is the whale,
A’ flourishin’ his tail,

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

The scud all a flyin’,

That’s his flip only foamin’;

When he stirs in the spicin’

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh

Thunder splits the ships,

But he only smacks his lips,
A tastin’ of this flip,

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh
462 MOBY DICK; OR
“Let the Typhoon sing, and strike
“Avast, Stubb,” cried Starbuck.
bis harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt
hold thy peace.”
“But I am not a brave man ;
never said I was a brave man ;
I am
a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I you what it
tell

is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but
to cut my throat. And when that’s done, ten to one I sing ye the dox-
ology for a wind-up.”
“Madman ! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.”
“What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else,

never mind how foolish?”

“Here!” cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and point-
ing his hand towards the weather bow; markest thou not that the gale
comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby
Dick ? the very course he swung to this day noon ? now mark his boat
there where is that stove
! In the stern-sheets, man where he is wont
!
;

to stand —
his standpoint is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and
sing away, if thou must!”
“I don’t half understand ye: what’s in the wind?”
“Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to Nan-
tucket,” soliloquised Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb’s question.
“The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it into a
fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all
is blackness of doom but to leeward, homeward I see it lightens up
;
—
there ;
but not with the lightning.”
At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, follow-
ing the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same
instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.
“Who’s there?”
“Old Thunder!” said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to
his pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by
elbowed lances of fire.

Now, as the lightning-rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry

off the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea
some ships carry to each mast is intended to conduct it into the water.
But as this conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 463

may avoid all contact with the hull; and as, moreover, if kept con-
stantly towing there, itwould be liable to many mishaps, besides inter-
fering not a little with some of the rigging, and more or less impeding
the vessel’s way in the water ;
because of all this, the lower parts of a
ship’s lightning-rods are not always overboard but are generally made
;

in long slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the

chains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require.
“The rods ! the rods !” cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admon-
ished to vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting
flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post. “Are they overboard ? drop them
and aft. Quick !”
over, fore
“Avast!” cried Ahab; “let’s have fair play here though we be the
weaker side. Yet I’ll contribute to raise rods on the Himalayas and
Andes, that all the world may be secured but out on privileges Let ;
!

them be, sir.”

“Look aloft!” cried Starbuck. “The corposants! the corposants!”

All the yardarms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at
each tri-pointed lightning-rod end with three tapering white flames,
each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air,

like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.

“Blast the boat ! let it go ! cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing
sea heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently
jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. “Blast it!” —but slip-

ping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and
immediately shifting his tone, he cried — “The corposants have mercy
on us all!”
To sailors, oaths are household words ;
they will swear in the trance
of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest ;
they will imprecate curses
from the topsail-yardarms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea

but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when

God’s burning finger has been laid on the ship when His “Mene, Mene, ;

Tekel Upharsin” has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage.
While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from
the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle,
all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far-away
constellation of stars. Believed against the ghostly light, the gigantic
 —

464 MOBY DICK; OR

jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed the
black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of
Tashtego revealed his shark- white teeth, which strangely gleamed as if

they too had been tipped by corposants; while lit up by the preter-
natural light, Queequeg’s tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on
his body.
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once
more the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall.
A moment or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed
against some one. It was Stubb. “What thinkest thou now, man; I
heard thy cry; it was not the same in the song.”
“Ho r
no, it wasn’t; I said, the corposants have mercy on us all; and
I hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces ?

have they no bowels for a laugh ? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck —but it’s

too dark to look. Hear me, then take that masthead flame we saw
for a sign of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is
going to be chock a’ block with sperm oil, d’ye see; and so, all that
sperm will work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three
masts will yet be as three spermaceti candles — that’s the good promise
we saw.”
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face slowly begin-
ning to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: “See! see!”
and once more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed
redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor.
“The corposants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb again.
At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the
flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but with his head
bowed away from him while near by, from the arched and overhang-
;

ing rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a num-
ber of the seamen arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung
pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig.
In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or run-
ning skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the decks;
but all their eyes upcast.
“Aye, aye, men!” cried Ahab. “Look up at it; mark it well; the
white flame but lights the way to the White Whale Hand me those
!
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 465

mainmast links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat
against it; blood against fire! Then turning the last link
So.” —
held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon the Parsee; and
with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he stood erect before
the lofty tri-pointed flames.
“Oh ! thou clear spirit of clear whom
on these seas I as Persian
fire,

once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to
this hour I bear the scar I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I know
;

that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt
thou be kind and e’en for hate thou canst but kill and all are killed.
; ;

No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless

power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its un-
conditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the person-
ified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at
best ;
whencesoe’er I came ;
wheresoe’er I go ;
yet while I earthly live,
the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But
war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I
will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal
power and though thou launchest navies of
;
full-frighted worlds, there’s
that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of

thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it

back to thee.”
[Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap to thrice
their previous height; Ahab, with the rest , closes his eyes, his right
hand pressed hard upon them*~\

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was
it wrung from me nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind
;

but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes.
Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not
take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache

and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on

some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfolded, yet will I talk to
thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am
darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins
cease open eyes see, or not ? There burn in the flames
;
Oh, thou !
;

magnanimous ! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but

 —

466 MOBY DICK; OR

my fiery father ;
my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel ! what hast
thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater.
Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten ;
I cer-
tainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I
know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnis-
cient ! There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit,

to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical.
Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh,
thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incom-
municable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty
agony, I read my
Leap leap up, and lick the sky I leap with
sire. ! !

thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly
I worship thee!”
“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck; “look at thy boat, old man!”
Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly
lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale
boat’s bow; but the sea that stove its bottom had caused the loose
leather sheath to drop off and from the keen steel barb there now came
;

a levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned

there like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm “God, —
God is against thee, old man forbear ’tis an ill voyage ill begun, ill
;
! !

continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and
make a fair wind of it homeward, to go on a better voyage than this.”
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-striken crew instantly ran to the
—
braces though not a sail was left aloft. Por the moment all the
aghast mate’s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous
cry. But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatch-
ing the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them;
swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope’s
end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery
dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke
“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine;
and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And
that ye may know to what tune this heart beats ;
look ye here ;
thus I
blow out the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he ex-
tinguished the flame.
 THE WHITE WHALE 467

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighbourhood
of some lone, gigantic elm,
whose height and strength hut render it so
much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunder-
bolts; so at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did run
from him in a terror of dismay.

CHAPTER CXIX
THE DECK TOWARDS THE END OF THE FIRST NIGHT WATCH

( Ahab standing by the helm. StarbucJc approaching him.)

“We must send down the maintopsail yard, sir. The band is work-
ing loose, and the lee lift is half stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?”
“Strike nothing lash it. ;
If I had skysail poles, I’d sway them up
now.”
“Sir ?— in God’s name — !
sir ?”

“Well.”
“The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard ?”
“Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind
rises, but it has not got up to my tablelands yet. Quick, and see to it.

—By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of

some coasting smack. Send down my maintopsail yard! Ho, glue-
pots! Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-
truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that?
Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time.
What a hooroosh aloft there! I would e’en take it for sublime, did
I not know that the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take
medicine !”

CHAPTER CXX
MIDNIGHT THE FORECASTLE BULWARKS

( Stubb and Flash mounted on them, and passing additional lashings

over the anchors there hanging.)

“No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please,
468 MOBY DICK; OR
but you will never pound into were just now saying. And
me what you
bow long ago is it since you said the very contrary ? Didn’t you once
say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something
extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder-
barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop now, didn’t you say
so ?”
“Well, suppose I did? What then? I’ve part changed my flesh

since that time, why not my mind ? Besides, supposing we are loaded
with powder-barrels aft and lucifers forward, how the devil could the
lucifers get afire in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man,
you have pretty red hair, but you couldn’t get afire now. Shake your-
self! you’re Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might fill pitchers
at your coat collar. Don’t you see, then, that for these extra risks the
Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hy-
drants, Flask. But hark, again, and I’ll answer ye the other thing.
First take your leg off from the crown of the anchor here, though, so
I can pass the rope; now, listen. What’s the mighty difference be-
tween holding a mast’s lightning-rod in the storm, and standing close
by a mast that hasn’t got any lightning-rod at all in a storm? Don’t
you see, you timberhead, that no harm can come to the holder of the
rod, unless the mast is first struck? What are you talking about,
then ? Hot one ship in a hundred carries rods, and Ahab, aye, man, —
—
and all of us, were in no more danger then, in my poor opinion, than
all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing the seas. Why, you
King-Post, you, I suppose you would have every man in the world go
about with a small lightning-rod running up the corner of his hat, like
a militia officer’s skewered feather, and trailing behind like his sash.
Why don’t ye be sensible, Flask? it’s easy to be sensible; why don’t
ye, then ? any man with half an eye can be sensible.”
“I don’t know that, Stubb. You will sometimes find it rather hard.”
“Yes, when a fellow’s soaked through, it’s hard to be sensible, that’s
a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind;
catch the turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down
these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again. Ty-
ing these two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man’s hands
behind him. And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. These
 THE WHITE WHALE 469

are your iron fists, hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder,
Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is,, she swings
with an uncommon long cable, though. There, hammer that knot
down, and we’ve done. So; next to touching land, lighting on deck
is the most satisfactory. I say, just wring out my jacket skirts, will
ye ? Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask but seems to me, ;

a long-tailed coat ought always to he worn in all storms afloat. The

tails tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d’ye see.
Same with cocked hats form gabled-end eave-troughs, Flask.
;
the cocks
No more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I must mount a
swallow-tail and drive down a heaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes
my tarpaulin over board; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from
heaven should be so unmannerly ! This is a nasty night, lad.”

CHAPTER CXXI
MIDNIGHT ALOFT THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

( The maintopsail yard — Tashtego passing new lashings around it.)

“Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up
here. What’s the use of thunder? ITm, um, um. We don’t want
thunder ;
we want rum ;
give us a glass of rum. IJm, um, um !”

CHAPTER CXXII
THE MUSKET

During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pe-
quod’s jawbone had several times been reelingly hurled to the
tiller

deck by its spasmodic motions, even though preventor tackles had been
attached to it—for they were slack —
because some play to the tiller
was indispensable.
In a severe gale like this,, while the ship is but a tossed shuttle-

cock to the blast, by no means uncommon to see the needles in the

it is

compasses, at intervals, go round and round- It was thus with the

 ; ! —

470 MOBY DICK; OR

Pequod’s at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice
the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is
a sight that hardly any one can behold without some sort of unwonted
emotion.
Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that
through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb —one en-
gaged forward and the other aft —the shivered remnants of the jib and
fore and maintopsails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddy-
ing away to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which some-
times are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.
The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and
a storm-trysail was set further aft ;
so that the ship soon went through
the water with some precision again; and the course —for the present,
east-south-east —which he was was once more
to steer, if practicable,
given to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale,, he had
only steered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing
the ship as near her course as possible, watching the compass mean-
while, lo a good sign the wind seemed coming round astern aye, the
! !
;

foul breeze became fair

Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of “Ho! the fair
!”
wind! oh-he-yo , cheerily men the crew singing for joy, that so prom-
ising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding
it.

In compliance with the standing order of his commander to report —

immediately, and at every one of the twenty-four hours, any decided
—
change in the affairs of the deck, Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the
—
yards to the breeze however reluctantly and gloomily, than he me- —
chanically went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.
Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a
—
moment. The cabin lamp taking long swings this way and that
was burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man’s
bolted door, — a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper
panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain
humming silence to reign there, though
was hooped round by all the
it

roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly
revealed, as they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck
 ©C1K1G9291

THE TYPHOON, THE MAN AT THE PEQUOD S JAW-

DURING THE MOST VIOLENT SHOCKS OF
REELINGLY HURLED TO THE DECK.
BONE TILLER HAD SEVERAL TIMES BEEN

t
 — ;;

THE WHITE WHALE m

was an honest, upright man but out of Starbuck’s heart,
; at that instant
when he saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought
but so blent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the in-
stant he hardly knew it for itself.

‘He would have shot me once,” he murmured; “yes, there’s the

very musket that he pointed at me that one with the studded stock
;
—
let me touch it lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many
deadly lances, strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded ? I must
see. Aye, aye; and powder in the pan; that’s not good. Best spill —
it ? wait. I’ll cure myself of this. I’ll hold the musket boldly

—
while I think I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair?
Fair for death and doom, that’s fair for Moby Dick. It’s a fair
wind that’s only fair for that accursed fish. The very tube he pointed
atme !
— the very one ;
this —I hold
one it here ;
he would have killed
me with the very thing I handle now —Aye, and he would fain kill all
his crew. Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any gale?
Has he not dashed his heavenly quadrant ? and in these same perilous
seas, gropeshe not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-
abounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he
would have no lightning-rods ? But shall this crazed old man be
tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with
him? —Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and
more, if this ship comes to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm,
my soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he
were this instant —put aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he
muttering in his sleep? Yes,, just there, — in there, he’s sleeping.
Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake again. I can’t with-
stand thee, then, old man. Hot reasoning; not remonstrance; not
entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scomest. Flat obedience
to thy commands, this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say’st
own flat

the men have vow’d thy vow; say’st all of us are Ahabs. Great God
forbid —
But is there no other way ? no lawful way ? Make him a
!
—
prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest this old man’s
living power from his own living hands ? Only a fool would try it.
Say he were pinioned even knotted all over with ropes and hawsers
;

chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor ;

he would be more hide-
472 MOBY DICK; OR
ous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could not
possibly fly his howlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason
would leave me on the* long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains ?
The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest.
I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole
—
continent between me and law Aye, aye, ’tis so —
Is heaven a mur-
derer when its lightning would-he murderer
strikes a in his bed, tin-
dering sheets and skin together? —And would I be
a murderer,
then,
if ” and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the
loaded musket’s end against the door.
“On this level, Ahab’s hammock swings within: his head this way.
A touch, and Starbuck may
hug his wife and child again.
survive to
— —
Oh, Mary! Mary! boy! boy! boy! But if I wake thee not to —
death, old man,, who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck’s
body this day week may sink, with all the crew! Great God, where
art thou ? Shall I ? shall I !
The wind has gone down and shifted,
sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads her
course.”
!”
“Stern all ! Oh, Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last
Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old
man’s tormented sleep, as if Starbuck’s voice had caused the long
dumb dream to speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard’s arm against the
panel Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel but turning from the
; ;

door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
“He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him,
and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know’st what to
say.”

CHAPTER CXXIII
THE NEEDLE

Hext morning the not yet subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track,, pushed her
on like giants’ palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze
abounded so that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails ;
the whole
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 473

world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the
invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his
place;
where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of
crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The
sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light
and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted Ahab stood apart andsilence, ;

every time the teetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit,
he turned to eye the bright sun’s rays produced ahead; and when she
profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun’s
rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his
undeviating wake.
“Ha, ha, my ship ! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-
chariot of the sun. Ho,, ho ! all ye nations before my prow, I bring
the sun to ye ! Yoke on the further billows ;
hallo ! a tandem, I drive
!”
the sea
But suddenly reigned back by some counter thought, he hurried
towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
“East-sou’-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman.
“Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. “Heading east
at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern ?”

Upon this every soul was confounded ;

for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its

very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.

Thrusting his head half-way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one
glimpse of the compass ;
his uplifted arm slowly fell ;
for a moment he
almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked,
and lo ! the two compasses pointed east, and the Pequod was as infal-
libly going west.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out aboard among the crew,
the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it ! It has happened
before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses
that’s all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”

“Aye ;
but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale

mate gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more
474 MOBY DICK; OR
than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy,
as developed in the mariners’ needle, is, as all know, essentially one
with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much mar-

velled at, that such things should be. In instances where the light-
ning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars
and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more
fatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before
magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife’s knitting needle.
But in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the orig-
inal virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be
affected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship;
even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed
compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took
the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were ex-
actly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship’s course to be changed
accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod
thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed
fair one had only been juggling her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said
nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and
—
Flask who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feel-
ings —likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though
some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their
fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained
almost wholly unimpressed ;
or if impressed, it was only with a certain
magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab’s.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper sight-
tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
“Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun’s pilot !
yesterday I wrecked
thee,and to-day the compasses would feign have wrecked me. So, so.
But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck a lance —
without a pole; top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles.
Quick!”
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now
 THE WHITE WHALE 475

about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might

have
been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtle skill, in
a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses.
Besides, the
old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though
clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious
sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.

“Men,” said he, steadily turning

upon the crew, as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old
Ahab’s needles but out of this bit of
; steel Ahab can make one of his
own, that will point as true as any.”
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as
this was said and with fascinated eyes they waited whatever magic
;

might follow. But Starbuck looked away.

With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of
the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining,
bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then,
with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod,
he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly
hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before.
Then going through some small strange motions with it whether in- —
dispensable to the magnetising of the steel, or merely intended to aug-
—
ment the awe of the crew, is uncertain he called for linen thread and ;

moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and
horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the
compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and
vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab,
who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back
from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, ex-
claimed,
—
“Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level
!”
loadstone The sun is east, and that compass swears it
!

One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes
could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they
slunk away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his

fatal pride.
 476 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER CXXIY
THE LOG AND LINE

While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage,
the log and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a con-
. fident relianceupon other means of determining the vessel's place,
some merchantmen, and many whalemen, especially when cruising,
wholly neglect to heave the log;, though at the same time, and fre-
quently more for form's sake than anything else, regularly putting
down upon the customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well
as the presumed average rate of progression every hour. It had been
thus with the Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached
hung, long untouched, just beneath the railing of the after bulwarks.
Rains and spray had damped it sun and wind had warped it all the
; ;

elements had combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. But heedless
of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance upon the
reel, not many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered how

his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level
log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows
rolled in riots.
“Forward, there !Heave the log !"
Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly
Manxman. “Take the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."
They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's leeside, where the
deck with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into
the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.
The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up by the project-
ing handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved,
so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced
to him.
Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or
forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when
the old Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line,
made bold to speak.

“Sir, I mistrust it ;
this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have
spoiled it,”
 THE WHITE WHALE 477
“
’Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled
thee? Thou seem’st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not
thou it.”
a
I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these
grey hairs of mine ’tis not worth while disputing, ’specially with a
superior, who’ll ne’er confess.”
“What’s that? There’s now a patched professor in Queen Nature’s
granite-founded College; hut methinks he’s too subservient. Where
wert thou bom ?”
“In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.”
“Excellent ! Thou’st hit the world by that.”
“I know not, sir, but I was horn there.”
“In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way,, it’s good. Here’s
a man from Man a man bom in once independent Man, and now un-
;

manned of Man; which is sucked in by what? Up with the reel! —

The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it!

So.”
The was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in long
log
dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In
turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the tower-
ing resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.
“Hold hard!”
Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the
tugging log was gone.
“I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the
mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here,
in, Tahitian ;
these lines run whole, and whirling out ! come in broken,
Tahitian; reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make
another log, and mend thou the line. See to it.”
“There he goes now; to him nothing’s happened; but to me, the
skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul
in, Tahitian ;
these lines run whole, and whirling out come
! in broken

and dragging slow. Ha, Pip! come to help; eh, Pip?”

“Pip ? whom call ye Pip ? Pip jumped from the whale boat. Pip’s
missing. Let’s see now if we haven’t fished him up here, fishermen.

It drags hard; I guess he’s holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti ! Jerk him
 !!

478 MOBY DICK; OR

off ;
we haul in no cowards here. Ho ! there’s his arm just breaking
water. A hatchet ! a hatchet ! cut it off —we haul in no cowards here.
Captain Ahab ! sir, sir ! here’s Pip, trying to get on board again.”
“Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him by the
!”
arm. “Away from the quarter-deck
“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahab, advancing.
“Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?”
“Astern there, sir, astern! Lo, lo!”
“And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant
pupils of thy eyes. Oh God ! that man should be a thing for immortal
souls to sieve through ! Who art thou, boy ?”

“Bell-boy, sir; ship’s-crier ;

ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip!
One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high looks —
—
cowardly quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen
Pip the coward ?”
“There can be no hearts above the snowline. Oh, ye frozen heavens
look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned
him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s
home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touches my inmost centre,
boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come,
let’s down.”
“What’s this? here’s velvet sharkskin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s
hand, and feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing
as this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a
man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old
Perth now come and rivet these two hands together ;
the black one with
the white, for I will not let this go.”
“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo ye
!
believers in
gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo, you ! see the omniscient gods
oblivious of suffering man and man, though
;
idiotic, and knowing not
what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come
I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped
an Emperor’s!”
“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One
daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 479

of the rotten line — all dripping too. Mend it, eh? I think we had
best have a new line altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”

CHAPTEE CXXV
THE LIFEBUOY
Steering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress
solely determined by Ahab’s level log and line the Pequod held on her
;

path towards the equator. Making so long a passage through such

unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways im-
pelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all
these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and des-
perate scene.
At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the
dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets the watch then headed
;
—
by Flask—was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly
like half articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s murdered
Innocents — that one and all, they started from their reveries, and for
the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly listen-
ing, like the carved Eoman slave, while that wild cry remained within
hearing. The Christian was mer-
or civilised part of the crew said it

maids, and shuddered ;

but the pagan harpooneers remained unap-
palled. Yet the grey Manxman — the oldest mariner of all —declared
that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of
newly drowned men in the sea.
Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn,
when he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask
not unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed,
and thus explained the wonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great
numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or
some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and
kept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort
of wail. But this only the more affected some of them, because most
 — ;

480 MOBY DICK; OR

mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not
only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the
human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peer-
ingly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain
circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.
But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most
plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morn-
ing. At sunrise this man went from his hammock to his masthead at
the fore; and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his
sleep (for sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether
is was thus with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it
may, he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard
a cry and a rushing —
and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in
the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in
the blue of the sea.
The lifebuoy —a long slender cask —was dropped from the stem,
where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose
to seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken,
so that it slowly filled, and the parched wood also filled at its every
pore ;
and the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom,
as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.
And thus the first man
Pequod that mounted the mast to look
of the
out for the White Whale, on the White Whale’s own peculiar ground
that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of
that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this
event, at least as a portent ;
for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing
of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.
They declared that now knew the reason of those wild shrieks
they
they had heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said
nay.
The lost lifebuoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed
to see to it ;
but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as
in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the
voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly
connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be therefore, ;

they were going to leave the ship’s stem unprovided with a buoy, when
 THE WHITE WHALE isi

by certain strange signs and innuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint con-

cerning his coffin.

“A lifebuoy of a coffin !” cried Starbuck, staring.

“Rather queer, that, I should say,” said Stubb.
It will make a good enough one,” said Flask, “the carpenter here
can arrange it easily.”
“Bring up; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, after a
it

melancholy pause. “Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so the —

coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it.”
“And shall I nail down the lid, sir ?” moving his hand as with a
hammer.
“Aye.”
“And shall I caulk the seams, sir?” moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron.
“Aye.”
“And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?” moving hrs
hand as with a pitch-pot.
“Away ! what possesses thee to this ? Make a lifebuoy of
the coffin, —
and no more Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with
me.”
“He The whole he can endure; at the parts he
goes off in a huff.
baulks. How I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and
he wears it like a gentleman but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and
;

he won’t put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with
that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a lifebuoy of it. It’s
like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side
now. I don’t like this cobbling sort of business —I don’t like it at

all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinker-
ings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean,
Virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that regularly
begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and
comes to an end at the conclusion ;
not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end
in the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It’s the old woman’s
tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all old
women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who ran
away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that’s the reason
482 MOBY DICK; OR
I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept
my job-shop in the Vineyard ;
they might have taken it into their lonely
old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho there are no caps at sea !

but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay
over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with
the snap-spring over the ship’s stern. Were ever such things done
before with a coffin ? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would he
tied up would do the job. But I’m made of
in the rigging, ere they
knotty Aroostook hemlock; I don’t budge. Cruppered with a coffin!
Sailing about with a grave-yard tray But never mind. We workers
!

in woods made bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and

hearses. We work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit;
not for us to ask thewhy and wherefore of our work, unless it he too
coufounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I’ll do
the job, now, tenderly. I’ll have me let’s see —
how many in the —
ship’s company, all told? But I’ve forgotten. Anyway, I’ll have
me thirty separate, Turk’s-headed life-lines, each three feet long hang-
ing all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there’ll be
thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very
often beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot and
marling-spike ! Let’s to it.”

CHAPTER CXXVI
THE DECK

{The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the bench-vice and the open
hatchway ; the Carpenter caulking its seams ; the string of twisted oakum
slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his
—
frock Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway , and hears Pip
following him.)

“Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this

hand complies with my humour more genially than that boy. Middle —
aisle of a church What’s here ?”
!

“Lifebuoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware

the hatchway!”
 THE WHITE WHALE 483

“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.”

“Sir ? The hatchway ? oh ! So it does, sir, so it does.”
Art not thou the leg-maker ? Look, did not this stump come from
thy shop ?”
“I believe it did, sir ;
does the ferrule stand, sir ?”
“Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?”
“Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg;
but they’ve set me now to turning it into something else.”
“Then tell me art thou not an
; arrant, all-grasping, inter-meddling,
monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and
the next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again lifebuoys out of
those same coffins ? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much
of a J ack-of-all-trades.”
“But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.”
“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about
a coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out
the craters for volcanoes ;
and the gravedigger in the play sings, spade
in hand. Dost thou never ?”

“Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, for that;
but the reason why the gravedigger made music must have been be-
cause there was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is

full of it. Hark to it.”

“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding-board; and what
makes the sounding-board is this there’s naught beneath.
in all things —
And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Car-
penter. Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock
against the churchyard gate going in?”
”
“Faith, sir, I’ve
“Faith ? What’s that ?”

“Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like — that’s all,

sir.”

“Um, um go ;
on.”
”
“I was about to say, sir, that
“Art thou a silkworm ? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thy-
self? Look at thy bosom! Dispatch! and get these traps out of
sight.”
484 MOBY DICK; OR
“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in
hot latitudes. I’ve heard of the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Galli-
pagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some
sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right, in his middle. He’s
always under the Line — fiery hot, I tell ye! He’s looking this way
—come, oakum; quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is

the cork, and I’m the professor of musical glasses -tap, tap 1” —
Ahab (to himself ).

“There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The grey-headed woodpecker

tapping the hollow tree ! Blind and dumb might well be envied now.
See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most
malicious way, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh!
how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but
imponderable thoughts Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim
?

death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope
of most endangered life. A lifebuoy of a coffin. Does it go further?
Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an
immortality-preserver ! I’ll think of that. But no. So far gone
am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright
one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done,
Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see
that thing here when I return again. How, then, Pip, we’ll talk
this over; I do such most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some
!”
unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee

CHAPTER CXXVII
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE RACHEL

Next day, a large ship, the Rachel , was descried, bearing directly
down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At
the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water ;
but as
the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful
sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled
from the smitten hull.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 485

Bad news, she brings bad news,” muttered the old Manxman; but
ere her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat
ere he could hopefully hail, Ahab’s voice
was heard.
“Hast seen the White Whale ?”
“Ay e >
yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift ?”
Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected ques-
tion; and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stran-
ger Captain himself, having stopped his vessel’s way, was seen descend-
ing her side. A
few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the
Pequod s mainchains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he
was recognised by Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal
salutation was exchanged.
— —
“Where was he? not killed! not killed!” cried Ahab, closely ad-
vancing. “How was it ?”

It seemed that somewhat on the afternoon of the day previous,

late
while three of the stranger’s boats were engaged with a shoal of whales,
which had led them some four or five miles from the ship and while they ;

were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby
Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the blue water, not very far to
leeward whereupon, the fourth rigged boat
; — a reserved one—had been
instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this
fourth boat —the swiftest keeled of all —seemed to have succeeded in
fastening (at least, as well as a man at the masthead could tell any-
thing about In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat;
it).

and then a swift gleam of bubbling white water and after that nothing ;

more; whence it was concluded that the stricken whale must have in-
definitely run away with his pursuers, as often happens. There was
some apprehension, but no positive alarm, as yet. The recall signals
were placed in the rigging; darkness came on; and forced to pick up
—
her three far to windward boats ere going in quest of the fourth one
in the precisely opposite direction —
the ship had not only been neces-
sitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight, but for the time,
to increase her distance from it. But the rest of her crew being at last
safe aboard, she crowded all sail — stunsail on stunsail — after the
missing boat; kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every
man aloft on the lookout. But though when she had thus sailed a
sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when
 ;

486 MOBY DICK; OR

last seen —though she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all
around her; and not finding anything, had again dashed on; again
paused, and lowered her boats; and though she had thus continued
doing till daylight; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had
been seen.
The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal

his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with
his own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles
apart, on parallel lines,, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were.
“I will wager something now,” whispered Stubb to Flask, “that some
one in that missing boat wore off that Captain’s best coat ;
mayhap, his

watch — he’s so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two
pious whale ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height
of the whaling season ? See, Flask, only see how pale he looks —pale
in the very buttons of his eyes —look— it wasn’t the coat — it must have
”
been the
“My boy, my own boy is among them.
For God’s sake I beg, I —
—
conjure” here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far
had but icily received his ‘petition. “For eight-and-forty hours let
—
me charter your ship I will gladly pay for it,, and roundly pay for it
— there be no other way—for eight-and-forty hours only—only that
if

—you must, you must, and you

oh, do thing.” shall this
“His son !”
cried Stubb, “oh, son I take back
it’s his he’s lost ! the
and watch —what says Ahab
coat We must save that boy.”
?

“He’s drowned with the rest on ’em, last night,” said the old
Manx sailor standing behind them; “I heard; all of ye heard their
spirits.”
Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel's
the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the
Captain’s sons among the number of the missing boat’s crew; but
among the number of the other boats’ crews at the same time, but on
the other hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes
of the chase, therehad been still another son; as that for a time, the
wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity
which was only solved for him by his chief mate’s instinctively adopting
the ordinary procedure of a whale ship in such emergencies, that is,
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 487

when placed between jeopardised but divided boats, always to pick
up
the majority first. But the Captain, for some unknown constitutional
reason,had refrained from mentioning all this, and not till forced to it
by Ahab’s iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy a little lad,
;

but twelve years old, whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving
hardihood of a Nantucketer’s paternal love, had thus early sought to
initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemori-
ally the destiny of all his race. Nor does it unfrequently occur, that
Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age away from them
for a protracted three or four years’ voyage in some other ship than
their own so that their first knowledge of a whaleman’s career shall be
:

unenervated by any chance display of a father’s natural but untimely

partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and concern.
Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of
Ahab; and Ahab still stood like an anvil receiving every shock, but
without the least quivering of his own.
“I will not go,” said the stranger, “till you say aye to me. Do to
me as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have
a boy, Captain Ahab —though but a child, and nestling safely at home
now —a child of your old age too. — Yes, yes, you relent; I see it

run, run, men, now, and stand by to square in the yards.”

“Avast,” cried Ahab—“touch not rope-yarn” then
a in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word — “Captain Gardiner, I
;

will not do it.

Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and
may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the bin-
nacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all

strangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.”
Hurriedly turning with averted face, he descended into his cabin,
leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter
rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment,

Gardiner silently hurried to the side ;

more fell than stepped into his
boat, and returned to his ship.
Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange
vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark
spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were
swung round; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now
 488 MOBY DICK; OR
she beat against a head seaand again it pushed her before it yet
; ;
all

the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as
three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.
But by her still halting course and winding, woful way, you plainly
saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without com-
fort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were
not.

CHAPTER CXXVIII
THE CABItf

( Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)

“Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour
is coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have
thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing
to my malady. Like cures like and for this hunt, my malady becomes
;

my most desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall
serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in
my own screwed chair; another screw to it, thou must be.”
“Ho, no, no !
ye have not a whole body, sir ;
do ye but use poor me
for your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I
remain a part of ye.”
“Oh ! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
fidelity of —
man! and a black! and crazy! but methinks like cures —
like applies to him too he grows so sane again.”
;

“They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, whose
drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin.
But I will never desert ye* sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with
ye.”
“If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab’s purpose keels up
in him. I tell thee no ;
it cannot be.”
!”
“Oh, good master, master, master
“Weep so, and I will murder thee have a ! care, for Ahab too is mad.
Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck and still
know that I am here. And now I quit thee. Thy hand Met! —
True art thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for
 —

THE WHITE WHALE 489

ever bless tliee ;

and come —God for ever save
if it to that, thee, let what
will befall.”

( Ahab goes ; Pip steps one step forward.)

Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air, —but I’m alone.
How were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he’s missing.
Pip! Pip! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip? He must be up
here ;
let’s try the door. What ? neither lock nor bolt nor bar ;
and
yet there’s no opening it. It must be the spell; he told me to stay
here. Aye, and told me this screwed chair was mine. Here, then,
I’ll seat me against the transom, in the ship’s full middle all her keel
and her three masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in their
black seventy-fours great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it

over rows of captains and lieutenants. Ha! what’s this? epaulets!

epaulets! the epaulets all come crowding! Pass round the decanters;
glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs! What an old feeling, now, when
a black boy’s host to white men with gold lace upon their coats !

Monsieurs, have you seen one Pip ? —a little negro lad, five feet high,

hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped from a whale boat once; — seen
him? Ho! Well then, fill up again, captains, and let’s drink shame
upon all name no names. Shame upon them
cowards ! I Put one !

foot upon the table. Shame upon all cowards Hist! above there, I —
—
hear ivory Oh, master master I am indeed down-hearted when you
! !

walk over me. But here I’ll stay though this stem strikes rocks ;
and
they bulge through, and oysters come to join me.”

CHAPTER CXXIX
THE HAT

And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab, — all other whaling waters swept — seemed
to have chased his foe into an ocean-fold,, to slay him the more securely
there now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longi-
;

tude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted now that a vessel ;

had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encoun-
 ;

490 MOBY DICK; OR

tered Moby Dick ;
—and now that all his successive meetings with vari-
ous ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with
which the White Whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned
against now it was that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes,
;

which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting
polar star which through the livelong, arctic, six months’ night sustains
its piercing, steady, Ahab’s purpose now fixedly
central gaze; so
gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It
domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings,
fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a
single spear or leaf.
In this foreshadowing interval humour, forced or natural,
too, all
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more
strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed
ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped
mortar of Ahab’s iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved
about the deck, ever conscious that the old man’s despot eye was on
them.
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours
when he thought no glance but one was on him then you would have ;

seen that even as Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Par-
see’s glance awed his or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times
;

affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the

thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men
looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed
he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the
deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always hover-
ing there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been
known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours: but
never sat or leaned his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say, “We
;

two watchmen never rest.”

Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon
the deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-
hole, or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits, — the
mainmast and the mizzen; or else they saw him standing in the cabin-
scuttle, — his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step ;
his hat
slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood,
 —; :

THE WHITE WHALE 491

however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung in
his hammock yet hidden beneath that slouching hat,
; they could never
tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times
or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter, though he
stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded
night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and
hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the next day’s sunshine dried
upon him and so, day after day, and night after night he went no
;
;

more beneath the planks whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing
;

he sent for.
He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals, —breakfast
and dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which
darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which
still grow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure.

But though was now become one watch on deck; and

his whole life
though the Parsee’s mystic watch was without intermission as his own;
yet these two never seemed to speak —one man to the other —unless at
long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary.
Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly,
and to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder. If by
day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men were both,
so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange. At times, for
longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted in the star-
light ;
Ahab by the mainmast but still fixedly
in his scuttle, the Parsee ;

gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown
shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.
—
And yet, somehow, did Ahab in his own proper self, as daily,
hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,
— Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still
again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them
the lean shade siding the solid rib. For.be this Parsee what he may,
all rib and keel was solid Ahab. At the first faintest glimmering of
the dawn, his iron voice was heard from aft
—“Man the mastheads !”

— and all through the day, till and after twilight, the same
after sunset
voice every hour, at the striking of the helmsman’s bell,, was heard
“What d’ye see? —sharp! sharp!”
But when three or four days had glided by, after meeting the chil-
492 MOBY DICK; OR
dren-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen ;
the monomaniac
old man seemed distrustful of his crew’s fidelity ;
at least, of nearly all

except the pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether

Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But
if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from
verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint
them.
“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,” —he said. “Aye!
Ahab must have the doubloon!” and with his own hands he rigged a
nest of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single
sheaved block, to secure to the mainmast head, he received the two
ends of the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket,
prepared a pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This
done, with that end yet in his hand, and standing beside the pin, he
looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing
his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning
Fedallah and then settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate,
said
— ;

“Take the rope, sir — I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.”

Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to
hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope
at last and afterwards stood near it.
;
And thus, with one hand cling-
ing round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles
—
and miles, ahead, astern, this side, and that, within the wide ex- —
panded circle commanded at so great a height.
When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place
in the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea
is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope under these ;

circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict

charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in
such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations
aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what them a is seen of
the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few
minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatal-
ity, if unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should

by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to
the sea. So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the
only strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 493

one only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the
slightest degree approaching to decision —one of those too, whose faith-
fulness on the lookout he had seemed to doubt somewhat; it was —
strange, that this was the very man he should select for his watchman
freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person’s
hand.
Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there
ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often
fly incommodiously round the manned mastheads of whalemen
close
in these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming
round his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it
darted a thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralised down-
wards, and went eddying again round his head.
But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab
seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would anyone else
have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now
almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning
in almost every sight.
“Your hat, your hat, sir !” suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
being posted at the mizzen-masthead, stood directly behind Ahab,
though somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air

dividing them.
But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes ;
the long
hooked hill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away
with his prize.

CHAPTER CXXX
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE DELIGHT

The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by;
the lifebuoy-coffin swung; and another ship, most miser-
still lightly
ably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes
were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-
ships, cross the quarterdeck at the height of eight or nine feet; serv-
ing to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.
Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs,
 ;

494 MOBY DICK; OR

and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-
boat; but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see
through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a
horse.
“Hast seen the White Whale V 9

“Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and

with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.
9
“Hast killed him V
“The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever do that,” answered
the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck,
whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing to-

gether.
“Hot forged!” and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from the crotch,
—
Ahab held it out, exclaiming “Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this
hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by light-
ning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot
place behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed
life!”
“Then God keep
— “I thee, old man — see’st thou that” —pointing to the
hammock bury but one of five stout men who were alive only
yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest
were buried before they died you sail upon their tomb.” Then turn-
ing to his crew —“Are ye ready there? ;

the plank then on place the

rail, and lift thebody; then — Oh! God! — advancing towards
so, the
hammock with uplifted hands “may the resurrection and the
”
life

“Brace forward ! Up
helm !” cried Ahab like lightning to his men.
But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape
the sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea
not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have
sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange
lifebuoy hanging at the Pequod’s stern came into conspicuous
relief.

“Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!” cried a foreboding voice in her

wake. “In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly from our sad burial. Ye but
turn us your taffrail to show us your coffin!”
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 495

CHAPTER CXXXI
THE SYMPHONY
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments
of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only,
the pensive air
was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s
chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air
;

but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks and these were the strong,
;

troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades
and shadows without those two seemed one it was only the sex, as it
; ;

were, that distinguished them.

Tied up and twisted, gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly
firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in
the ashes of ruin ;
untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the
morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s fore-
head of heaven.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side,
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze,
the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But
the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for
a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that
winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the stepmother world,
so long cruel — —
forbidding now threw affectionate arms round his
stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one,
that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save
and to bless-. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear
into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one
wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over
the side and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless
;

sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful
 —

496 MOBY DICK; OR

not to touch him, or he noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and
stood there.
Ahah turned.
“Starbuck !”
“Sir.'”
a Oh,
Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky.
On such a day —very much such a sweetness as this —I struck my
first whale— boy-harpooneer of eighteen!
a Forty— forty —forty
years ago! — ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of
privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea!

for forty years has Ahah forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years
to make war on the horrors of the deep ! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out
of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of
this life I have led ;
the desolation of solitude it has been ;
the masoned,
walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small en-
trance to any sympathy from the green country without — oh, weari-
ness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! when I —
think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me be-
fore — and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare — fit

emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil !

—when the poorest lands-
man has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s
fresh bread to my
mouldy crusts away, whole oceans away, from
that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty,and sailed for Cape Horn the
next day, leaving hut one dent in my marriage pillow wife ? wife ? —
rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor
girl when I married her, Starbuck and then, the madness, the frenzy,
;

the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand
lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly, chased his prey —more
a demon than- a man ? — aye, aye ! what a forty years’ fool — — fool old
fool, has old Ahab been ! Why this strife of the chase why weary and
?

palsy the arms at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer
or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that
with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched
from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that
I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some
ashes ! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck ? I feel
 !!

THE WHITE WHALE 497

deadly faint, bowed, and bumped, as though I were Adam, staggering

beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God! crack —
my heart !
— stave my brain !
—mockery ! mockery ! bitter, biting mock-
ery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and
feel thus intolerably old ? Close stand close to me, Starbuck let me !
;

look into a human eye ; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better
;

than to gaze upon God. By

by the bright hearthstone
the green land ;

this is the magic glass, I see my wife and my child in thine eye.
man ;

No, no; stay on board, on board! lower not when I do; when branded —
Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No,
no not with the far-away home I see in that eye !”
!

“Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after

all ! why should any one give chase to that hated fish ! Away with me
let us fly these deadly waters ! let us home ! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck’s —wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, playfellow
youth ;
even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing,
paternal old age ! Away ! let us away !
— this instant let me alter the
course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we
bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have
some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.”
“They have, they have. summer days in
I have seen them —some
the morning. About this time yes, it is his noon nap now the boy — —
vivaciously wakes sits up in bed and his mother tells him of me, of
; ;

cannibal old me; how I am aboard upon the deep, but will yet come
back to dance him again.”
“ ’Tis my Mary, my Mary herself She promised that my boy, !

every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse
of his father’s sail ! Yes, yes ! no more ! it is done! we head for Nan-
tucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away!
!”
See, see ! the boy’s face from the window ! the boy’s hand on the hill
But Ahab’s glance was averted ;
like a blighted fruit tree he shook,
and cast his last cindered apple to the soil.
“What what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it what
is it, ;

cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor com-
mands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
 !

498 MOBY DICK; OR

making me ready what in my own proper, natural heart, I
to do
durst not so much as dare ? Is Ahab, Ahab ? Is it I, God, or who, that
lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as
an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some
;

invisible power ;
how then can this one small heart beat ;
this one small
brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that think-
ing, does that living, and not I ? By heaven, man, we are turned round
and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the hand-
spike. And all the time, lo ! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea
Look! seeyon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that
flying-fish ? Where do murderers go, man ? Who’s to doom, when the
judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind,
and a mild-looking sky ;
and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-
away meadow they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes
;

of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-
mown hay. Sleeping ? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last
on the field. Sleep ? Aye, and rust amid greenness as last year’s ;

scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swathes — Starbuck!”

But blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair, the mate had stolen
away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started
at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motion-
lessly leaning over the same rail.

CHAPTER CXXXII
THE CHASE FIRST DAY

That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man — wont at

as his
intervals —stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went
to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing
up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some
barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that
peculiar odour,sometimes to a great distance given forth by the
living Sperm Whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any
mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the
 THE WHITE WHALE 499

dog-vaiie, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odour as

nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship’s course to be slightly
altered, and the sail to be shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindi-
cated at daybreak by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly
and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated
watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some
swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
“Man the mastheads! Call all hands!”
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the fore-
castle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that
they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they
appear with their clothes in their hands.
“What d’ye see?” cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
“Nothing, nothing, sir!” was the sound hailing down in reply.
“T’gallant-sails ! stunsails alow and aloft, and on both sides!”
All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for sway-
ing him to the mainroyal masthead ;
and’ in a few moments they were
hoisting him thither, when, while, but two-thirds of the way aloft,

and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the
ma intopsail and topgallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air,
—
“There she blows! there she blows! A hump like a snowhill! It
!”
is Moby Dick

Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the

three lookouts, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the
famous whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained
his final perch, some feet above the other lookouts, Tashtego standing

just beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the In-
dian’s head was almost on a level with Ahab’s heel. From this
height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll
of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his
silent spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the
same silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic

and Indian Oceans.

“And did none of ye see it before?” cried Ahab, hailing the
perched men all around him.
 — ;;;

500 MOBY DICK; OR

“I saw him almost the same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I
cried out,” said Tashtego.
“Hot the same instant; not the same — no, the doubloon is mine,
Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have
White Whale first. There she blows there she blows
raised the there !
!
—
she blows! —
There again! there again!” he cried, in long-drawn,
lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the
whale’s visible jets. “He’s going to sound ! In stunsails ! Down top-
gallant-sails Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay
!

on board, and keep the ship. Helm there Luff, luff a point So ! !

steady, man, steady!There go flukes! Ho, no; only black water!

All ready the boats there ? Stand by, stand by Lower me, Mr. Star- !

—
buck; lower, lower, quick, quicker!” and he slid through the air to
the deck.
“He is heading straight to leeward, sir,” cried Stubb ;
“right away
from us cannot have seen the ship yet.”
;

“Be dumb, man Stand by the braces

! Hard down the helm !
!

brace up Shiver her

! shiver her !
—
So well that Boats, boats
!
;
!
!”

Soon all the boats but Starbuck’s were dropped all the boat-sails ;
set

— all the padciles plying ;

with rippling swiftness, shooting to leeward
and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah’s
sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
Like noiseless nautilus prows sped through the sea
shells, their light

but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean
grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves;
seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breath-
less hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his en-
tire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an
isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy,

greenish foam. He
saw the vast involved wrinkles of the slightly pro-
jecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged
waters, went the glistening white shadows from his broad, milky fore-
head, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade and behind, ;

the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of
his steady wake and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by
;

his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of
 THE WHITE WHALE 501

gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful
flight; and
like to some flagstaff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall
but,shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the
white whale’s
back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls
hovering, and
to and fro skimming like a canopy over the
fish, silently perched
and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pen-
nons.
A gentle joyousness —a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, in-
vested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away
with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns his lovely, leering
;

eyes sideways intent upon the maid with smooth bewitching fleetness,
;

rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove did surpass
the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.
On each soft side — coincident with the parted swell, that but once
laving him, then flowed so wide away —on each bright side, the whale
shed off enticings. No wonderhad been some among the hunters
there
"who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity had ven-
tured to assail it but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture
;

of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale thou glidest on, to
!

allwho for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same
way thou may’st have be juggled and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among
waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture,
Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of
his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wretched hideousness of his
jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for
an instant his whole marbleised body formed a high arch, like Vir-
ginia’s Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in
the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight.
Hoveringty halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls long-
ingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.
With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails

adrift, the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick’s ap-
pearance.
“An hour,” said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat’s stern, and he
gazed beyond the whale’s place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide
502 MOBY DICK; OR
wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his
eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle.
The breeze now freshened ;
the sea began to swell.
“Th.e birds !
— the birds !” cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were
now all and when within a few yards began
flying towards Ahab’s boat ;

fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,
expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s Ahab could dis- ;

cover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and into its
depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white
weasel, with a wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose,
till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked

rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable

bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast,
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glitter-

ing mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb;
and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled
the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon
Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and
seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and
stand by to stem.
How, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its

axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while
yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick,
with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly trans-
planted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his plaited head
lengthwise beneath the boat.
Through and through ;
through every plank and each rib, it thrilled

for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of
a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his
mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into
the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a rowlock. The bluish pearl-
white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab’s head,
and reached higher than that. In this attitude theWhite Whale now
shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With un-
astonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the tiger-
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 503

yellow crew were tumbling over each other’s head

to gain the utter-
most stern.
Andnow, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out,
as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in
this devilish way; and
from his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted
at from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were
and while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis
impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious
with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and
helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized
the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from
its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him ;
the
frailgunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an
enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain,
and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two
floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the
crew at the stern- wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold
fast to the oars to lash them across.
At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the
first, to perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head,

a movement that loosed his hold for the time at that moment his hand
;

had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only
slipping further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as it
slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out
of it, as he leaned to the push and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea.
;

Kipplinglv withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little
distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in
the billows and at the same time slowly revolving his whole splendid
;

body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose some twenty or —
more feet out of the water — the now rising swells, with all their con-
fluent waves, dazzling’ broke against it ;
vindictively tossing their shiv-
1
ered spray still higher into the air. So, in a gale, the but half baffled

1
This motion peculiar to the Sperm whale. It receives its designa-
is
tion (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down
poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously de-
scribed. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively
yi$w whatever objects may be encircling him,
 —

504 MOBY DICK; OR

Channel billows only from the base of the Eddystone, tri-
recoil
umphantly to overlap its summit with their scud.

But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly
round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in
his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more
deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden
him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus’s
elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered
in the foam of the whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to

swim, —though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a
whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble
which the least chance shock might burst. From the boat’s frag-
mentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed him; the cling-
ing crew, at the other drifting end, could not succour him more than ;

enough was them to look

it for to themselves. For so revolvingly
appalling was the White Whale’s and so planetarily swift the
aspect,
ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping
upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed, still hovered hard
by, still they dared not pull into the eddy to strike, lest that should
be the signal for the instant destruction of the jeopardised castaways,
Ahab and all; nor in that case could they themselves hope to escape.
With straining eyes, then they remained on the outer edge of the dire-
ful zone, whose centre had now become the old man’s head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the
ship’s mastheads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon
the scene ;
and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her ;

“Sail on the” —but

moment a breaking sea dashed on him from
that
Moby Dick, and whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it
again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted, — “Sail on
the whale !
—Drive him off
!”

The Pequod’s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed

circle, she effectually parted the White Whale from his victim. As
he sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.
Dragged into Stubb’s boat with bloodshot, blinded eyes, the white
brine caking in his wrinkles ;
the long tension of Ahab’s bodily strength
did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body’s doom: for a
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 505

time, lying all crushed in the bottom
of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden
under foot of herds of elephants. F ar inland,
nameless wails came from
him, as desolate sounds from out ravines.
But this intensity of his physical prostration did hut so much the
more abbreviate it. In an instant’s compass, great hearts sometimes
condense to one deep pang, the sum-total of those
shallow pains kindly
diffused through feebler men’s whole
lives. And so, such hearts,
though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods
decree it, in
their lifetime aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly
made up of instan-
taneous intensities; for even in their pointless centres,
those noble
natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.
“The harpoon,” said Ahab,. half-way rising, and draggingly lean-
ing on one bended arm “is it safe ?” —
“
A
y e > s i r? ^ or it was not darted; this is it,” said Stubb, showing it.
“Lay it before me —
any missing men ?”
;

“One, two, three, four, five ;

—there were five oars, sir, and here are
five men.”
“That’s good. —Help me, man ;
I wish to stand. So, so, I seehim
there ! there !
going to leeward still ;
what a leaping spout !—Hands off
from me! The eternal sap runs in Ahab’s bones again! Set the
sail ;
out oars ;
the helm !”
It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked
up by another boat, help to work and the chase is
that second boat;
thus continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus
now. But the added power of the boat did not equal the added power
of the whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin swim- ;

ming with a velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these cir-
cumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely pro-
longed, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long
a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing
barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself,

then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermedi-

ate means of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made
for her, and were soon swayed up to their cranes the two parts of the —
wrecked boat having been previously secured by her and then hoist- —
ing everything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and side-
 — !!

506 MOBY DICK; OR

ways outstretching it with stunsails, like the double-jointed wings of an
albatross the Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby Dick.
;

At the well-known, methodical intervals, the whale’s glittering spout

was regularly announced from the manned mastheads; and when he
would be reported ao just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and
then pacing the deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last
second of the allotted hour expired, his voice was heard — “Whose is

the doubloon now? D’ye see him? and if the reply was, “No, sir!”
straightway he commanded them to lift him to his perch. In this way
the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless; anon, unrestingly
pacing the planks.
As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men
aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a
still greater breadth —thus
and fro pacing, beneath his slouched
to
hat, at every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been
dropped upon the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow
to shattered stern. At last he paused before it; and as in an already
over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so
over the old man’s face there now stole some such added gloom as this.
Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though,
to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place
in his Captain’s mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed
“The thistle the ass refused ;
it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir ;
ha
ha!”
“What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck?' Man,
man! did I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I
could swear thou wert. a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard
before a wreck.”
“Aye, sir,” said Starbuck, drawing near, “ ’tis a solemn sight ;
an
omen, and an ill one.”
“Omen? omen? — the dictionary! If the gods think to speak out-
right to man, they will honourably speak outright; not shake their
heads, and give an old wife’s darkling hint. Begone! Ye two are the —
opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is
Starbuck and ye two are all mankind and Ahab stands alone among
; ;

the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbours
 . —

THE WHITE WHALE 507

Cold, cold —I —How now? Aloft there!

sliiver !
D’ye see him?
Sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a second !”
The day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe was
rustling. Soon, it was almost dark, but the look-out men still re-
mained unset.
“Can’t see the spout now, sir; — too dark” — cried a voice from the
air.

“How heading when last seen ?”

“As before, sir — straight to leeward.”
“Good! he will travel slower now ’tis night. Down royals and
top-gallant stunsails, Mr. Starbuck. We
must not run over him be-
fore morning; he’s making a passage now, and may heave-to a while.
Helm there! keep her full before the wind! Aloft! come down! —
Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand to the foremost head, and see it manned
till morning.” —
Then advancing towards the doubloon in the mainmast
— “Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it but I shall let it abide here
;

till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises

him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man’s and if ;

on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be

divided among all of ye ! Away now !

—the deck is thine, sir.”

And so saying, he placed himself half-way within the scuttle, and

slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals rous-
ing himself to see how the night wore on.

CHAPTER CXXXIII
THE CHASE SECOND DAY

At daybreak, the three mastheads were punctually manned afresh.

“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the
light to spread.
“See nothing, sir.”

“Turn up hands and make sail he travels faster than I thought

all !

for —
the top-gallant sails!— aye, they should have been
kept on her

all night. But no matter— ’tis but resting for the rush.”
said, that this pertinacious pursuit of
one particular
Here be it
508 MOBY DICK; OR
whale, continued through day into night, and through night into day,
is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South Sea fishery. For
such is the wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible
confidence acquired by some great natural geniuses Nan-
among the
tucket commanders, that from the simple observation of a whale when
last descried, they will, under certain given circumstances, pretty

accurately foretell both the direction in which he will continue to swim

for a time, while out of sight, as well as his probable rate of progres-
sion during that period. And, in these cases, somewhat as a pilot,
when about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending he well
knows, and which he desires shortly to return to again, but at some
further point; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takes
the precise bearing oi: the cape at present visible, in order the more
certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen headland, eventually to
he visited: so does the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale;
for after being chased, and diligently marked, through several hours
of daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature’s future
wake through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious
mind of the hunter, as the pilot’s coast is to him. So that to this
hunter’s wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in
water, a wake, is to all desired purposes well-nigh as reliable as the
steadfast land. And mighty iron Leviathan of the modern
as the
railway is so familiarly known in its every pace, that, with watches in
their hands, men time his rate as doctors that of a baby’s pulse; and
lightly say of it, “the up train or the down train will reach such or
such a spot, at such and such an hour,” even so, almost, there are occa-
sions when these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, ac-
cording to the observed humour of his speed and they say
;
to themselves,
“so many hours hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles,
will have about reached this of that degree of latitude or longitude.”
But to render this acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind
and the sea must be the whaleman’s allies; for of what present avail
to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him
he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from this port? In-
ferable from these statements are many collateral subtle matters
touching the chase of whales.
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 509

The ship tore on ;

leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-
ball, missent, becomes a ploughshare and turns up the level field.
By salt and hemp !” cried Stubb, “but this swift motion of the
deck creeps up one’s legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are
two brave fellows !
—
Ha ha Some one take me up, and launch me,
! !

spine-wise, on the sea, — by for live-oaks ! my spine’s a keel. Ha, ha

we go the gait that no dust behind
leaves !”

“There she blows— she blows — she !

blows !
— right ahead !” was
now the masthead cry.
“Aye, aye!” cried Stubb; “I knew it ye can’t escape blow on-
— —
and split your spout, O Whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye!
—
blow your trump blister your lungs! Ahab will dam off your —
blood, as a miller shuts his water-gate upon the stream!”
And Stubb did but speak out for well-nigh all that crew. The
frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up,
like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings
some of them might have felt before; these were not only now kept
out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken
up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before
the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls;
and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past
night’s suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which
their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all
these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made
great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible
as irresistible ;
this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so
enslaved them to the race.
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them
all; though was put together of all contrasting things oak, and
it —
maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp yet all these ran —
into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both
balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the in-
dividualities of the crew. This man’s valour, that man’s fear; guilt
and were welded into oneness, and were all
guiltiness, all varieties

directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did
point to.
 ! —

510 MOBY DICK; OR

The rigging lived. The mastheads, like the tops of tall palms, were
outspreadingly tufted with -arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with
one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings ;
others,
shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking
yards all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their
;

fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek
out the thing that might destroy them
“Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?” cried Ahab, when,
after the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been
heard. “Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick
casts one odd jet that way, and then disappears.”
It is even so ;
in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some
other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for
hardly had Ahab reached his perch hardly was the rope belayed to its
;

pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the
air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant
halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as much nearer to the —
ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead
Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and in-

dolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain

in his head, did the White Whaler now reveal his vicinity but by the ;

far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost

velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his
entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of
dazzling foam, shows ’his place to the distance of seven miles
and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes
off seem his mane; in some cases this breaching is his act of de-

fiance.

“There she breaches! there she breaches!” was the cry, as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like
to Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved
against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for
the moment, intolerably glittered -and glared like a glacier; and stood
there gradually fading away from its first sparkling intensity, to the
dim and fading mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.
“Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!” cried Ahab, “thy
 —a ;

THE WHITE WHALE 511

hour and thy harpoon are hand! — Down! down

at all of ye, but one
man at the fore. The boats !— stand by !”
Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like
shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays
and halyards
while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly, was dropped from his
perch.
“Lower awa y,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat —
spare one, rigged the afternoon previous. “Mr. Starbuck, the ship
is thine keep away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all !”
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first
assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the
three crews.Ahab’s boat was central; and cheering his men, he told
them he would take the whale head-and-head, that is, pull straight —
up to his forehead, — a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain
limit, such a course excludes the coming onset from the whale’s side-
long vision. But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all
three boats were plain as the ship’s three masts to his eye; the White
Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it
were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, and lashing tail, offered
appalling battle on every side and heedless of the irons darted at him
;

from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank
of which those boats were made. But skillfully manoeuvered, inces-
santly wheeling like trained chargers in the field ;
the boats for a while
eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank’s breadth; while all

the time, Ahab’s unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to
shreds.
But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed

and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three
lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves,
warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him though now
;

for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more

tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid out

more line and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again
:

hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls when lo a sight — !

—
more savage than the embattled teeth of sharks!
—
Caught and twisted corkscrewed in the mazes of the line — loose
 ;

512 MOBY DICK; OR

harpoons and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came
flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab’s boat.
Only one thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically
reached within through and— — then, without —the rays of steel

dragged in the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then,
twice sundering the rope near the chocks — dropped the intercepted
fagot of steel into the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the

White Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the
other lines; by so doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats
of Stuhb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together like two
rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the
sea, disappeared in a coiling maelstrom, in which, for a space,
the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like
the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch.
While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out
after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while
aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching
his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was
lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old
— —
man’s line now parting admitted of his pulling into the creamy
pool rescue whom he could; —
to wild simultaneousness of a
in that
thousand concreted —Ahab’s yet unstricken boat seemed drawn
perils,

up towards Heaven by — shooting

invisible wires, as, arrow-like, per-
pendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead
against its and sent it, turning over and over, into the
bottom,
air ;
till it fell again gunwale —
downwards and Ahab and —
his men struggled out from under it, like seals from a seaside
cave.
The first uprising momentum of the whale —modifying its direction
as he struck the surface —involuntarily launched him along it, to a
little distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and
with his back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his
flukesfrom side to side and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least
;

chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back,
and came sideways, smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his
work for that time was done, he pushed his plaited forehead through
 ;

the white whale 513

the ocean, and trailing after *him the intertangled lines, continued his
leeward way at a traveller’s methodic pace.
As before, the attentive ship having descried
the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at,
and safely landed them upon her decks. Some sprained shoulders,
wrists, and ankles livid contusions wrenched harpoons
;
;and lances in- :

extricable intricacies of rope shattered oars and planks all these were
; ;

there but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one.
;

As with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly cling-
ing to his boat’s broken half, which offered a comparatively easy float;
nor did it exhaust him as the previous day’s mishap.
But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon
him; as instead of standing by himself he still half -hung upon the
shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist
him. His ivory leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp
splinter.
“Aye, aye, Starbuck, ’tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who
he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has.”
“The ferrule has not stood, sir,” said the carpenter, now coming up
“I put good work into that leg.”
“But no bones broken, sir, I hope,” said Stubb with true concern.
“Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb! — d’ye see it? —But even
with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched ;
and I account no living bone
of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that’s lost. Nor white
whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own
proper and inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any
—
mast scrape yonder roof? Aloft there! which way?”
“Dead to leeward, sir.”
“Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, shipkeepers; down the rest
—
of the spare boats and rig them Mr. Starbuck, away, and muster the
boat’s crews.”
“Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.”
“Oh, oh, oh ! how this splinter gores me now ! Accursed fate ! that

the unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!”
“Sir?”
 I ;!

514 :
MOBY DICK; OR
“My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane — there,

that shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not
seen him yet. By heaven, it cannot be! —missing?—quick! call

them all.”
The old man’s hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the com-
pany, the Par see was not there.
“The Parsee!” cried Stubb “he must have been caught in
” —
“The black vomit wrench thee! run all of ye above, alow, cabin, —
forecastle —
find him not gone not gone!” — —
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee
was nowhere to be found.
—
“Aye, sir,” said Stubb “caught among the tangles of your line —
thought I saw him dragged under.”
“My line ? my line ? Gone ? gone ? What means that little word ? —
—What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were
the belfry. The harpoon, too !
— toss over the litter there, — d’ye see it ?

— —
the forged iron, men, the white whale’s
— — no, no, no, blistered fool
this hand did the dart —Aloft it! Keep him
’tis in fish! there!
nailed — Quick — hands the rigging
!
all — the oars
to of the boats collect
—harpooneers! the — the
the irons, higher— irons! hoist royals a pull
on the
all —helm
sheets steady
!
your there ten ! steady, for life ! I’ll

times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it,

but him yet !”

I’ll slay
“Great God but for one ! show thyself,” cried Starbuck
single instant
“never, never wilt thou capture him, old man. In Jesus’ name no —
more of this, that’s worse than devil’s madness. Two days chased;
twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under
thee; thy evil shadow gone —
all good angels mobbing thee with warn-

ings: —
what more wouldst thou have? Shall we keep chasing this —
murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged
by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the
infernal world ? Oh, oh !
—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him
more !”
“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee ;
ever since that
hour we both saw —thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes. But
in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm
 THE WHITE WHALE 515

of this hand a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man.
This whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me
a billion years before this ocean rolled. Tool! I am the Fates’
lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou
obeyest mine. Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down
to the stump ;
leaning on a shivered lance propped up on a lonely
;

foot. ’Tis Ahab his body’s part ;

but Ahab’s soul’s a centipede, that
moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes
that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere
I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and till ye hear that know that Ahab’s
,

hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called
omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown,
drowning things will twice rise to the surface then rise again, to sink ;

for evermore. So with Moby Dick two days he’s — floated —to-morrow
will be the third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more —but only to spout
his last! D’ye feel brave men, brave?”
“As fearless fire,” cried Stubb.
“And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab. Then as the men went
forward, he muttered on: —“The things called omens! And yester-
day I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat.
Oh how ! valiantly I seek to drive out of other’s hearts what’s clinched
so fast in mine !
— The Parsee— the Parsee !
—gone, gone ? and he was
to go before :
—but still was to be seen again ere I could perish —How’s
that ? — There’s a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the
ghosts of the whole line of judges: — like a hawk’s beak it pecks my
brain. Fit, Til solve it, though!”
Whendusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly
as on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum
of the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by
lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and
sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the
broken keel of Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another
leg while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within
;

his scuttle; his hid heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on

its dial set due eastward for the earliest sun.
;
516 MOBY DICK; OR
CHAPTER CXXXIV
THE CHASE THIRD DAY

The morning of the third day dawned and once more

fair and fresh,
the solitary night-man at the fore-masthead was relieved by crowds of
the daylight lookouts, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.
“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight
“In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all.
Helm there ; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely
day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house
to the angels, and morning the first of its throwing open to them,
this
a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here’s food for
thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only
feels, feels, feels, that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s

audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or
ought to be, a coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts throb, and
;

our poor brains heat too much for that. And yet, I’ve sometimes
thought my brain was very calm —frozen calm, this old skull cracks
so, like a glass in which the contents turn to and shiver it. And
ice,

still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must

breed it hut no, it’s like that sort of common grass that will grow any-
;

where, between the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava.

How the wild winds blow it ;
they whip it about me as the torn shreds
of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that
has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards
of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as
innocent as fleeces. —
Out upon it! it’s tainted. Were I the wind, I’d
blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I’d crawl some-
where to a cave, and slink there. And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic
thing, the wind who ever conquered it ?
! In every fight it has the last
and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it,and you but run through it.
Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand
to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing —a nobler thing
than that. Would now the wind hut had a body; but all the things
that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are
bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There’s a most
 !

THE WHITE WHALE 517

special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet,

I say again, and swear it now, that there’s something all glorious and
gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds at least, that in the
clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mild-
ness and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the
;

sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippi of the land shift and
swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles
these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on these Trades, ;

or something like them —

something so unchangeable, and full as strong,
blow my keeled soul along To it Aloft there
! What d’ye see ?”
! !

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See

the sun! Aye, aye, it must be so. I’ve over-sailed him. How got
the start? Ave, he’s chasing me now; not I, him — that’s bad; I
might have known it, too. Fool! the lines the harpoons he’s towing. —
Aye, aye, I have run him by last night. About about Come ! !

down, all of ye, but the regular lookouts! Man the braces!”
Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the
Pequod’s quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction,
the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream
in her own white wake.
“Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,” murmured Star-
buck to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail.
“God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from
the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobeyed my God in

obeying him!”
“Stand by tosway me up !” cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen
basket. “We should meet him soon.”
“Aye, aye, and straightaway Starbuck did Ahab’s bidding, and
sir,”

once more Ahab swung on high.

A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now
last, some three points
held long breaths with keen suspense.* But at
off weather-bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly
the
if the tongues of
from the three mastheads three shrieks went up as
fire had voiced it.

“Forehead to forehead I meet thee this third time,

Moby Dick!
?
 !

518 MOBY DICK; OR

On deck there! —brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind’s eye.
He’s too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake ! Stand
over that helmsman with a topmaul So, so he travels fast, and I must
!
;

down. But let me have one more good round look aloft here at sea;
there’s time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young;
aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-
hills of Nantucket! —
The same! the same! the same to Noah as to —
me. There’s a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings!
—
They must lead somewhere to something else than common land, more
palmy than the palms. Leeward the white whale goes that way look
!
;

to windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good-bye,

good-bye, old masthead ! What’s this ?
—green ? ay, tiny mosses in
these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab’s head
There’s the difference now between man’s old age and matter’s. But
aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though,
are we not, my ship ? Aye, minus a leg, that’s all. By heaven this !

dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. I can’t compare
with it; and I’ve known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives
of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What’s that he
said ? he should still go before me, my
and yet to be seen again ?
pilot ;

But where? Shall I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I
descend those endless stairs ? and all night I’ve been sailing from him,
wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou told’st direful
truth as touching thyself, 0 Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell
short. Good-bye, masthead —keep upon the whale, the
a good eye
while I’m gone. We’ll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white
whale down there, tied by head and tail.”
lies

He gave the word and still gazing round him, was

;
steadily lowered
through the cloven blue air to the deck.
In due time the boats were lowered but as standing in his shallop’s
;

stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the
—
mate, who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck and bade him pause. —
!”
“Starbuck
“Sir ?”
“For the third time my soul’s ship starts upon this voyage, Star-
buck.”
 THE WHITE WHALE 519

“Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.”

Some ships sailed from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing,
!”
Starbuck
“Truth, sir : saddest truth.”
Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full
of the flood; and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb,
Starbuck. I— shake hands with me, man.”
am old;
Their hands met; their eyes
fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.
Oh, my my captain —noble heart—go not—go not —
captain, !
!
see
it s a brave man that weeps ;
how great the agony of the persuasion
then!”
—
“Lower away!” cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s* arm from him.
“Stand by the crew!”
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.
“The sharks the sharks !” cried a voice from the low cabin-window
!

there; “O master, my master, come back!”

But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then;
and the boat leaped on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship,
when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters
beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every
time they dipped in the water ;
and in this way accompanied the boat
with their bites ? It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the
whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently
following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the
banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first

sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had
been first descried ;
and whether it was that Ahab’s crew were all such
tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the

senses of the sharks — a matter sometimes well known to affect them,

—however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without molest-
ing the others.
“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck, gazing over the side,
and following with his eyes the receding boat
—“canst thou yet ring
boldly to that sight? —lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and
followed by them, open-mouthed, to the chase; and this the critical
 —
!!
;

520 MOBY DICK; OR

third day? —For when three days flow together in one continuous in-
tense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the noon,
and the third the evening and the end of that thing be that end what —
it may. Oh my God what is this that shoots through me, and leaves
! !

me so deadly calm, yet expectant, — fixed at the top of a shudder!

Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all
the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale
glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous
blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep be-
tween — Is my journey’s end coming? My legs feel faint; like his who
has footed it all day. Feel thy heart, — beats it yet? — Stir thyself,
Starbuck !
—
—move, move speak aloud —Masthead there
stave it off !
!

See ye my hand on
boy’s — Crazed — there —keep thy
the hill ? ;
aloft !

keenest eye upon the boats: — mark well the whale! —Ho! again!
drive that hawk
off he pecks —he the vane” — pointing
see the tears to
red the main-truck
flag flying at
—“Ha he
! !

away with ! soars it !

Where’s the old man now thou that oh Ahab — shudder,

? see’st sight, !

!”
shudder
The when by a signal from the mast-
boats had not gone very far,
—
heads a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had
sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on
his way a little sideways from, the vessel the becharmed crew maintain- ;

ing the profoundest silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and

hammered against the opposing bow.
“Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost
heads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no
coffin and no hearse can be mine :
—and hemp only can kill me ! Ha
ha!”
Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles;
then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg
of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard
a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled
with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot length-
wise, but obliquely from the
Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of
sea.

mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell
swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters
 — ;
!

THE WHITE WHALE 521

flashed for an instant like heaps of
fountains, then brokenly sank in
a shower of flakes, leaving the circling
surface creamed like new milk
round the marble trunk of the whale.
Give way ! cried Ahab to the oarsmen and the boats darted for-
ward to the attack ;
but maddened by yesterday’s fresh irons that cor-
roded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels
that fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading
Ins broad white forehead, beneath the transparent
skin, looked knitted to-
gether ; as head on, he came churning his tail among the boats and once
;

more them apart spilling out the

flailed
; irons and lances from the two
mates boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows,
but leaving Ahab’s almost without a scar.
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks and
;

as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire
flank as he shot by them again at that moment a quick cry went up.
;

Lashed round and round to the fish’s hack; pinioned in the turns upon
turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involu-
tions of the lines around him, the half tom body of the Parsee was seen
his sable raiment frayed to shreds ;
his distended eyes turned full upon
old Ahab.
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
“Befooled, befooled !”
—drawing in a long lean breath
—“Aye, Parsee
I see thee again —Aye, and thou goest before ;
and this, this then is the
hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of
thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship!
those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return
to me if not, Ahab is enough to die
;
—
Down, men the first thing that !

but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye
are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me
Where’s the whale ? gone down again ?”
But he looked too nigh the boat for as if bent upon escaping with
;

the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter
had been hut a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again
steadily swiming forward; and had almost passed the ship, which —
thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for
the present her headway had been stopped. Ho seemed swimming with
 ;

522 MOBY DICK; OR

his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight
path in the sea.

“Oh Ahab,”
! cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third
day to desist. See ! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that
madly seekest him!”
Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled
to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was slid-

ing by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as

he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and
follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards,
he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three
mastheads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats
which had just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in re-
pairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped,
he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves
on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all of this
as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers
seemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now mark-
ing that the vane or flag was .gone from the main masthead, he shouted
to Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, to descend again for an-
other flag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.
Whether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and the resistance
to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was
some latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the
White Whale’s way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so
rapidly nearing him once more; though indeed the whale’s last start
had not been so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the
waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously
stuck to the boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the
blades became jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea,
at almost every dip.
“Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your
oars. Pull on! ’tis the better rest, the shark’s jaw than the yielding
water.”
“But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!”
“They will last long enough! pull on! But who can tell” he — —
 ! !

THE WHITE WHALE 523

muttered “ whether these sharks swim to feast on a whale or on Ahab ?

But pull on Aye, all alive, now we near him. The helm take
!
— !

the helm let me pass,”

; and so saying, two of the oarsmen helped him
forward to the bows of the still flying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along
with the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious
of its
advance as the whale sometimes will and Ahab was fairly within the—
smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled
round his great, Monadnock hump. He was even thus close to him;
when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to
the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into
the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if
sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically
rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it,

so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated
part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would have once more
been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen who fore- —
knew not the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared
for its effects — these were flung out ;
but so fell, that, in an instant two
of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a comb-
ing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again ;
the third man help-
lessly drooping astern, but still afloat and swimming.
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering
sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with
the line, and hold it so ;
and commanded the crew to turn round on their
seats, and tow the boat up to the mark ;
the moment the treacherous line
felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air
“What breaks in me ? Some sinew cracks !
— ’tis whole again ;
oars
!”
oars ! Burst in upon him
Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale
wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay but in that evolu- ;

tion, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly
seeing in it the source of all his persecutions ;
bethinking it — it may be

— a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its ad-

vancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

 ! ! !

524 MOBY DICK; OR

Ahab staggered ;
his hand smote his forehead. “I grow blind ;
hands
stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is’t nigh V
’

“The whale! The ship!” cried the cringing oarsmen.

“Oars oars
! Slope downwards to thy depths, 0 sea, that ere it be
!

for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark!
I see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my
ship ?”
But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the sledge-
hammering seas, the before whale-smitten how-ends of two planks burst
through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat lay
nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying
hard gap and bale out the pouring water.
to stop the
Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s mast-head
hammer remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrap-
ping him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him,
as his own forward-flowing heart ;
while Starbuck and Stubh, standing
upon the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster
just as soon as he.
“The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet
powers of air, now hug me close Let not Starbuck ! die, if die he must,
in awoman’s fainting fit. —
Up helm, I say ye fools, the jaw! the
jaw! Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long

fidelities ? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady ! helmsman, steady.
Hay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unap-
peasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot
depart. My God, stand by me now
“Stand not by me, hut stand under me, whoever you are that will
now help Stubb; for Stubh, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou
grinning whale! Whoever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but
Stubb’s own unwinking eye ? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a
mattress that is all too soft would it were stuffed with brushwood
; I !

grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, moon and stars! I
call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For
all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup

Oh, oh, oh, oh ! thou grinning whale, hut there’ll be plenty of gulping
soon! Why fly ye not, O, Ahab? For me, off shoes and jacket to it;
let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over-salted death,
 THE WHITE WHALE 525

though;— cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry
ere we die !”
“Cherries ? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb,
I hope my poor mother’s drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few cop-
pers will come to her now, for the voyage is
up.”
Fiom the ship s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive;
hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in
their hands, just as they had darted from their various employments;
all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side
strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of over-
spreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution,
swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of
all that mortal man
could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead
smote the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some
fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the
harpooneers aloft shook on their hull-like necks. Through the
breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a
flume.
“The ship The hearse! —
the second hearse !” cried Ahab from
!

the boat; “its wood could only be American!”

Diving beneath the settling ship, the Whale ran quivering along its
keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far
off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab’s boat, where, for a
time, he lay quiescent.
“I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego ! let me hear thy
hammer. Oh ye three unsurrendered spires of mine thou uncracked
! ;

keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm,
—
and Pole-pointed prow, death-glorious ship! must ye then perish,
and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest
shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I
feel my topmost greatness lies in my
from all topmost grief. Ho, ho !

your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole

foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards
thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I

grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit
my last breath at thee. Sink all coifins and all hearses to one common
pool ! and since neither can be mine let me then tow to pieces, while
 ”

526 MOBY DICK; OR

still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I
give up the spear !

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with ig-
niting velocity the line ran through the groove ;
ran Ahab stopped
foul.
to clear it ;
he did clear it ;
but the flying turn caught him round the
neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bow-string their victims, he was
shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the
heavy eyesplice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub,
knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its
depths.
For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned.
“The ship? Great God, where is the ship? Soon they through dim,
bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gas-
eous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed
by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan
harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And
now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and
each floating oar, and every lance-pole and spinning, animate and in-
animate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip
of the Pequod out of sight.

But whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the

as the last
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of
the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,
which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying
billows they almost touched ;
—
at that instant, a red arm and a hammer
hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the
flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that
tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural
home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego
there this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing be-
;

tween the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that
ethereal thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept
his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with unearthly
shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive
form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like
Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of
heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
 ;

THE WHITE WHALE 527

ISTow small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen
white surf beat against its steep sides ;
then all collapsed, and the great
shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

ETYMOLOGY
(supplied by a late consumptive usher to a GRAMMAR 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.]

“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 igno-
rance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the
word, you deliver that which is not true.” Hakluyt.

“Whale. . Sw. and Dan. hval

. . This animal is named from round-
.

ness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.”

Webster's Dictionary.

“Whale. ... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen
a.s. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.” Richardsons Dictionary.

Hebrew.
in
K^ro? Greek.
Cetus . Latin.
Whcel . . Anglo-Saxon.
Hvalt . Danish.
Wal . . Dutch.
Hwal . Swedish.
Whale . Icelandic.
Whale . . English.
Baleine French.
Ballena Spanish.
Pekee-nuee-nuee Fejee.
Pehee-nuee-nuee Erromangoan.
 ;

528 MOBY DICK; OR

EXTRACTS
(supplied BY a SUB-SUB-LIBRARIAN".)

[It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grubworm of
a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Yaticans
and picking up whatever random allusions to
street-stalls of the earth,
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. Ear from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well
as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertain-
ing, as affording a glancing bird’s-eye view of what has been promiscuously
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and genera-
tions, including our own.
So fare thee Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.
well, poor devil of a
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 for ever go thankless! Would that I could clear out
Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye down your tears and
! Bu-t gulp
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 !]

“And God created great whales.”

Genesis.
“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him;
One would think the deep to be hoary.”
Job.
“How 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
 , :

THE WHITE WHALE 529

punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked ser-
pent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Isaiah.
And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this mon-
ster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently
that
great swallow of his, and perish eth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.”

Holland’s Plutarch's Morals.

“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are
among which the Whales and Whirlpools 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

“He visited this country also with a view of catching horsewhales, which
had bones which he brought some to
of very great value for their teeth, of
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.

“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, Apology for Raimond Sebond.

“Let us fly, let Old Hick take me if it is not Leviathan described

us fly !

by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.” Rabelais.

“This whale’s liver was two cart-loads.” Stowe’s Annals.

“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like a boiling pan.”

Lord Bacon’s : Version of the Psalms.

Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received

530 MOBY DICK; OR
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.

“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward 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 Faerie Queene.

“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful

calm trouble the ocean till it boil.”
Sir William Davenant, Preface to Gondibert.

“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hos-
mannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly. Nescio quid sit.”
Sir T. Browne, 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 Commonwealth or

State — (in Latin, Ci vitas) 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
 THE WHITE WHALE 531

Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.”

Paradise Lost.

“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 chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.”
Dryden’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 Purclias.

“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which na-
ture has placed on their shoulders.”
Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages to Asia and Africa. (Harris Coll.)

“Here they saw such large 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. . . .
 ,

532 MOBY DICK; OR

One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitz-
bergen 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 which (as I was came in,

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.

“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Spermaceti
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.

“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.

. “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an

. .

insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”

Ulloa’s South America.

“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,

<V"e trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,

Tho’ stiff with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”

Pape of the Loclc.

“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 contemp-
tible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in crea-
tion.”
Goldsmith, Nat. His ,
 :

THE WHITE WHALE 533

“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 endeavour to conceal themselves behind
the whale, in older 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 men-
at sea they are afraid to
tion even their names, and carry dung, limestone, 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
SolamdePs Voyage to Iceland in 1772.

“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce

animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.”
Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the
French Minister in 1778.

“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?”

Edmund Burke’s Reference in Parliament
to the Nantucket Whale Fishery.

“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 protecting 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 property
of the king.”
Blackstone.

“Soon death the crews repair

to the sport of
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,

534 MOBY DICK; OR
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.

“In the free element beneath me swam,

Floundered and dived, in play, in chase, 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’s World before the Flood.
 THE WHITE WHALE 535

“Io ! Paean ! Io ! 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.”
Charles 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 point- —
—
ing to the sea is a green pasture where our children’s grandchildren will
go for bread.” Obed Macy’s History of Nantuclcet.

“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 jawbones.”
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.”
Eckmann’s Conversations with Goethe.

“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 Nantucket , first mate of said
vessel. New York, 1821.

“Amariner sat in the shrouds one night,

The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale.
536 MOBY DICK; OR
And the phosphor gleamed in the wake of the whale
As it floundered in the sea.”
Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

“The quantity of linewithdrawn from the different boats engaged in

the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or
nearly six English miles.” . . .

“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.

“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the in-
furiated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head,
and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes
at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with vast swift-
ness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.
... It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the
habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial 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 opportunities of witnessing their habi-
tudes.” 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 possessing 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, 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 masthead.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”
“Steady, sir.”

“•Masthead ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”

“Ay ay, sir ! A shoal of Sperm Whales ! There she blows ! There she
!’*
breaches
 , , s

THE WHITE WHALE 537

“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?"

“Two miles and a half.”
“Thunder and lightning! so near! call all hands!”
J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a
Whaling Cruise, 1846.

“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.

“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.”
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.

“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a mo-
ment.”
The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman'
Adventures and the Whale's Biography, gath-
ered on the Cruise of the “Commo-
Homeward
dore Preble” by the 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

538 MOBY DICK; OR
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.

“These things are reciprocal; the bound forward

ball rebounds, only to
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 .

“It is impossible to meet a whale ship on the ocean without being struck
by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with lookouts at the
mastheads, 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.

“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect hav-

ing 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.”

“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.

“Suddenly mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up per-
a
pendicularly 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 Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.
 THE WHITE WHALE 539

“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’sthrow of the shore” (Terra 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 KUler.

“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,

!”
JVhile 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.
/
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