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 Title : Moby Dick; Or, The Whale


 
 Author : Herman Melville


 


 
 Release date : July 1, 2001 [eBook #2701]

 Most recently updated: October 11, 2026



 Language : English



 Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701 



 Credits : Daniel Lazarus, Jonesey, and David Widger



 
 *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHALE *** 
 
 
 MOBY-DICK;

or, THE WHALE.
 
 
 

 


 
 By Herman Melville
 
 
 
 

 


 
 
 
 

 


 
 
 CONTENTS 
 


 
 

 


 
 ETYMOLOGY. 
 


 
 EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
 
 


 
 

 


 
 CHAPTER 1. Loomings. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 5. Breakfast. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 6. The Street. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 7. The Chapel. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 9. The Sermon. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 11. Nightgown. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 12. Biographical. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 14. Nantucket. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 15. Chowder. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 16. The Ship. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 18. His Mark. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 19. The Prophet. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 20. All Astir. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 24. The Advocate. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 25. Postscript. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 28. Ahab. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 30. The Pipe. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 32. Cetology. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 37. Sunset. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 38. Dusk. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 43. Hark! 
 


 
 CHAPTER 44. The Chart. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 46. Surmises. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 49. The Hyena. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
 
 


 
 CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 52. The Albatross. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 53. The Gam. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of
 Whales. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of
 Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in
 Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 58. Brit. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 59. Squid. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 60. The Line. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 62. The Dart. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 63. The Crotch. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 67. Cutting In. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 68. The Blanket. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 69. The Funeral. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale;
 and Then Have a Talk over Him. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted
 View. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted
 View. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 79. The Prairie. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 80. The Nut. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
 
 


 
 CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 85. The Fountain. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 86. The Tail. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 92. Ambergris. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 93. The Castaway. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 95. The Cassock. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 97. The Lamp. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 101. The Decanter. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s
 Skeleton. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude
 Diminish?—Will He Perish? 
 


 
 CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
 
 


 
 CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 111. The Pacific. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 113. The Forge. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 114. The Gilder. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
 
 


 
 CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 119. The Candles. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the
 First Night Watch. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle
 Bulwarks. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and
 Lightning. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 123. The Musket. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 124. The Needle. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 127. The Deck. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 129. The Cabin. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 130. The Hat. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 132. The Symphony. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day. 
 


 
 CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day. 
 


 
 Epilogue 
 


 
 
 
 

 


 

 
 
 Original Transcriber’s Notes: 
 
 
 This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS
 project at Virginia Tech and one from Project Gutenberg’s archives. The
 proofreaders of this version are indebted to The University of Adelaide
 Library for preserving the Virginia Tech version. The resulting etext
 was compared with a public domain hard copy version of the text.
 


 

 
 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 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
 ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of
 the word, you deliver that which is not true.” — Hackluyt. 
 


 
 “WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval . This animal is named from roundness or
 rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.” — Webster’s
 Dictionary. 
 


 
 “WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen ; A.S.
 Walw-ian , to roll, to wallow.” — Richardson’s Dictionary. 
 


 
 
 
 חו, 
 Hebrew . 
 
 
 
 ϰητος, 
 Greek . 
 
 
 
 CETUS, 
 Latin . 
 
 
 
 WHŒL, 
 Anglo-Saxon . 
 
 
 
 HVALT, 
 Danish . 
 
 
 
 WAL, 
 Dutch . 
 
 
 
 HWAL, 
 Swedish . 
 
 
 
 HVALUR, 
 Icelandic . 
 
 
 
 WHALE, 
 English . 
 
 
 
 BALEINE, 
 French . 
 
 
 
 BALLENA, 
 Spanish . 
 
 
 
 PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, 
 Fegee . 
 
 
 
 PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, 
 Erromangoan . 
 
 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
 
 
 It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a
 poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans
 and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to
 whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane.
 Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the
 higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these
 extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the
 ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these
 extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing
 bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
 and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our
 own.
 


 
 So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou
 belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world
 will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong;
 but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too;
 and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes
 and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness—Give
 it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the
 world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless! Would that I
 could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down
 your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your
 friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens,
 and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael,
 against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there,
 ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!
 


 
 EXTRACTS.
 
 
 “And God created great whales.” — Genesis .
 


 
 “Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to
 be hoary.” — Job .
 


 
 “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” — Jonah .
 


 
 “There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play
 therein.” — Psalms .
 


 
 “In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall
 punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked
 serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” — Isaiah .
 


 
 “And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s
 mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that
 foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his
 paunch.” — Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals .
 


 
 “The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among
 which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in
 length as four acres or arpens of land.” — Holland’s Pliny .
 


 
 “Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
 great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
 former, one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us,
 open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before
 him into a foam.” — Tooke’s Lucian . “ The True History .”
 


 
 “He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
 which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought
 some to the king.... The best whales were catched in his own country, of
 which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was
 one of six who had killed sixty in two days.” — Other or Other’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 us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described
 by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.” — Rabelais .
 


 
 “This whale’s liver was two cartloads.” — Stowe’s Annals .
 


 
 “The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.”
 — Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms .
 


 
 “Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
 nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible
 quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.” — Ibid .
 “ History of Life and Death .”
 


 
 “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 Fairie Queen .
 
 
 “Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
 calm trouble the ocean till it boil.” — Sir William Davenant.
 Preface to Gondibert .
 


 
 “What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
 Hosmannus 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, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.” — Opening sentence
 of Hobbes’s Leviathan .
 


 
 “Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat
 in the mouth of a whale.” — Pilgrim’s Progress .
 


 “That sea beast
 Leviathan, which God of all his works
 Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.” — Paradise Lost .

 —“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 Leviathan 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 Purchas .
 


 
 “In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
 wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
 nature has placed on their shoulders.” — Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages
 into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll .
 


 
 “Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
 proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship
 upon them.” — Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation .
 


 
 “We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
 Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that
 is a fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they
 can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains....
 I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of
 herrings in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me that he caught
 once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.” — A Voyage to
 Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll .
 


 
 “Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
 eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
 informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
 baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.”
 — Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross .
 


 
 “Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
 Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was
 killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.” — Richard
 Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668.
 


 
 “Whales in the sea God’s voice obey.” — N. E. Primer .
 


 
 “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,
 We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
 Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
 Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”
 — Rape of the Lock .
 
 
 “If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that
 take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
 contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
 animal in creation.” — Goldsmith, Nat. Hist .
 


 
 “If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
 speak like great whales.” — Goldsmith to Johnson .
 


 
 “In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
 found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then
 towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the
 whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.” — Cook’s Voyages .
 


 
 “The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so
 great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to
 mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and
 some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to
 terrify and prevent their too near approach.” — Uno Von Troil’s
 Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in 1772.
 


 
 “The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
 animal, and requires vast address and 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 to the sport of death the crews repair:
 Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends
 The barbed steel, and every turn attends.”
 — Falconer’s Shipwreck .

 “Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
 And rockets blew self driven,
 To hang their momentary fire
 Around the vault of heaven.

 “So fire with water to compare,
 The ocean serves on high,
 Up-spouted by a whale in air,
 To express unwieldy joy.”
 — Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London .
 
 
 “Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a
 stroke, with immense velocity.” — John Hunter’s account of the
 dissection of a whale . ( A small sized one .)
 


 
 “The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
 water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
 through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
 gushing from the whale’s heart.” — Paley’s Theology .
 


 
 “The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.” — Baron
 Cuvier .
 


 
 “In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any
 till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.” — Colnett’s
 Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fishery .
 


 “In the free element beneath me swam,
 Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
 Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;
 Which language cannot paint, and mariner
 Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
 To insect millions peopling every wave:
 Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,
 Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
 And trackless region, though on every side
 Assaulted by voracious enemies,
 Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,
 With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”
 — Montgomery’s World before the Flood .

 “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—pointing
 to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children
 will go for bread.” — Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket .
 


 
 “I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form
 of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” — Hawthorne’s
 Twice Told Tales .
 


 
 “She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed
 by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.” — Ibid .
 


 
 “No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his sprout; 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.” — Eckermann’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.
 


 “A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
 The wind was piping free;
 Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
 And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
 As it floundered in the sea.”
 — Elizabeth Oakes Smith .
 
 
 “The quantity of line withdrawn from the 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
 infuriated 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
 swiftness, 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, 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 habitudes.”
 — 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 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 mast-head.



 “Where away?” demanded the captain.



 “Three points off the lee bow, sir.”



 “Raise up your wheel. Steady!”



 “Steady, sir.”



 “Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”



 “Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she
 breaches!”



 “Sing out! sing out every time!”



 “Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there— thar she
 blows—bowes—bo-o-os!”



 “How far off?”



 “Two miles and a half.”



 “Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands.”



 — J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize . 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 moment.”
 —“ The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’s Adventures and the
 Whale’s Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore
 Preble .” By Rev. Henry T. Cheever .
 


 
 “If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send
 you to hell.” — Life of Samuel Comstock ( the mutineer ), by his
 brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship Globe
 narrative .
 


 
 “The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order,
 if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they
 failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale.” — McCulloch’s
 Commercial Dictionary .
 


 
 “These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward
 again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem
 to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West
 Passage.” — From “ Something ” unpublished .
 


 
 “It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck
 by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at
 the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a
 totally different air from those engaged in regular voyage.” — Currents
 and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex .
 


 
 “Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
 having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form
 arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have
 been told that these were the ribs of whales.” — Tales of a Whale
 Voyager to the Arctic Ocean .
 


 
 “It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
 that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages
 enrolled among the crew.” — Newspaper Account of the Taking and
 Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack .
 


 
 “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 a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
 perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.” — Miriam Coffin or
 the Whale Fisherman .
 


 
 “The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
 manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied
 to the root of his tail.” — A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and
 Trucks .
 


 
 “On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and
 female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone’s
 throw of the shore” (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 Killer .
 


 
 “So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold
 harpooneer is striking the whale!” — Nantucket Song .
 


 “Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
 In his ocean home will be
 A giant in might, where might is right,
 And King of the boundless sea.”
 — Whale Song .
 
 

 
 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
 
 
 Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
 little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
 shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of
 the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the
 circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever
 it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself
 involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear
 of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an
 upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me
 from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
 people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon
 as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical
 flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.
 There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men
 in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings
 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 downtown is
 the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, 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 of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
 Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do
 you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
 thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
 leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking
 over 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 bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
 extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
 warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as
 they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
 them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys,
 streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all
 unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses
 of all those ships attract them thither?
 


 
 Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
 almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale,
 and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let
 the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand
 that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead
 you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be
 athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your 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, shadiest,
 quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of
 the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees,
 each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and
 here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder
 cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way,
 reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their 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 all were vain,
 unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go
 visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
 knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there
 is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would
 you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of
 Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate
 whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a
 pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy
 with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to
 sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such
 a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
 of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the
 Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this
 is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of
 Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he
 saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image,
 we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the
 ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
 


 
 Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to
 grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do
 not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to
 go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag
 unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow
 quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves
 much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though
 I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a
 Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to
 those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable 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 ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though
 once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered,
 there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say
 reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous
 dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse,
 that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the
 pyramids.
 


 
 No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
 plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True,
 they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like
 a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is
 unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, 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 transition
 is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires
 a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear
 it. But even this wears off in time.
 


 
 What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
 and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I
 mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
 Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
 respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a
 slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me
 about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
 satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one
 way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
 metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed
 round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be
 content.
 


 
 Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying
 me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I
 ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there
 is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act
 of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two
 orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid ,—what will compare
 with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really
 marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root
 of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.
 Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
 


 
 Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise
 and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are
 far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate
 the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the
 quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the
 forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same
 way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same
 time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after
 having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it
 into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer
 of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs
 me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer
 than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed
 part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time
 ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more
 extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
 something like this:
 


 
 “ Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. 
 “WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
 


 
 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 circumstances, I
 think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being
 cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about
 performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it
 was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating
 judgment.
 


 
 Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
 himself. Such a 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. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and
 could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is
 but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one
 lodges in.
 


 
 By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great
 flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that
 swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul,
 endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand
 hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
 
 
 I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm,
 and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old
 Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in
 December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for
 Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would
 offer, till the following Monday.
 


 
 As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
 this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be
 related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up
 to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine,
 boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old
 island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late
 been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though in this
 matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her
 great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the
 first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did
 those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give
 chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first
 adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
 cobblestones—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?
 


 
 Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in
 New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter
 of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very
 dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and
 cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels 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 expensive and jolly there.
 Further 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, pausing 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 followed the streets that took me waterward, for there,
 doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
 


 
 Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and
 here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this
 hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town
 proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding
 from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had
 a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so,
 entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the
 porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are
 these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But “The 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; and the
 preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and
 wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out,
 Wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The Trap!’
 


 
 Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks,
 and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging
 sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a
 tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath—“The
 Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”
 


 
 Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion,
 thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose
 this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
 the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little
 wooden house itself looked as if it might have been 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 howling
 than ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless,
 is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet 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 from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, 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. The universe is finished; the
 copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor
 Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow,
 and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both
 ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not
 keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his
 red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What
 a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them
 talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give
 me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
 


 
 But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to
 the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than
 here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of
 the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to
 keep out this frost?
 


 
 Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
 door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
 moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar
 in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a
 temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
 


 
 But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is
 plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet,
 and see what sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
 
 
 Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low,
 straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the
 bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
 oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
 unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study
 and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the
 neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
 purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
 you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
 England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of
 much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
 especially by throwing open the little window 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, portentous,
 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, unimaginable sublimity
 about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily 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 unnatural combat of the
 four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean
 winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.
 But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in
 the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But
 stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the
 great leviathan himself?
 


 
 In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly
 based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I
 conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a
 great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three
 dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to
 spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself
 upon the three mast-heads.
 


 
 The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array
 of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth
 resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and
 one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment
 made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you
 gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have
 gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed
 with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and
 deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly
 elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a
 sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was
 flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years 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 at last was found imbedded in the hump.
 


 
 Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut
 through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
 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
 further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a
 rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the
 vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive
 beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters,
 bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another
 cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little
 withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums
 and death.
 


 
 Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true
 cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling 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; to this a penny more; and so on
 to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for
 a shilling.
 


 
 Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a
 table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander . I sought
 the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room,
 received for answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied.
 “But avast,” 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, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he
 (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was
 not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a
 strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any
 decent man’s blanket.
 


 
 “I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper?
 Supper’ll be ready directly.”
 


 
 I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the
 Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with
 his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space
 between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he
 didn’t make much headway, I thought.
 


 
 At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining
 room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said
 he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a
 winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to
 our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare
 was of the most substantial kind—not only meat and potatoes, but
 dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green
 box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.
 


 
 “My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead
 sartainty.”
 


 
 “Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer is it?”
 


 
 “Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer
 is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don’t—he
 eats nothing but steaks, and he 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 landlord
 cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing this
 morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we’ll
 have the latest news from the Feegees.”
 


 
 A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open,
 and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy
 watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all
 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. No wonder, then, that they made a
 straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the bar—when the wrinkled
 little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all
 round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed
 him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a
 sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how
 long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the
 weather side of an ice-island.
 


 
 The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with
 the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about
 most obstreperously.
 


 
 I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he
 seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own
 sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as
 the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had
 ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a
 sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here
 venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in
 height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom
 seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his
 white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his
 eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy.
 His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine
 stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the
 Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had
 mounted to its height, this man slipped away 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 “Bulkington! 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 supernaturally
 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.
 


 
 No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
 rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people
 like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping
 with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that
 stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was
 there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more
 than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than
 bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one
 apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own
 blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
 


 
 The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the
 thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
 harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of
 the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
 Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home
 and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight—how
 could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?
 


 
 “Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan’t
 sleep with him. I’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—wait, I say, and I’ll make ye snug enough.” So
 saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first
 dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while
 grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the
 plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near
 spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven’s sake to quit—the
 bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in
 the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the
 shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the
 middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown
 study.
 


 
 I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
 short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too
 narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than
 the planed one—so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first
 bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leaving a
 little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I soon found
 that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of
 the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially as another
 current from the rickety door met the one from the window, and both
 together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of
 the spot where I had thought to spend the night.
 


 
 The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn’t I steal a
 march on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be
 wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon
 second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next
 morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be
 standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!
 


 
 Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a
 sufferable night unless in some other person’s bed, I began to think that
 after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this
 unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I’ll wait awhile; he must be 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 boarders 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. “No,” 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 to-night he went out a peddling,
 you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be,
 he can’t sell his head.”
 


 
 “Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
 are telling me?” getting into a 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.
 


 
 “With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the world?”
 


 
 “I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you’d better stop
 spinning that yarn to me—I’m not green.”
 


 
 “May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but I rayther
 guess you’ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin’
 his head.”
 


 
 “I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this
 unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s.
 


 
 “It’s broke a’ready,” said he.
 


 
 “Broke,” said I—“ broke , do you mean?”
 


 
 “Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I guess.”
 


 
 “Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm—“landlord,
 stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too
 without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can
 only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain
 harpooneer. And about this 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 feeling towards the man whom you design
 for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate
 and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak
 out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in
 all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you
 will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if
 true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and
 I’ve no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean,
 landlord, you , sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would
 thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.”
 


 
 “Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “that’s a purty long
 sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy,
 this here harpooneer I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the
 south seas, where he bought up a lot of ’balmed New Zealand heads (great
 curios, you know), and he’s sold all on ’em but one, and that one he’s
 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 had no idea of fooling me—but at
 the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a
 Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal
 business as selling the heads of dead idolators?
 


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


 
 “He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s getting dreadful
 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 of room
 for two to kick about in that bed; it’s an almighty big bed that. Why,
 afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot
 of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow,
 Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that,
 Sal said it wouldn’t do. Come along here, I’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 it’s Sunday—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 up stairs we went, and I was
 ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,
 with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers
 to sleep abreast.
 


 
 “There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest
 that did double duty as a wash-stand 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 corner; also a large seaman’s bag, containing the
 harpooneer’s wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there
 was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the
 fire-place, and a tall harpoon 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 smelt it, and tried every way possible to 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, as you see the same in
 South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer
 would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in
 that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a
 hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as
 though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I
 went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw
 such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I
 gave myself a kink in the neck.
 


 
 I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
 head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on
 the bed-side, 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 crockery, there
 is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a
 long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly
 made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall
 in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under
 the door.
 


 
 Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
 head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word
 till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New
 Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without
 looking 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 his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I
 knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred
 to me. I remembered a story of a white man—a whaleman too—who,
 falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that
 this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with
 a similar 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
 extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were
 passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at
 all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced
 fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a
 seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the
 middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly
 thing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his
 hat—a new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with fresh
 surprise. There was no hair on his head—none to speak of at least—nothing
 but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head
 now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger
 stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than
 ever I bolted a dinner.
 


 
 Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it
 was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this
 head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance
 is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded
 about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was
 the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night.
 In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to
 address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed
 inexplicable in him.
 


 
 Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his
 chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with
 the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark
 squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped
 from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were
 marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of
 young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage
 or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in
 this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps
 the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens!
 look at that tomahawk!
 


 
 But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
 something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that
 he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or
 dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the
 pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a
 hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days’ old Congo baby.
 Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black
 manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that
 it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished
 ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed
 it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and
 removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image,
 like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks
 inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very
 appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
 


 
 I now screwed my eyes hard 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 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 be 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 woodcock.
 


 
 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 it was high time, 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 moment 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 comprehended 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!”
 


 
 “Speak-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 room light in
 hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
 


 
 “Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here wouldn’t
 harm a hair of your head.”
 


 
 “Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that that
 infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?”
 


 
 “I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads
 around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look
 here—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you
 sabbee?”
 


 
 “Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away 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 really did this in not only a civil but a
 really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all
 his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.
 What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—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 you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn
 in with him. But I don’t fancy 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 politely
 motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to
 say—“I won’t touch a leg of ye.”
 


 
 “Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”
 


 
 I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
 
 
 Upon waking next morning about daylight, 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 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 tell it from
 the quilt, they so 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
 child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that 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 it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep
 do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all
 the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother
 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 hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help
 for it, so up stairs 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 for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small of
 my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in
 at the window, and a great rattling of 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 best and most conscientious of
 stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For 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 troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it—half
 steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit 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 phantom, to which the hand
 belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side. 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
 bridegroom 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 suddenly
 felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there 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! “Queequeg!—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 matrimonial 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 rubbing his eyes as if he did not
 altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness of
 knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I
 lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon
 narrowly observing 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 first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole
 apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is
 a very civilized 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 Queequeg, 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 toilette
 motions; for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding.
 Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don’t see every day, he and his ways
 were well worth unusual regarding.
 


 
 He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one,
 by the by, and then—still minus his trowsers—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 see, was a creature in the transition stage—neither
 caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his
 outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His education was not
 yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree
 civilized, he very probably 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.
 


 
 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 wash-stand 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 Rogers’s best cutlery with a vengeance. 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 rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of
 the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his
 harpoon like a marshal’s baton.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 5. 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 is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce 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 be spent in that way. And the
 man that has anything bountifully laughable 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 all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and 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 tawn, 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 New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men,
 they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere
 crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn 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 reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that 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—entire
 strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet,
 here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling,
 all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other 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 into breakfast with him, and
 using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the
 imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling 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 anything 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 withdrew like the rest
 into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there
 quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied
 out for a stroll.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 6. 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 New Bedford.
 


 
 In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently
 offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even
 in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes
 jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and
 Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared
 the natives. But New Bedford beats 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 Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,
 and Brighggians, 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 Mountains whence they came. In
 some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look there! that
 chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed
 coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with
 a sou’-wester and a bombazine 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 his
 two 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 distinguished
 reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical
 things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he
 orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah,
 poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst 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 patrician-like houses; parks and
 gardens more opulent, than in New 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 be 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. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?
 


 
 In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
 daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You
 must go to New 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, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their
 tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art;
 which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces
 of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation’s final
 day.
 


 
 And the women of New 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 7. The Chapel.
 
 
 In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and few are the
 moody fishermen, shortly bound 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 first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
 special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving
 sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called
 bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, 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 incommunicable. The chaplain had not
 yet arrived; and there these silent islands 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 1 st , 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 31 st , 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by their
 surviving SHIPMATES.
 


 
 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 Japan, 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 myself
 near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me.
 Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering 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 those frigid inscriptions
 on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names
 appeared there were now among the congregation, 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 infidelities in the
 lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections 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
 it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales,
 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 antique Adam
 who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be
 comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in
 unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead;
 wherefore but the rumor 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.
 


 
 It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
 Nantucket 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 be 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 immortal by brevet. Yes,
 there is death in this business of whaling—a 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 me. And therefore three cheers for
 Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave
 my soul, Jove himself cannot.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
 
 
 I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
 robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon
 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 ministry. 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 adventurous maritime life he had led. When he
 entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come
 in his carriage, for his 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, it was a very lofty one, and since a
 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 a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those
 used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain
 had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted 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. Halting for an instant at the
 foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of
 the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly
 sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the
 steps as if ascending the main-top 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 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 symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by
 that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for
 the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for
 replenished with the meat and wine of the word, 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 sea-farings. 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. Its panelled front was in the
 likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting
 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
 earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads
 the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first
 descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is 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 9. The Sermon.
 
 
 Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered
 the scattered people to condense. “Starboard gangway, there! 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 his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered 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 towards 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 sun-lit 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.

 “In black distress, I called my God,
 When I could scarce believe him mine,
 He bowed his ear to my complaints—
 No more the whale did me confine.

 “With speed he flew to my relief,
 As on a radiant dolphin borne;
 Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
 The face of my Deliverer God.

 “My song for ever shall record
 That terrible, that joyful hour;
 I give the glory to my God,
 His all the mercy and the power.”
 
 
 Nearly 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 Jonah—‘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 sealine sound! what a pregnant
 lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the
 fish’s belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods
 surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters;
 sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But what is this lesson
 that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, 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. As with all sinners among men, the 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 endeavors to persuade.
 And if we obey 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, and seeks a ship that’s bound
 for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto 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 Mediterranean, 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 deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no
 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 confidence; 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—“Jack, he’s robbed a widow;” or, “Joe, do
 you mark him; he’s a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, 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 looks from Jonah 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 be the man that is advertised,
 they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin.
 


 
 “‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out
 his papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that harmless
 question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But
 he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye,
 sir?’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the man
 now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than
 he darts a scrutinizing glance. ‘We sail with the next coming tide,’ at
 last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. ‘No 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 overlooked in this history, ‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere
 the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
 


 
 “Now 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 without 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. Not 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 lookest 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 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 is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds
 the little state-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 feels the heralding presentiment of that
 stifling 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 oscillates
 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 round the place, and
 this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.
 But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor,
 the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in
 me!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my
 soul are all in crookedness!’
 


 
 “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 race-horse 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 steals 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
 the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars
 are clattering 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—a berth in the cabin as I have taken
 it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and
 shrieks in his dead ear, ‘What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!’ 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 leaping 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 overhead, 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 behavior
 of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from;
 whereas, they not 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! Straightway, he now goes on to
 make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more
 appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, 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 masterless 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 punishment 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 towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is
 true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for
 punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in
 the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I
 do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but 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 God and himself.
 


 
 But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head 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 be 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 mast-head 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 bidden 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 slantings 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.
 Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet—‘out of the belly of
 hell’—when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even
 then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God
 spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the
 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 multitudinously
 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 dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even
 though to be 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 again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out 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 main-truck higher than the
 kelson 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 treacherous 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 departed, and
 he was left alone in the place.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
 
 
 Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg 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 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 gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then
 begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number 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 countenance 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; but certain it was his head was
 phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded
 me of General Washington’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 indifference of his very
 strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly
 how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm
 self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed
 also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but 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 acquaintances. 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 sensible of strange
 feelings. I felt a melting in me. No 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 civilized hypocrisies 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 hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
 bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a
 little complimented.
 


 
 We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain 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 then we sat exchanging
 puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping 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 it out, and left
 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 countryman, this sudden flame
 of friendship would have seemed far too premature, 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 a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous
 tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty
 dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically
 dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and
 said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by
 pouring them into my trowsers’ 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; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
 Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
 worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you
 suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans
 and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of
 black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God— that 
 is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what
 I would have my fellow man to do to me— that is the will of God. Now,
 Queequeg is my fellow man. 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
 idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little
 idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed 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, in our hearts’
 honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
 
 
 We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
 Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over
 mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy
 were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little
 nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting
 up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.
 


 
 Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began
 to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up;
 the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the head-board 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 the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and
 unmistakably 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.
 


 
 We 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 be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our
 essences, though light be 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 revulsion. Nor did I
 at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps 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, because he seemed to be 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, but 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 ill comprehended 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
 
 
 Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and
 South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
 


 
 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 desire
 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 Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, 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 its prow seaward, he
 sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; 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-bolt 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 Czar Peter content to toil in the
 shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg 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 of whalemen 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 Harbor; and
 seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, 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 idolator 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 hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and 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 design, and informed him of my
 intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising 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 Potluck 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, like me, was wholly ignorant of the
 mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to
 merchant seamen.
 


 
 His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg embraced
 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 13. 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, however, 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
 about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person
 whom I now companied with.
 


 
 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,
 preferred 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 Harbor. 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 thing—though
 in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage
 the barrow—Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then
 shoulders the barrow 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 Rokovoko,
 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
 Rokovoko, and its 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 in, and being assigned
 the post of honor, placed himself over 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 immemorial ceremony of the island; that is,
 dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the
 blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and
 noting the ceremony, and thinking himself—being Captain of a ship—as
 having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King’s
 own house—the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the
 punchbowl;—taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said
 Queequeg, “what you tink now?—Didn’t our people laugh?”
 


 
 At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner.
 Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New 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 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 begins 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 turnpike 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 bowsprit, that for some
 time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a
 lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so
 companionable; as though a white man were anything 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 stern 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 officer;
 “Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.”
 


 
 “Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea,
 stalking up to Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you
 know you might have killed that chap?”
 


 
 “What him say?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
 


 
 “He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,” pointing to
 the still shivering greenhorn.
 


 
 “Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an 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 cannibal, if you try
 any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.”
 


 
 But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to
 mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted the
 weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side,
 completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor fellow
 whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; 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, but
 saw no one to be saved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself
 perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now took an instant’s glance
 around him, and seeming to see just how matters were, dived down and
 disappeared. 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 voted Queequeg a noble
 trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg
 like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg 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 leaning against
 the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to
 himself—“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We
 cannibals must help these Christians.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 14. 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 hillock, 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 Canada 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 snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way
 inclosed, 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 Indian in his
 talons. With loud lament the parents saw their 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 discovered the
 island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,—the poor little
 Indian’s skeleton.
 


 
 What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take
 to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the
 sand; grown bolder, 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 circumnavigations 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 Mastodon,
 clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very
 panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious
 assaults!
 


 
 And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from
 their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world 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 his; he owns it,
 as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through
 it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but 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 another world, more strangely than the moon would to
 an Earthsman. 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 15. 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 business
 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 Try Pots,
 whom he asserted to be 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 Try Pots. But the
 directions 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 top-mast, planted in front of an old
 doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so
 that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was
 over sensitive 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, 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 so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but 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 at
 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; is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?” 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 savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
 apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder
 came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends!
 hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely 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 favourite fishing food before him,
 and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great
 expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey’s
 clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment.
 Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word “cod” with great
 emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury steam came
 forth again, but with a different flavor, 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 here has any effect on the head? What’s that
 stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? “But look, Queequeg, ain’t
 that a live eel in your bowl? Where’s your harpoon?”
 


 
 Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its
 name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for
 breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began
 to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area before the
 house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished necklace of
 codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior
 old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I could
 not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along
 the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled cow feeding
 on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod’s
 decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.
 


 
 Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey
 concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede
 me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, 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
 dangerous,” says she. “Ever since young Stiggs coming 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 weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg” (for she had
 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?”
 


 
 “Both,” says I; “and let’s have a couple of smoked herring by way of
 variety.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
 
 
 In 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
 everyway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in
 harbor, 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 purposed 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 sort
 of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did
 not succeed in his benevolent designs.
 


 
 Now, this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching the selection 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 prepared to set
 about this business with a determined rushing sort of energy and vigor,
 that should quickly settle that trifling little affair. Next 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 it several times, I
 never could master his liturgies and XXXIX Articles—leaving
 Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at
 his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among 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 board 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-box 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 bows looked bearded. Her masts—cut
 somewhere on 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 ancient decks were worn and wrinkled,
 like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where
 Becket bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were added new and
 marvellous 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 chief-mateship, 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 Thorkill-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 pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons
 to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly
 travelled over 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 back 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 I saw
 nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or rather
 wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. 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
 Pottowottamie 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
 ship’s work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the 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 blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there
 was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles
 interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual
 sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;—for
 this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such
 eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.
 


 
 “Is this the Captain of the Pequod?” 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.”
 


 
 “Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?
 


 
 “Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been several
 voyages in the merchant service, and I think that—”
 


 
 “Merchant 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 indeed! I suppose now ye feel
 considerable proud of having served in 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 innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of
 these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated 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 art 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, including crew. We
 are part owners and agents. But as I was going 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 devoured, chewed
 up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat!—ah,
 ah!”
 


 
 I was a little alarmed by 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; but how could I know there was
 any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, 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 it. But let us understand each other. I
 have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel inclined for
 it?”
 


 
 “I do, sir.”
 


 
 “Very good. Now, 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 be the fact.”
 


 
 “Good again. Now 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.”
 


 
 For 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.
 


 
 Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, 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, but 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 but water; considerable horizon
 though, and there’s a squall coming up, I think.”
 


 
 “Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do 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 be 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, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was 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 modified 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 vengeance.
 


 
 So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with Scripture
 names—a singularly common fashion on 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 unoutgrown
 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 confiding 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 overruling 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 whaleman. But
 unlike Captain Peleg—who cared not a rush for what are 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 life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island
 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
 conscientious 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 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 conclusion 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 boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship
 owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, 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.
 


 
 Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
 incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard
 task-master. They told me in Nantucket, 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 inordinate 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 something—a hammer or a
 marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind
 what. Indolence and idleness perished 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 vesture was buttoned
 up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in reading from
 a ponderous volume.
 


 
 “Bildad,” cried Captain Peleg, “at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have 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.”
 


 
 “Dost 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 a chest, and drawing forth
 the ship’s articles, placed pen and ink before 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 whaling, 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 putting up at this grim
 sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay
 would be 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 and more 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 surprise, considering that he was such an
 interested party in these proceedings; 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 give this young man?”
 


 
 “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 I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and
 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 magnitude of
 the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest
 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-seventh,” again said Bildad, without lifting
 his eyes; and then went on mumbling—“for where your treasure 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 labors 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 still an
 impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a
 leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering 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 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 be good at sharpening a
 lance, mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone.
 That’s he; thank ye, Bildad. Now 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 but 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 board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take
 command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged, and the shore
 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, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.
 


 
 “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. Any how, young man, he won’t always see me, so I don’t
 suppose he will thee. He’s a queer man, Captain Ahab—so some think—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 to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in
 mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the
 surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and he
 ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s 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 Gayhead,
 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, 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. Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man has a child:
 hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my
 lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!”
 


 
 As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been 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 that sort
 of awe, which I cannot at all describe, 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
 
 
 As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all
 day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I
 cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations,
 never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
 even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; 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 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. “Queequeg,” said I
 softly through the key-hole:—all silent. “I say, Queequeg! why don’t
 you speak? It’s I—Ishmael.” But all remained still as before. I
 began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant time; I thought he
 might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through the key-hole; but the
 door opening into an odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect was but
 a crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of the foot-board 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 evening 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 happened.
 Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted.
 Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person I
 met—the chamber-maid. “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 of
 attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime.
 


 
 “Wood-house!” 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
 up stairs 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-cruet, so
 as to have one hand free; “look here; are you talking about 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, shipmate?”
 


 
 In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the
 whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of her
 nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed—“No! 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 another counterpane—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 parlor;”—might as well kill
 both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be merciful to 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 supplemental bolt
 remained unwithdrawn within.
 


 
 “Have to burst it open,” said I, and was running down the entry a little,
 for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing 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 wall, 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 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;
 especially, 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 endeavored 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 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 up
 stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must
 certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there he was
 just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow
 vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be sitting
 there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a
 piece of wood on his head.
 


 
 “For heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up and shake 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 over him, as it
 promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinary
 round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into the
 faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere thought of
 Queequeg—not four feet off—sitting there in that uneasy
 position, stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me really wretched.
 Think of it; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan
 on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!
 


 
 But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break of
 day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he had
 been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun
 entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a
 cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again
 against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.
 


 
 Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s religion, be
 it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other
 person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s
 religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him;
 and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an 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 labored to show
 Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in
 cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for
 the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common
 sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely
 sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see
 him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his.
 Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves
 in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This
 is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy
 notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather
 digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling;
 and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by
 Ramadans.
 


 
 I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia;
 expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in. He said no;
 only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by his
 father the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the
 enemy had been killed by about two o’clock in the afternoon, and all
 cooked and eaten that very evening.
 


 
 “No more, Queequeg,” said I, shuddering; “that will do;” for I knew the
 inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had
 visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a
 great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard
 or garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great
 wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and
 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 we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty
 breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make
 much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod,
 sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 18. 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 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.” Here be
 it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last
 come to be converted into the churches.
 


 
 “First Congregational Church,” cried Bildad, “what! that worships in
 Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman’s meeting-house?” and so saying, taking out his
 spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and
 putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning
 stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at Queequeg.
 


 
 “How long hath he been a member?” he then said, turning to me; “not very
 long, I rather guess, young man.”
 


 
 “No,” said Peleg, “and he hasn’t been baptized right either, or it would
 have washed some of that devil’s blue off his face.”
 


 
 “Do tell, now,” cried Bildad, “is this Philistine a regular member of
 Deacon Deuteronomy’s meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it
 every Lord’s day.”
 


 
 “I don’t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting,” said I;
 “all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
 Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is.”
 


 
 “Young man,” said Bildad sternly, “thou art skylarking with me—explain
 thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me.”
 


 
 Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “I mean, sir, the same ancient
 Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg
 here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the
 great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world;
 we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no
 ways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands.”
 


 
 “Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing nearer. “Young
 man, you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I
 never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy—why Father Mapple
 himself couldn’t beat it, and he’s reckoned something. Come aboard, come
 aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog there—what’s
 that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great anchor, what a
 harpoon he’s got there! looks like good stuff that; and he handles it
 about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand
 in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?”
 


 
 Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the
 bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to
 the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried
 out in some such way as this:—
 


 
 “Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well,
 spose him one whale eye, well, den!” and taking sharp aim at it, he darted
 the iron right over old Bildad’s broad brim, clean across the ship’s
 decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.
 


 
 “Now,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him whale-e
 eye; why, dad whale dead.”
 


 
 “Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
 vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway.
 “Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We must have
 Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we’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 no ways abashed; but taking the offered pen,
 copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a
 queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so that through
 Captain Peleg’s obstinate mistake touching his appellative, 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 darkness, I must do my
 duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the
 souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I
 sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn
 the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind
 thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!”
 


 
 Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad’s language,
 heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
 


 
 “Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,”
 cried Peleg. “Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers—it takes the shark out of ’em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish.
 There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all
 Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to good.
 He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered
 away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went
 to Davy Jones.”
 


 
 “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, can’st thou prate in this ungodly
 guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod
 here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same
 voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did’st thou not think of
 Death and the Judgment then?”
 


 
 “Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
 thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,—“hear him, all of ye.
 Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and
 the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting
 thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft.
 Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death
 then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save
 all hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the nearest
 port; that was what I was thinking of.”
 


 
 Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where we
 followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some sailmakers who
 were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up a
 patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which otherwise might have been
 wasted.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
 
 
 “Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?”
 


 
 Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the
 water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above
 words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his
 massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily
 apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black
 handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all
 directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed
 bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.
 


 
 “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 back his whole
 arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed
 bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.
 


 
 “Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.”
 


 
 “Anything down there about your souls?”
 


 
 “About what?”
 


 
 “Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. “No matter though, I
 know many chaps that hav’n’t got 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 emphasis upon
 the word he .
 


 
 “Queequeg,” said I, “let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from
 somewhere; he’s talking about something and somebody we don’t know.”
 


 
 “Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old
 Thunder yet, have ye?”
 


 
 “Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of
 his manner.
 


 
 “Captain Ahab.”
 


 
 “What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?”
 


 
 “Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav’n’t
 seen him yet, have ye?”
 


 
 “No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be
 all right again before long.”
 


 
 “All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
 derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then
 this left arm of mine will be all right; not before.”
 


 
 “What do you know about him?”
 


 
 “What did they tell you about him? Say that!”
 


 
 “They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that he’s a
 good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.”
 


 
 “That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump
 when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the word
 with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off
 Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights;
 nothing about that deadly 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 Nantucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about
 the leg, and how he lost it; aye, 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 that you must be a little
 damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship
 there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of
 his leg.”
 


 
 “ All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?”
 


 
 “Pretty sure.”
 


 
 With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
 stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled 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! Morning to ye, shipmates,
 morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped ye.”
 


 
 “Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us,
 out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken
 in your game; that’s all I have to say.”
 


 
 “And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you
 are just the man for him—the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates,
 morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one of
 ’em.”
 


 
 “Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—you can’t fool us.
 It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a
 great secret in him.”
 


 
 “Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.”
 


 
 “Morning it is,” said I. “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this crazy
 man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?”
 


 
 “Elijah.”
 


 
 Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s
 fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a
 humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a
 hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did
 so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance.
 Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of
 his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether
 the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it
 seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for
 the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous,
 half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all
 kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with
 the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn
 fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when
 I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig;
 and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy
 things.
 


 
 I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
 dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and
 on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without
 seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it
 seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
 
 
 A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not
 only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board,
 and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened
 that the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg
 seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp
 look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at
 the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were
 working till long after night-fall.
 


 
 On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was given at
 all the inns where the ship’s company were stopping, that their chests
 must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the
 vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving,
 however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give very
 long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days.
 But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling
 how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped.
 


 
 Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds, sauce-pans, knives
 and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are
 indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which
 necessitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all
 grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also
 holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as
 with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the
 numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the
 impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented,
 it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most
 exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and
 loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends.
 Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and
 spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate ship.
 


 
 At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the
 Pequod had been almost completed; 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, but
 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 beloved 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 that article upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg
 came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the
 hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded
 by roaring back into his wigwam.
 


 
 During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft,
 and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was
 going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would answer,
 that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every day;
 meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything
 necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest
 with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but
 half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once
 laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so
 soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any
 wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter,
 he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And
 much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.
 


 
 At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly
 sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
 
 
 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 at the same time coming close behind
 us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself
 between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight,
 strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.
 


 
 “Going aboard?”
 


 
 “Hands off, will you,” said I.
 


 
 “Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way!”
 


 
 “Ain’t going aboard, then?”
 


 
 “Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of yours? Do you know,
 Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?”
 


 
 “No, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly and wonderingly
 looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances.
 


 
 “Elijah,” said I, “you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are
 going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be
 detained.”
 


 
 “Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?”
 


 
 “He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.”
 


 
 “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 before
 the Grand Jury.” And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving
 me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.
 


 
 At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound
 quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the
 hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to
 the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we
 went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered
 pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face
 downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept
 upon him.
 


 
 “Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?” said I,
 looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf,
 Queequeg had not at 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; 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; but
 how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are
 heavy, it’s grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, he’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
 in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land,
 owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs,
 and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some of the
 lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that
 respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them
 round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an
 excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into
 walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his 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 vapor 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 be ye smokers?”
 


 
 “Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?”
 


 
 “Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain came
 aboard last night.”
 


 
 “What Captain?—Ahab?”
 


 
 “Who but him indeed?”
 


 
 I was going to ask him some further questions 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
 
 
 At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers,
 and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the
 ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift—a
 night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare
 Bible for the steward—after all this, the two Captains, Peleg and
 Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said:
 


 
 “Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is all
 ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from shore, eh?
 Well, call all hands, then. Muster ’em aft here—blast ’em!”
 


 
 “No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,” said Bildad,
 “but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.”
 


 
 How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain
 Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the
 quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well
 as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him
 was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the
 idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship
 under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at
 all his proper business, but the pilot’s; and as he was not yet completely
 recovered—so they said—therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below.
 And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant service
 many captains never show themselves 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 Captain Peleg
 was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding, and
 not Bildad.
 


 
 “Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors lingered at the
 main-mast. “Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.”
 


 
 “Strike the tent there!”—was the next order. As I hinted before,
 this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the
 Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to
 be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.
 


 
 “Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the next
 command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes.
 


 
 Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is
 the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it
 known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots
 of the port—he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in
 order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned
 in, for he never piloted any other craft—Bildad, I say, might now be
 seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor,
 and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer
 the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about
 the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three
 days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed
 on board the Pequod, particularly 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 would sink
 the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on my
 handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we
 both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was
 comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious Bildad might be
 found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay;
 when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was
 horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his
 leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick.
 


 
 “Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared. “Spring,
 thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don’t ye spring, I
 say, all of ye—spring! 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
 short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we
 found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray
 cased us in ice, as in polished armor. 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 dressed in living green.
 So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
 While Jordan rolled between.” 
 
 
 Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were
 full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the
 boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was
 yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and
 glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring,
 untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
 


 
 At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no
 longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
 alongside.
 


 
 It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at
 this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very
 loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage—beyond
 both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned
 dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain;
 a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors
 of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful
 of every interest to him,—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the
 deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another
 farewell word there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked
 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 everywhere 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
 main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now!
 Careful, careful!—come, Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye,
 Starbuck—luck to ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to ye, Mr. Flask—good-bye
 and good luck to ye all—and this day three years I’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 is all he needs, and
 ye’ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the
 hunt, ye mates. Don’t stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers; good
 white cedar plank is raised full three per cent. within the year. Don’t
 forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste
 the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t
 whale it too much a’ Lord’s days, men; but don’t miss a fair chance
 either, that’s rejecting Heaven’s good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses
 tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the
 islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Don’t keep
 that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it’ll spoil. Be
 careful with the butter—twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye,
 if—”
 


 
 “Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,—away!” and with that,
 Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt 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 23. The Lee Shore.
 
 
 Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded
 mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
 


 
 When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
 bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm
 but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the
 man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage,
 could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term.
 The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the
 unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is
 the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him
 as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward
 land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is
 safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s
 kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that
 ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,
 though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.
 With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights
 ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the
 lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into
 peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
 


 
 Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
 intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
 effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the
 wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,
 slavish shore?
 


 
 But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite
 as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be
 ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like,
 then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all
 this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee
 grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight
 up, leaps thy apotheosis!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 24. 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; therefore, I am all
 anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us
 hunters of whales.
 


 
 In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the
 fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted
 on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger
 were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but
 slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to
 the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval
 officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his
 visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming
 and ridiculous.
 


 
 Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring 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 honor. 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 whale-ship at
 least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting
 the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a
 whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those
 battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’
 plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of
 the soldier’s profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has
 freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of
 the sperm whale’s vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head.
 For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the
 interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
 


 
 But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly
 pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost
 all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as
 before so many shrines, to our glory!
 


 
 But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales;
 see what we whalemen are, and have been.
 


 
 Why did the Dutch in De Witt’s time have admirals of their whaling fleets?
 Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling
 ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of
 families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the
 years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties 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
 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing,
 $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors 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 potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one
 aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and
 another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so
 continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well
 be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves
 pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue
 all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past the
 whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least
 known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which
 had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and
 European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them
 fire salutes to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally
 showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages.
 They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your
 Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have
 sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook
 and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in
 the 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 but the
 life-time 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 log. Ah, the world! 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 policy of the Spanish
 crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be
 distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation
 of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the
 establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
 


 
 That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given
 to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born
 discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as
 pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-ship
 is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of
 the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved
 from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily
 dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia
 confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that
 cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases
 carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that
 double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the
 whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the
 threshold.
 


 
 But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
 æsthetically 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 the words from
 Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our
 glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
 


 
 True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no
 good blood in their veins.
 


 
 No good blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood
 there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards,
 by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the
 ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers—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.” *
 


 
 Oh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand
 imposing way.
 


 
 The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the mighty
 triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world’s capital,
 the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the
 most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
 


 
 *See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
 


 
 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 to Queequeg! No more! I know a man
 that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account
 that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted
 of taking as many walled towns.
 


 
 And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered
 prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small
 but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if
 hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather
 have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more
 properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I
 prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a
 whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
 
 
 In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
 substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
 should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell
 eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be
 blameworthy?
 


 
 It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern
 ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is
 gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be
 a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows?
 Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his
 coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint
 it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery?
 Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this
 regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and
 contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that
 anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally,
 that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general
 rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality.
 


 
 But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil
 is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar
 oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil.
 What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured,
 unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?
 


 
 Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens
 with coronation stuff!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
 
 
 The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
 Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy
 coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard
 as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would
 not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general
 drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is
 famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried
 up all his physical 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 pantomime 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 seemed 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 organizations 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.
 


 
 “Aye, aye,” 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 see
 what that word “careful” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or
 almost any other whale hunter.
 


 
 Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment;
 but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally
 practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that 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 sun-down; 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, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it
 was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
 terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that
 these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which,
 under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and
 burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of
 bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally
 abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the
 ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more
 terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from
 the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.
 


 
 But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete
 abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to
 write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the
 fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint
 stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;
 men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and
 so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious
 blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
 That immaculate manliness we feel 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 valor-ruined man. Nor can
 piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings
 against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not
 the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no
 robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick
 or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates
 without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and
 circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
 


 
 If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and 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 hast spread one royal
 mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great
 democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the
 pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of
 finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst
 pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a
 war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all
 Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from
 the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
 
 
 Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,
 according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;
 neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent
 air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling
 away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year.
 Good-humored, 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 be a question;
 but, 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, unfearing
 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-humor 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 be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed,
 instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into
 his mouth.
 


 
 I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his
 peculiar disposition; for 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 it; and as in time of the
 cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their
 mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb’s tobacco
 smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent.
 


 
 The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vineyard. A
 short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who
 somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and
 hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor
 with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to
 all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and
 mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible
 danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous
 whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat,
 requiring 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 inserted into it, serves to brace the ship
 against the icy concussions of those battering seas.
 


 
 Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous
 men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the
 Pequod’s 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 harpooneer,
 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’s harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them
 belonged.
 


 
 First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for
 his squire. But Queequeg is already known.
 


 
 Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly
 promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant
 of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of
 Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they
 usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean,
 sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding eyes—for an
 Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering
 expression—all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the
 unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the
 great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests
 of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the
 woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea;
 the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of
 the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would
 almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans,
 and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers
 of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s squire.
 


 
 Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
 negro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold.
 Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors
 called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail 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 harbors most
 frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of
 the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of
 men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a
 giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his
 socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white
 man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a
 fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the
 Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the
 residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not
 one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the
 American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the
 officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as
 with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the
 engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and
 Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American
 liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously
 supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to
 the Azores, where the outward bound 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, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly
 all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging
 the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate
 continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these
 Isolatoes 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—oh, no! he
 went before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall
 ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time,
 when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in
 with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here,
 hailed a hero there!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 28. 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.
 


 
 Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed
 aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague
 disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea,
 became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by
 the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me,
 with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But poorly
 could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile
 at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves.
 But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness—to call it so—which
 I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed
 against all warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though the
 harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric,
 heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies
 which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I
 ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness
 of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so
 abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three chief
 officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to
 allay these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness
 in every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers
 and men, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and
 they were every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape
 man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, 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. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab
 stood upon his quarter-deck.
 


 
 There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the
 recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the
 fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or
 taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole
 high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an
 unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way out from
 among his 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 resembled that perpendicular
 seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the
 upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single
 twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off
 into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether
 that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some
 desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit 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, superstitiously 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 insinuated, an
 old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had
 never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old
 sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old
 Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor
 seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should
 be tranquilly laid out—which might hardly come to pass, so he
 muttered—then, whoever should do that last office for the dead,
 would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.
 


 
 So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid
 brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted
 that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric
 white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that
 this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the
 sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, 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 side of
 the Pequod’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
 bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud;
 Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s
 ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a
 determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless,
 forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his
 officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and
 expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness
 of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody
 stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the
 nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.
 


 
 Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But
 after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing
 in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily
 walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a
 little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the
 ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the
 sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that
 he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said,
 or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary
 there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage now; not
 regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision
 the mates were fully competent to, so that there was 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, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant,
 holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood.
 For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to
 the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most
 thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to
 welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little
 respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did
 he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would
 have soon flowered out in a smile.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
 
 
 Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went
 rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually
 reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly
 cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as
 crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with
 rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in
 jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their
 absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, ’twas
 hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all
 the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and
 potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul,
 especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her
 crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these
 subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab’s texture.
 


 
 Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less
 man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the
 old 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
 set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and
 when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it
 not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its
 place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of
 steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman
 would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge,
 gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering
 touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually
 abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates,
 seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been
 the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would
 have been on 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 old second mate,
 came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness,
 hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one
 could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting
 something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the
 insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab
 then.
 


 
 “Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb,” said Ahab, “that thou wouldst wad me that
 fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where
 such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.—Down,
 dog, and kennel!”
 


 
 Starting at the unforseen 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 terrors in
 his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
 


 
 “I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,” muttered
 Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. “It’s very queer.
 Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don’t well know whether to go back and strike
 him, or—what’s that?—down here on my knees and pray for him?
 Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time
 I ever did pray. It’s queer; very queer; and he’s queer too; aye, 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 aint 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 to think of ’em. But that’s against 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! 
 He might as well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick me,
 and I didn’t observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow.
 It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil’s the matter with me? I
 don’t stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of
 turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though—How?
 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 plaguey juggling thinks over
 by daylight.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
 
 
 When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks;
 and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the
 watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting
 the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side
 of the deck, he sat and smoked.
 


 
 In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were
 fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one
 look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him
 of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the
 sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
 


 
 Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in
 quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. “How now,”
 he soliloquized 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 sereneness, to send up mild white vapors
 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
 
 
 Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
 


 
 “Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man’s ivory
 leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back,
 upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto!
 Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But
 what was still more curious, Flask—you know how curious all dreams
 are—through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be
 thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, that
 kick from Ahab. ‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘what’s the row? It’s not a real leg,
 only a false leg.’ And there’s a mighty difference between a living thump
 and a dead thump. That’s what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty
 times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that
 makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the
 while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed
 pyramid—so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I
 say, I was thinking to myself, ‘what’s his leg now, but a cane—a
 whalebone cane. Yes,’ thinks I, ‘it was only a playful cudgelling—in
 fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me—not a base kick. Besides,’
 thinks I, ‘look at it once; why, the end of it—the foot part—what
 a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked me,
 there’s a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to a
 point only.’ But now comes the greatest joke of the dream, Flask. While I
 was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old merman,
 with a hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round.
 ‘What are you ’bout?’ says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Such a
 phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. ‘What am I about?’
 says I at last. ‘And what business is that of yours, I should like to
 know, Mr. Humpback? Do you want a kick?’ By the lord, Flask, I had no
 sooner said that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over, and
 dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout—what do you think, I
 saw?—why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of
 marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts, ‘I guess I
 won’t kick you, old fellow.’ ‘Wise Stubb,’ said he, ‘wise Stubb;’ and kept
 muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney
 hag. Seeing he wasn’t going to stop saying over his ‘wise Stubb, wise
 Stubb,’ I thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I
 had only just lifted my foot for it, when he roared out, ‘Stop that
 kicking!’ ‘Halloa,’ says I, ‘what’s the matter now, old fellow?’ ‘Look ye
 here,’ says he; ‘let’s argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t
 he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I—‘right here it was.’ ‘Very good,’ says he—‘he
 used his ivory leg, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says
 he, ‘wise Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didn’t he kick with right
 good will? it wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No,
 you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb.
 It’s an honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old
 England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen,
 and made garter-knights of; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked
 by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; be kicked by
 him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you can’t
 help yourself, wise Stubb. Don’t you see that pyramid?’ With that, he all
 of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into the
 air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my hammock! Now, what do
 you think of that dream, Flask?”
 


 
 “I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.’”
 


 
 “May be; may be. But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask. D’ye see Ahab
 standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing you
 can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him, whatever
 he says. Halloa! What’s that he shouts? Hark!”
 


 
 “Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!
 


 
 “If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!
 


 
 “What do you think of that now, Flask? ain’t there a small drop of
 something queer about that, eh? A white whale—did ye mark that, man?
 Look ye—there’s something special in the wind. Stand by for it,
 Flask. Ahab has that that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this
 way.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
 
 
 Already 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 of the
 leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost
 indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special
 leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow.
 


 
 It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that
 I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
 classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
 essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.
 


 
 “No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
 Cetology,” says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
 


 
 “It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as
 to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families. * * *
 Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal” (sperm whale),
 says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
 


 
 “Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.”
 “Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field strewn
 with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us
 naturalists.”
 


 
 Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,
 those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real
 knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some
 small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men,
 small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in
 little, written of the whale. Run over a few:—The Authors of the
 Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray;
 Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;
 Marten; Lacépède; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier;
 John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of
 Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate
 generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will
 show.
 


 
 Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen ever
 saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer
 and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of the
 Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby
 knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale, compared with
 which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it
 said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas.
 He is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the
 long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some
 seventy years back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown
 sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all
 but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been
 every way complete. Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in
 the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale,
 without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has
 at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good
 people all,—the Greenland whale is deposed,—the great sperm
 whale now reigneth!
 


 
 There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living
 sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree
 succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale’s and Bennett’s; both in
 their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and
 reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to be found in
 their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of
 excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. As
 yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in
 any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten
 life.
 


 
 Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive
 classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to
 be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers. As no better man
 advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor
 endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to
 be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not
 pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or—in
 this place at least—to much of any description. My object here is
 simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the
 architect, not the builder.
 


 
 But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office
 is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to
 have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis
 of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to
 hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well
 appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the
 hope of him is vain! But I have swam through libraries and sailed through
 oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in
 earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to settle.
 


 
 First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is
 in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still
 remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature,
 A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the
 fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks
 and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were
 still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.
 


 
 The grounds upon which Linnæus 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 naturæ jure
 meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley
 Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they
 united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether
 insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
 


 
 Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
 ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This
 fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal respect
 does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnæus has given you those
 items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all
 other fish are lungless and cold blooded.
 


 
 Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
 conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a
 whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail . There you have him.
 However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation.
 A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because
 he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more
 cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that
 all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or
 up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be
 similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal position.
 


 
 By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from
 the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with the
 whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with
 it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.* Hence, all the
 smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this
 ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire
 whale host.
 


 
 *I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
 Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included
 by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy,
 contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on
 wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as
 whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom
 of Cetology.
 


 
 First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS
 (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both
 small and large.
 


 
 I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.
 


 
 As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale ; of the OCTAVO, the
 Grampus ; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise .
 


 
 FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:—I. The
 Sperm Whale ; II. the Right Whale ; III. the Fin-Back Whale ; IV. the
 Hump-backed Whale ; V. the Razor Back Whale ; VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale .
 


 
 BOOK I. ( Folio ), CHAPTER I. ( Sperm Whale ).—This whale, among the
 English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale,
 and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the
 Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is,
 without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of
 all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far
 the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that
 valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will,
 in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I
 now have to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries
 ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper
 individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from the
 stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly
 supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known
 in England as the Greenland or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that
 this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale
 which the first syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times,
 also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but
 only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the
 druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in
 the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known, its
 original name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its
 value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the
 appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from
 which this spermaceti was really derived.
 


 
 BOOK I. ( Folio ), CHAPTER II. ( Right Whale ).—In one respect this is
 the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted
 by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and
 the oil specially known as “whale oil,” an inferior article in commerce.
 Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the
 following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the
 Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity
 concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously baptised. What
 then is the whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios? It
 is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of
 the English whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the
 Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more than two
 centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic
 seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in
 the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor’ West Coast, and various
 other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
 


 
 Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the
 English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree in
 all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single
 determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by
 endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that
 some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The
 right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to
 elucidating the sperm whale.
 


 
 BOOK I. ( Folio ), CHAPTER III. ( Fin-Back ).—Under this head I reckon a
 monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and
 Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale
 whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
 Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in
 his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less
 portly girth, and a lighter 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 his race, bearing
 for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his
 mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a
 theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales , that is, whales with
 baleen. Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be
 several varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed
 whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed
 whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen’s names for a few sorts.
 


 
 In 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 kind of whales, yet it is in vain to
 attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his
 baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts
 or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a
 regular system of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions,
 which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump,
 back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are
 indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any regard
 to what may be the nature of their structure in other and more essential
 particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a
 hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked whale
 and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the
 similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above
 mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular
 combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an
 irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general methodization formed
 upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the whale-naturalists has
 split.
 


 
 But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale,
 in his anatomy—there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right
 classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland
 whale’s anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by
 his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And
 if you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you
 will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the
 systematizer as those external ones already enumerated. What then remains?
 nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal
 volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical
 system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for
 it alone is practicable. To proceed.
 


 
 BOOK I. ( Folio ) CHAPTER IV. ( Hump Back ).—This whale is often seen on
 the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and
 towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you might
 call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular name for
 him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has
 a hump though a smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen.
 He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more
 gay foam and white water generally than any other of them.
 


 
 BOOK I. ( Folio ), CHAPTER V. ( Razor Back ).—Of this whale little is
 known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a
 retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no
 coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises
 in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does
 anybody else.
 


 
 BOOK I. ( Folio ), CHAPTER VI. ( Sulphur Bottom ).—Another retiring
 gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the
 Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at
 least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then
 always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is never
 chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of
 him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor
 can the oldest Nantucketer.
 


 
 Thus ends BOOK I. ( Folio ), and now begins BOOK II. ( Octavo ).
 


 
 OCTAVOES.*—These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among
 which present may be numbered:—I., the Grampus ; II., the Black Fish ;
 III., the Narwhale ; IV., the Thrasher ; V., the Killer .
 


 
 *Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
 Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the
 former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in
 figure, yet the bookbinder’s Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does
 not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
 


 
 BOOK II. ( Octavo ), CHAPTER I. ( Grampus ).—Though this fish, whose
 loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to
 landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly
 classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive features of
 the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one. He is of
 moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length,
 and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds; he is
 never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and
 pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded as
 premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
 


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


 
 BOOK II. ( Octavo ), CHAPTER III. ( Narwhale ), that is, Nostril whale .—Another
 instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar
 horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is some
 sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some
 exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn
 is but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little
 depressed from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side,
 which has an ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the
 aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn
 or lance answers, it would be hard to say. It does not seem to be used
 like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell
 me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of
 the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer; for
 the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it
 sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But you
 cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion is,
 that however this one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale—however
 that may be—it would certainly be very convenient to him for a
 folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked
 whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious
 example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated
 nature. From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same
 sea-unicorn’s horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote
 against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It
 was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way
 that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn.
 Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black
 Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage,
 when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window
 of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; “when Sir
 Martin returned from that voyage,” saith Black Letter, “on bended knees he
 presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which
 for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor.” An Irish author
 avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to
 her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn
 nature.
 


 
 The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
 milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His
 oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and he is
 seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
 


 
 BOOK II. ( Octavo ), CHAPTER IV. ( Killer ).—Of this whale little is
 precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed
 naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say that
 he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage—a sort of
 Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and
 hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The
 Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception
 might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its
 indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and
 Sharks included.
 


 
 BOOK II. ( Octavo ), CHAPTER V. ( Thrasher ).—This gentleman is famous
 for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts
 the Folio whale’s back, and as he swims, he works his passage by flogging
 him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar process.
 Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are outlaws,
 even in the lawless seas.
 


 
 Thus ends BOOK II. ( Octavo ), and begins BOOK III. ( Duodecimo ).
 


 
 DUODECIMOES.—These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza
 Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
 


 
 To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
 possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
 feet should be marshalled among WHALES—a word, which, in the popular
 sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down
 above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition
 of what a whale is— i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail.
 


 
 BOOK III. ( Duodecimo ), CHAPTER 1. ( 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
 Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and
 delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in
 request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones.
 Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you
 that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very
 readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and
 you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.
 


 
 BOOK III. ( Duodecimo ), CHAPTER II. ( Algerine Porpoise ).—A pirate.
 Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat
 larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke
 him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but
 never yet saw him captured.
 


 
 BOOK III. ( Duodecimo ), CHAPTER III. ( Mealy-mouthed Porpoise ).—The
 largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is
 known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated, is
 that of the fishers—Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that
 he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in
 some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly
 girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no
 fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and
 sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all.
 Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a
 boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship’s hull, called the “bright
 waist,” that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate
 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, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the
 Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans
 of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous
 whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not
 personally. I shall enumerate them by their fore-castle appellations; for
 possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, who may
 complete what I have here but begun. If any of the following whales, shall
 hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated into
 this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:—The
 Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape
 Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered
 Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue
 Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there
 might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner
 of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly
 help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying
 nothing.
 


 
 Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here,
 and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my
 word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even
 as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing
 upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished
 by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone
 to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book
 is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time,
 Strength, Cash, and Patience!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.
 
 
 Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as
 any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising from
 the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of
 course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
 


 
 The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is evinced by
 the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and more
 ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now
 called the captain, but was divided between him and an officer called the
 Specksnyder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time
 made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain’s
 authority was restricted to the navigation and general management of the
 vessel; while over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the
 Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland
 Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch
 official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At
 present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of
 the captain’s more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good
 conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely
 depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important
 officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a
 whaling ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore the
 grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live
 apart from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as
 their professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded
 as their social equal.
 


 
 Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is this—the
 first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen
 alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so, too, in
 most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part
 of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain’s cabin,
 and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.
 


 
 Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of
 all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the
 community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or
 low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common
 luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work;
 though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous
 discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an
 old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances,
 live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the
 quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.
 Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper
 parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any
 military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore
 the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
 


 
 And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given
 to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage he ever
 exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no man
 to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck; and
 though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected
 with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms,
 whether of condescension or in terrorem , or otherwise; yet even Captain
 Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the
 sea.
 


 
 Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those
 forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally
 making use of them for other and more private ends than they were
 legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain,
 which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those
 forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible
 dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can
 never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without
 the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in
 themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps
 God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the
 highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous
 more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of
 the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead
 level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when
 extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances
 even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the
 case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire
 encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before
 the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would
 depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever
 forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now
 alluded to.
 


 
 But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness
 and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must
 not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him;
 and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied
 me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at
 from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied
 air!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
 
 
 It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread
 face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master; who,
 sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of
 the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth,
 medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part
 of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings, you would
 think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, catching
 hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even,
 unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,” disappears into the
 cabin.
 


 
 When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and Starbuck, the
 first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck
 rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a
 grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness,
 “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges
 about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see
 whether it will be all right with that important rope, he likewise takes
 up the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner, Mr. Flask,” follows after his
 predecessors.
 


 
 But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,
 seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts
 of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he
 strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the
 Grand Turk’s head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up
 into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as
 he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by
 bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway
 below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent,
 hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character of
 Abjectus, or the Slave.
 


 
 It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
 artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some
 officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly
 enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers
 the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander’s
 cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and
 humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is
 marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem?
 Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been
 Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have
 been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and
 intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited
 guests, that man’s unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence
 for the time; that man’s royalty of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for
 Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has
 tasted what it is to be Cæsar. It is a witchery of social czarship which
 there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the
 official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive
 the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
 


 
 Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on
 the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential
 cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were
 as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk
 the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all
 fastened upon the old man’s knife, as he carved the chief dish before him.
 I do not suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment
 with the slightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the
 weather. No! And when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the
 slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards
 him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it
 tenderly; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the
 plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without
 circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the
 German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these
 cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at
 table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a
 relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the
 hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy
 of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his
 would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help
 himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first
 degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would
 he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless,
 strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the
 chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did Flask
 presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of the
 ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny
 complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such
 marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him,
 a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
 


 
 Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask is
 the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask’s dinner was badly jammed in
 point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they
 also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but
 a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon
 shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself,
 he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy
 usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask
 once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of
 an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be
 otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much
 relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction,
 thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer;
 but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the
 forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There’s the fruits of
 promotion now; there’s the vanity of glory: there’s the insanity of life!
 Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge
 against Flask in Flask’s official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in
 order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a
 peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered
 before awful Ahab.
 


 
 Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in
 the Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted order
 to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to
 some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers
 were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a
 sort of temporary servants’ hall of the high and mighty cabin.
 


 
 In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
 invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free
 license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows
 the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the
 sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food
 with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords;
 they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices.
 Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the
 vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain
 to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the
 solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a
 nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
 accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once
 Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by
 snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden
 trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle
 preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering
 sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt
 baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the
 black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these
 three savages, Dough-Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-quiver.
 Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they
 demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry
 adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door,
 till all was over.
 


 
 It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his
 filed teeth to the Indian’s: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the
 floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low
 carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin
 framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship.
 But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say
 dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small
 mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad,
 baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed
 strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his
 dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or
 by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal,
 barbaric smack of the lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so
 much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any
 marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear
 Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be
 picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging
 round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the
 whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances
 and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would
 ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all
 tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his
 Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some
 murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white
 waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm,
 but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three
 salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering
 ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish
 scimetars in scabbards.
 


 
 But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
 there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were
 scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time,
 when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
 


 
 In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
 captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the
 ship’s cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that
 anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the
 mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have
 lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it was
 something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a moment,
 only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the
 open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no
 companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included
 in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the
 world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as
 when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying
 himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his
 own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in
 the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.
 
 
 It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the
 other seamen my first mast-head came round.
 


 
 In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously
 with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen
 thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground.
 And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is drawing nigh
 home with anything empty in her—say, an empty vial even—then,
 her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles
 sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the
 hope of capturing one whale more.
 


 
 Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very
 ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take
 it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians;
 because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their
 progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have
 intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet
 (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may
 be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath;
 therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the
 Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is
 an assertion based upon the general belief among archæologists, that the
 first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly
 supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those
 edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those
 old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new
 stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a
 whale just bearing in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian
 hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and
 spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his
 food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance
 of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his
 place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing
 everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern
 standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and
 bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still
 entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any
 strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of
 Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the
 air; careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe,
 Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft
 on his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’ pillars,
 his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals
 will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his
 mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London
 smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is
 smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor
 Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to
 befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze;
 however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick
 haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.
 


 
 It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standers
 of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is
 plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of
 Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early
 times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit
 of the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the
 sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats,
 something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this same
 plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying
 the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this
 custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head,
 that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from
 sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the
 helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of
 the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy
 meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the
 silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic
 stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the
 hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of
 the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite
 series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship
 indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you
 into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime
 uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras
 with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary
 excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities;
 fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have
 for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly
 stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.
 


 
 In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years’ voyage,
 as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head
 would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that
 the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term
 of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching
 to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of
 feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a
 pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in
 which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch
 is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel
 sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’ gallant cross-trees.
 Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as he
 would standing on a bull’s horns. To be sure, in cold weather you may
 carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but
 properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the
 unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its 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 convenient closet of
 your watch-coat.
 


 
 Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a
 southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or
 pulpits, called crow’s-nests , in which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler
 are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the
 fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled “A Voyage among the
 Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the
 re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this
 admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a
 charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented
 crow’s-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet’s good
 craft. He called it the Sleet’s crow’s-nest , in honor of himself; he
 being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous
 false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own
 names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise
 should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In
 shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe;
 it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a movable
 side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed
 on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch
 in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a
 comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and
 coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet,
 pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in
 person stood his mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he
 always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a
 powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales,
 or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot
 successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the
 water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was
 plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the
 little detailed conveniences of his crow’s-nest; but though he so enlarges
 upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account
 of his experiments in this crow’s-nest, with a small compass he kept there
 for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called
 the “local attraction” of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the
 horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship’s planks, and in the Glacier’s
 case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among
 her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific
 here, yet, for all his learned “binnacle deviations,” “azimuth compass
 observations,” and “approximate errors,” he knows very well, Captain
 Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic
 meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well
 replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his
 crow’s nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I
 greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain;
 yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that
 case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have
 been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the
 mathematics aloft there in that bird’s nest within three or four perches
 of the pole.
 


 
 But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain
 Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly
 counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive
 seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up
 the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with
 Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending
 a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take
 a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my
 ultimate destination.
 


 
 Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but
 sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being
 left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how
 could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships’
 standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.”
 


 
 And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
 Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with
 lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who
 offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of
 such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed;
 and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the
 world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these
 monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an
 asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men,
 disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar
 and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the
 mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase
 ejaculates:—
 


 “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
 Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”
 
 
 Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young
 philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient
 “interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to
 all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather
 not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists
 have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what
 use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses
 at home.
 


 
 “Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been
 cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet.
 Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they
 were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon;
 but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious
 reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with
 thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at
 his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul,
 pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding,
 beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of
 some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive
 thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In
 this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes
 diffused through time and space; like Cranmer’s sprinkled Pantheistic
 ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
 


 
 There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a
 gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the
 inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move
 your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes
 back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at
 mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop
 through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for
 ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
 
 
 ( Enter Ahab: Then, all. )
 


 
 It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning
 shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway
 to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country
 gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden.
 


 
 Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old
 rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over
 dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did
 you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you
 would see still stranger foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one
 unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
 


 
 But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his
 nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought
 was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast
 and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in him as
 he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely possessing him,
 indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement.
 


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


 
 The hours wore on;—Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing
 the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
 


 
 It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks,
 and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand
 grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
 


 
 “Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
 ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
 


 
 “Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “Mast-heads, there! come down!”
 


 
 When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious and not
 wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the
 weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing
 over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from
 his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy
 turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to
 pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men; till Stubb
 cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for
 the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long.
 Vehemently pausing, he cried:—
 


 
 “What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”
 


 
 “Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed
 voices.
 


 
 “Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
 hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically
 thrown them.
 


 
 “And what do ye next, men?”
 


 
 “Lower away, and after him!”
 


 
 “And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”
 


 
 “A dead whale or a stove boat!”
 


 
 More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
 countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to
 gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they
 themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.
 


 
 But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his
 pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost
 convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:—
 


 
 “All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white
 whale. Look ye! d’ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?”—holding up a
 broad bright coin to the sun—“it is a sixteen dollar piece, men.
 D’ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.”
 


 
 While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly
 rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten
 its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to
 himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it
 seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.
 


 
 Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast
 with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other,
 and with a high raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me a
 white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye
 raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his
 starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white
 whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”
 


 
 “Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed
 the act of nailing the gold to the mast.
 


 
 “It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw down the topmaul:
 “a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water;
 if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”
 


 
 All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more
 intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the
 wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately
 touched by some specific recollection.
 


 
 “Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “that white whale must be the same that
 some call Moby Dick.”
 


 
 “Moby Dick?” shouted Ahab. “Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?”
 


 
 “Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?” said the
 Gay-Header deliberately.
 


 
 “And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very bushy, even for a
 parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?”
 


 
 “And he have one, two, three—oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
 Captain,” cried Queequeg disjointedly, “all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him—him—”
 faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though
 uncorking a bottle—“like him—him—”
 


 
 “Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and
 wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock
 of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual
 sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a
 squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen—Moby
 Dick—Moby Dick!”
 


 
 “Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far
 been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed
 struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. “Captain
 Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took
 off thy leg?”
 


 
 “Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye, Starbuck; aye, my
 hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that
 brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a
 terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; “Aye,
 aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging
 lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless
 imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good
 Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round
 perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped
 for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all
 sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye,
 men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”
 


 
 “Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
 excited old man: “A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for Moby
 Dick!”
 


 
 “God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye, men.
 Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what’s this long face
 about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for
 Moby Dick?”
 


 
 “I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain
 Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came
 here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will
 thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will
 not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”
 


 
 “Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a
 little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the
 accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
 girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let
 me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here! ”
 


 
 “He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for? methinks it
 rings most vast, but hollow.”
 


 
 “Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from
 blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab,
 seems blasphemous.”
 


 
 “Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,
 are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act,
 the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing
 puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
 If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach
 outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is
 that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But
 ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength,
 with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly
 what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale
 principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy,
 man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then
 could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein,
 jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even
 that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye!
 more intolerable than fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou
 reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye,
 Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men
 from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let
 it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn—living,
 breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards—the
 unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no
 reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they
 not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he
 laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the
 general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it?
 Reckon it. ’Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck.
 What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all
 Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has
 clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow
 lifts thee! Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye! thy silence, then, that 
 voices thee. ( Aside ) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has
 inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now,
 without rebellion.”
 


 
 “God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured Starbuck, lowly.
 


 
 But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did
 not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the hold;
 nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the
 hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts
 sank in. For again Starbuck’s downcast eyes lighted up with the
 stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on;
 the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye
 admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye
 predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions from
 without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little
 external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these
 still drive us on.
 


 
 “The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.
 


 
 Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered
 them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the
 capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood
 at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship’s company formed a
 circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every
 man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the
 prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their
 head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden
 snare of the Indian.
 


 
 “Drink and pass!” he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
 nearest seaman. “The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short
 draughts—long swallows, men; ’tis hot as Satan’s hoof. So, so; it
 goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
 serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this
 way it comes. Hand it me—here’s a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so
 brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!
 


 
 “Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye
 mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with
 your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort
 revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will
 yet see that—Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand
 it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, wer’t 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, 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—yon three most
 honorable 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 not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye not
 the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance.
 The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!” Forthwith, slowly going
 from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the
 fiery waters from the pewter.
 


 
 “Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow
 them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha!
 Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon
 it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful
 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 maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were
 simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and
 shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds
 among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all
 dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 37. 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 ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The
 gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes
 down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the
 crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright
 with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel
 that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. ’Tis iron—that I know—not
 gold. ’Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my
 brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the
 sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!
 


 
 Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me,
 so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all
 loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with the high
 perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly 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. Now,
 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 blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to
 bullies—Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve
 knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth
 from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s
 compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot
 swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The
 path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, 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 38. Dusk.
 
 
 ( By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it .)
 


 
 My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by a madman!
 Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he
 drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his
 impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the
 ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife
 to cut. Horrible old man! Who’s over him, he cries;—aye, he would be
 a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I
 plainly see my miserable office,—to obey, rebelling; and worse yet,
 to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would
 shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The
 hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish
 has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting 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 demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward! mark
 the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through
 the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to
 drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his 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
 feed—Oh, life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee!
 but ’tis not me! that horror’s out of me! and with the soft feeling of the
 human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand
 by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.
 
 
 Fore-Top.
 


 
 ( Stubb solus, and mending a brace .)
 


 
 Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I’ve been thinking over it
 ever since, and that ha, ha’s the final consequence. Why so? Because a
 laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what
 will, one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all
 predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye
 Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure the
 old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had had the gift,
 might readily have prophesied it—for when I clapped my eye upon his
 skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb—that’s my title—well,
 Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here’s a carcase. I know not all that may be
 coming, but be it what it will, I’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—
 


 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 calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, 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 40. 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.—
 
 
 1ST 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 harpooner is striking the whale!
 
 
 MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!
 


 
 2ND 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—aye, lie down there, like ground-tier
 butts. At ’em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em through
 it. Tell ’em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell ’em it’s the
 resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment. 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. Jig it, men, I say;
 merry’s 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 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 grasshopper!
 


 
 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-bitts; up you mount! Now,
 boys! ( The half of them 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, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it,
 stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
 


 
 PIP. Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it
 so.
 


 
 CHINA SAILOR. Rattle 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!
 


 
 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. I’ll dance over your grave, I will—that’s the
 bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat 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.
 


 
 3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling
 after whales in a calm—give us a whiff, Tash.
 


 
 ( They cease dancing, 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-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
 


 
 SICILIAN SAILOR. ( Reclining .) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet
 interlacings of the limbs—lithe swayings—coyings—flutterings!
 lip! heart! hip! all graze: unceasing 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! I still
 rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven in the
 wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted
 quite. Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear 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 lunging presently.
 


 
 DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou
 holdest! 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!
 


 
 4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab
 tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst 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!
 


 
 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 one case our old Mogul’s fire-waters are somewhat long in
 working.
 


 
 5TH 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!
 


 
 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. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring
 Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad’st thou
 the ring?
 


 
 MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant
 sails! Stand by to reef topsails!
 


 
 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, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just
 now, and the white whale—shirr! shirr!—but spoken of once! and
 only this evening—it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine—that
 anaconda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God
 aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy
 down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 41. 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 wild,
 mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed
 mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous 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 uncivilized seas mostly frequented 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
 individualizing 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; to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I
 say, that the whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick.
 Yet as 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 ignorantly gave
 battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were
 content to 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.
 


 
 Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more
 horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do
 fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising
 terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but,
 in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors
 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 rumors 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 appallingly
 astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest
 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 chiseled hearth-stone, 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 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 rumors of the White Whale did in the
 end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and
 half-formed fœtal 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 rumors, 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,
 as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the leviathan, 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 perhaps—either from professional
 inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the
 Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among
 those whaling nations not sailing under the American flag, who have never
 hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the
 leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the
 North; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish
 fireside 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 him.
 


 
 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
 incredibly 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) are “struck
 with the most lively terrors,” and “often in the precipitancy of their
 flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence 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 rumors 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 induce long practised
 Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare;
 such men protesting that although other leviathans might be 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 specific details of
 any certain calamity, and without superstitious accompaniments, 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 in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, 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 altogether
 without some faint show of superstitious probability. For 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.
 


 
 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. Nor is
 it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has been declared
 that the interval of time between the two assaults could not have exceeded
 very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been believed by some
 whalemen, that the Nor’ 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
 whalemen.
 


 
 Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing
 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
 hundreds 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 monster 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, pyramidical 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
 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
 else. For, when swimming before his exulting 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 his chase. But though similar
 disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the
 fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale’s infernal
 aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused,
 was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent
 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 torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds
 of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that
 smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
 


 
 His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling 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 seeming 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 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 malignity which has been from the beginning;
 to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the
 worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue
 devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but
 deliriously transferring its idea to the 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 piled upon the whale’s white
 hump the sum of all the 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, passionate, corporal
 animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but
 felt the agonizing 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 unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his
 Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his
 mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in
 his hammock. 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
 appearances, 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, however 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 become transfigured into some 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 Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing
 monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in
 that broad madness, 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, his special lunacy stormed his general
 sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own
 mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one
 end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely
 brought to bear upon any one reasonable object.
 


 
 This is much; yet Ahab’s larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But
 vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. 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, 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
 likeness! 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 determinate. Nevertheless,
 so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that when with ivory leg he
 stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer 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 fitness for another whaling voyage, on account of
 such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent isle were
 inclined to harbor 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 scorched 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 him, Ahab had purposely sailed
 upon the present voyage with the 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 fiendish 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
 supernatural 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 indifference 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 all this came to be—what the White
 Whale was to them, or how to 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 42. 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
 yet, in some dim, random way, explain 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 preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu
 placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other
 magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam
 unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the
 Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the
 great Austrian Empire, Cæsarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the
 imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it
 applies to the 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 joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and
 symbolizings, 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
 deepest pledge of honor; 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 midwinter 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 own fidelity;
 and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests
 derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic,
 worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish
 faith, white is specially employed in the celebration 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 associations, with whatever is sweet, and
 honorable, and sublime, there yet 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 it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, 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 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 shark.*
 


 
 *With reference 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
 rises 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 bear 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 French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish mass for
 the dead begins with “Requiem eternam” (eternal rest), whence Requiem 
 denominating the mass itself, and any other funeral 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 .
 


 
 Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual
 wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
 imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God’s great,
 unflattering laureate, Nature.*
 


 
 *I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged
 gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch
 below, 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
 throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some
 king’s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange
 eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. 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! never had heard that name before; is it
 conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore!
 never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name
 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
 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. But
 I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven,
 when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking, and
 adoring cherubim!
 


 
 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, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast
 herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the
 Rocky 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-beaters
 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
 endlessly 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. Nor 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
 accessory 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! 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 crowning
 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 in
 Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the
 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 as 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, symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing
 he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized
 significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to 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 whiteness—though
 for the time either wholly or in 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 modified;—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, 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 but loosely
 acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention
 of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless
 processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast 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 neighbors—the
 Byward 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 spectralness 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 unsubstantial instance, purely addressed
 to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does
 “the tall pale man” of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor
 unrustlingly glides through the 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
 earthquakes; 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 cope-stones, 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 can’st see. For
 Lima has 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 whiteness 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 exhibited 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 precisely
 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 swimming 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
 backwoodsman 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, beholding the
 scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal trick of
 legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half
 shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery,
 views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean
 ice monuments and splintered crosses.
 


 
 But thou sayest, methinks that 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 this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley 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 phrensies
 of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild
 creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he
 smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience 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 windrowed
 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, somewhere
 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 Christian’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 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 concrete 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 butterfly cheeks of
 young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in
 substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature
 absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the
 charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the
 mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
 principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless 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 43. Hark!
 
 
 “HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
 


 
 It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing 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, whose
 post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, 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
 turning 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.”
 


 
 “Aye, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of the old
 Quakeress’s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; 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 44. The Chart.
 
 
 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 himself before it, you
 would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which
 there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional
 courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he would refer
 to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein were set down the seasons
 and places in which, on various former voyages 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 thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they 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, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, 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 approaching 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 periodicalness 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
 charts of the sperm whale.*
 


 *Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne
 out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of
 the National Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 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 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.”
 
 
 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 chart,
 with one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the
 direction 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 mast-heads, 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 confidence be
 looked for.
 


 
 And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate
 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 unquestionable 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 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
 accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only
 been made to whatever way-side, 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 possibility 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 descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, 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 himself to rest all his hopes upon
 the one crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to
 those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize
 his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.
 


 
 Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the
 Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor 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 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, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would
 spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his
 vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should
 turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or
 China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons,
 Pampas, Nor’-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and
 Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag 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 solitary
 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. For 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 midnight he would throw himself
 back in reveries—tallied him, and shall he escape? His broad fins
 are bored, and scalloped out like a lost 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 phrensies, and whirled them round
 and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his
 life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the
 case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and
 a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked 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 fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead
 of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at
 his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at
 such times, crazy 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 him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the
 eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time
 dissociated from the characterizing 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 purpose, 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 unbidden and unfathered 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 45. The Affidavit.
 
 
 So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as
 indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars 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; but 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,
 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
 interval (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
 there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated 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, afterwards 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 however peculiar in
 that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his
 peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a 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 Cæsar. Was it not so, O
 Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long
 did’st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen
 from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack! 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 semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky?
 Was it not so, O 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 Tom 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 Narragansett Woods,
 Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture that notorious
 murderous savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the Indian 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
 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 general
 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 suppose
 that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by 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 special point I here seek can be established upon
 testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Sperm
 Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously
 malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and
 sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale has done it.
 


 
 First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket, 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 her 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 exposure, part of the crew reached the
 land in their boats. Being returned home at last, Captain Pollard once
 more sailed for the Pacific in command 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
 catastrophe.*
 


 
 *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 manœuvres 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, when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable
 shore. “The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears of
 being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks,
 with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, seemed
 scarcely entitled to a moment’s thought; the dismal looking wreck, and the
 horrid aspect and revenge of the whale , wholly engrossed my reflections,
 until day again made its appearance.”
 


 
 In another place—p. 45,—he speaks of “ the mysterious and
 mortal attack of the animal .”
 


 
 Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807 totally
 lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic particulars 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 board a Nantucket ship in the
 harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the
 Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength
 ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present. 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 thimbleful. Very good; but 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
 interview with that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus
 converted from unbelief by a similar fright? 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 Krusenstern’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. For some days we had very little wind; it was not till
 the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest 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 sail, was almost upon
 him, so that it was impossible to prevent its striking 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.
 The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether, while we who were below
 all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding 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 adventures
 as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of Dorchester near
 Boston. I have the honor of being a nephew of his. I have particularly
 questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates
 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 Ferdinando,” as he calls the
 modern Juan Fernandes. “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 earthquake, 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 back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long
 withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English 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 designs 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 marvellous 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 magistrate 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.
 


 
 Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term of
 his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the
 neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels
 at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. 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 inclined 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 connecting 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
 told, on good authority, that on the Barbary 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 substance
 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 Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm
 whale.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
 
 
 Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
 thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick;
 though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one
 passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long
 habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether to
 abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if this were
 otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more influential with
 him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his
 monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might
 have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that
 the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances
 that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one
 he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were
 still additional considerations which, though not so strictly according
 with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of
 swaying him.
 


 
 To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the
 shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for
 example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over
 Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any
 more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for
 to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal
 relation. Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s, so long
 as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain; still he knew that for all
 this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain’s quest, and could
 he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It
 might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen.
 During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open
 relapses of rebellion against his captain’s leadership, unless some
 ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon
 him. Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick
 was noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and
 shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some
 way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally
 invested it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn
 into the obscure background (for few men’s courage is proof against
 protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their
 long night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to
 think of than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage
 crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all
 sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable—they live in the
 varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness—and when
 retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however
 promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things
 requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and
 hold them healthily suspended for the final dash.
 


 
 Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion
 mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent.
 The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought
 Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the
 hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even
 breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the
 love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for
 their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric
 Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of
 land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries,
 picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they
 been strictly held to their one final and romantic object—that final
 and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust. I will
 not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash—aye, cash.
 They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and no perspective
 promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once
 mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.
 


 
 Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to
 Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps somewhat
 prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod’s voyage,
 Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly laid
 himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect
 impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end
 competent, could refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently
 wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted imputation of
 usurpation, and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression
 gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect
 himself. That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain
 and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to
 every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to
 be subjected to.
 


 
 For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be verbally
 developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree
 continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod’s voyage;
 observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force himself to
 evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of
 his profession.
 


 
 Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
 mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
 reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
 
 
 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 warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg,
 standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the
 threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly
 drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign
 all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting
 dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time,
 and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the
 Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single,
 ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to
 admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This
 warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own
 shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
 Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof
 slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;
 and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding
 contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword,
 thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this
 easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free will, and
 necessity—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; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given
 threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines
 of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though
 thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last
 featuring blow at events.
 


 
 Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
 strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of
 free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence
 that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad
 Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand
 stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his
 cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard
 all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high
 in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have
 derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.
 


 
 As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly
 peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or
 seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing
 their coming.
 


 
 “There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”
 


 
 “Where-away?”
 


 
 “On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!”
 


 
 Instantly all was commotion.
 


 
 The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and
 reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other
 tribes of his genus.
 


 
 “There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
 disappeared.
 


 
 “Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”
 


 
 Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
 minute to Ahab.
 


 
 The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling
 before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to
 leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of
 our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale
 when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while
 concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the
 opposite quarter—this deceitfulness of his could not now be in
 action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego
 had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of
 the men selected for shipkeepers—that is, those not appointed to the
 boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors
 at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their
 places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three
 boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs.
 Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail,
 while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long
 line of man-of-war’s men about to throw themselves on board an enemy’s
 ship.
 


 
 But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
 every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was
 surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
 
 
 The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of
 the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles
 and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always been deemed
 one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain’s, on
 account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The figure that now
 stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly
 protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black
 cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark
 stuff. But strangely crowning 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 be the paid spies and secret
 confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose
 counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere.
 


 
 While yet the wondering ship’s company were gazing upon these strangers,
 Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head, “All ready
 there, Fedallah?”
 


 
 “Ready,” was the half-hissed reply.
 


 
 “Lower away then; d’ye hear?” shouting across the deck. “Lower away there,
 I say.”
 


 
 Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the men
 sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with a
 wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous,
 off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like,
 leaped down the rolling ship’s side into the tossed boats below.
 


 
 Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship’s lee, when a fourth keel,
 coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and showed
 the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern, loudly
 hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, so as to
 cover a large expanse of water. But with all their eyes again riveted upon
 the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other boats obeyed not
 the command.
 


 
 “Captain Ahab?—” said Starbuck.
 


 
 “Spread yourselves,” cried Ahab; “give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask,
 pull out more to leeward!”
 


 
 “Aye, aye, sir,” cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his great
 steering oar. “Lay back!” addressing his crew. “There!—there!—there
 again! There she blows right ahead, boys!—lay back!”
 


 
 “Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.”
 


 
 “Oh, I don’t mind ’em, sir,” said Archy; “I knew it
 all before now. Didn’t I hear ’em in the hold? And didn’t I
 tell Cabaco here of it? What say ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask.”
 


 
 “Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little
 ones,” drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom
 still showed signs of uneasiness. “Why don’t you break your backbones, my
 boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They are
 only five more hands come to help us—never mind from where—the
 more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone—devils
 are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that’s the stroke for
 a thousand pounds; that’s the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the
 gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men—all hearts
 alive! Easy, easy; don’t be in a hurry—don’t be in a hurry. Why
 don’t you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so,
 so, then:—softly, softly! That’s it—that’s it! long and
 strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin
 rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull.
 Pull, will ye? pull, can’t ye? pull, won’t ye? Why in the name of gudgeons
 and ginger-cakes don’t ye pull?—pull and break something! pull, and
 start your eyes out! Here!” whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle;
 “every mother’s son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between
 his teeth. That’s it—that’s it. Now ye do something; that looks like
 it, my steel-bits. Start her—start her, my silver-spoons! Start her,
 marling-spikes!”
 


 
 Stubb’s exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had rather
 a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in
 inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this
 specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions
 with his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief
 peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a tone
 so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so calculated
 merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer
 invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the mere
 joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy and indolent
 himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so broadly gaped—open-mouthed
 at times—that the mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer
 force of contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was
 one of those odd sort of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so
 curiously ambiguous, as to put all inferiors on their guard in the matter
 of obeying them.
 


 
 In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
 across Stubb’s bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty
 near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.
 


 
 “Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye
 please!”
 


 
 “Halloa!” returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he spoke;
 still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set like a
 flint from Stubb’s.
 


 
 “What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!”
 


 
 “Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
 boys!)” in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: “A sad
 business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind,
 Mr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what
 will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There’s hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr.
 Stubb, and that’s what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm’s the
 play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand.”
 


 
 “Aye, aye, I thought as much,” soliloquized Stubb, when the boats
 diverged, “as soon as I clapt eye on ’em, I thought so. Aye, and that’s
 what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long
 suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale’s at the bottom of
 it. Well, well, so be it! Can’t be helped! All right! Give way, men! It
 ain’t the White Whale to-day! Give way!”
 


 
 Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as
 the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably
 awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship’s company;
 but Archy’s fancied discovery having some time previous got abroad among
 them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some small measure
 prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge of their wonder;
 and so what with all this and Stubb’s confident way of accounting for
 their appearance, they were for the time freed from superstitious
 surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for all manner of
 wild conjectures as to dark Ahab’s precise agency in the matter from the
 beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen
 creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the
 enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
 


 
 Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest
 to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance
 bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures
 of his seemed all steel and 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 seen
 steadily managing his steering 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
 irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly
 discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab
 had observed it.
 


 
 “Every man look out along his oars!” cried Starbuck. “Thou, Queequeg,
 stand up!”
 


 
 Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage
 stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the
 spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme
 stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the
 gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself
 to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the
 vast blue eye of the sea.
 


 
 Not very far distant Flask’s boat was also lying breathlessly still; its
 commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort
 of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of
 the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its
 top is not more spacious than the palm of a man’s hand, and standing upon
 such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the mast-head of some ship
 which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little King-Post was small and
 short, and at the same time little King-Post was full of a large and tall
 ambition, so that this loggerhead stand-point of his did by no means
 satisfy King-Post.
 


 
 “I can’t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to
 that.”
 


 
 Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way,
 swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty
 shoulders for a pedestal.
 


 
 “Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?”
 


 
 “That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you
 fifty feet taller.”
 


 
 Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the
 boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to
 Flask’s foot, and then putting Flask’s hand on his hearse-plumed head and
 bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous fling
 landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask
 now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a 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 harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his
 broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked
 nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious
 little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added
 heave did he thereby give to the negro’s lordly chest. So have I seen
 Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth
 did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.
 


 
 Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes.
 The whales might have made one of their regular soundings, not a temporary
 dive from mere fright; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in
 such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing interval with
 his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband, where he always wore it aslant
 like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed home the loading with his
 thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sandpaper
 of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to
 windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped like light from his erect
 attitude to his seat, crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, “Down, down
 all, and give way!—there they are!”
 


 
 To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been
 visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white
 water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and
 suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white
 rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it were,
 like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this
 atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of
 water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the other
 indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning
 couriers and detached flying outriders.
 


 
 All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water
 and air. But it bade 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 something, my
 hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on their
 black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I’ll sign over to you my
 Martha’s Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children, boys. Lay
 me on—lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad!
 See! see that white water!” And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his
 head, and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it far
 off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat’s
 stern like a crazed colt from the prairie.
 


 
 “Look at that chap now,” philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his
 unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a short
 distance, followed after—“He’s got fits, that Flask has. Fits? yes,
 give him fits—that’s the very word—pitch fits into ’em.
 Merrily, merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;—merry’s
 the word. Pull, babes—pull, sucklings—pull, all. But what the
 devil are you hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only
 pull, and keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite
 your knives in two—that’s all. Take it easy—why don’t ye take
 it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and lungs!”
 


 
 But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of
 his—these were words best omitted here; for you live under the
 blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the
 audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and
 eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.
 


 
 Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask
 to “that whale,” as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to
 be incessantly tantalizing his boat’s bow with its tail—these
 allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would
 cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the
 shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must put out
 their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage pronouncing that
 they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but arms, in these
 critical moments.
 


 
 It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the
 omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along
 the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the
 brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the
 knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to
 cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows;
 the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the
 headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;—all these, with the
 cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the
 oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her
 boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;—all
 this was thrilling.
 


 
 Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever
 heat of his first battle; not the dead man’s ghost encountering the first
 unknown phantom in the other world;—neither of these can feel
 stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time
 finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm
 whale.
 


 
 The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more
 visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows flung
 upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere
 to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats
 were pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales running dead
 to leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we
 rushed along; the boat going with such madness through the water, that the
 lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from
 the row-locks.
 


 
 Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship
 nor boat to be seen.
 


 
 “Give way, men,” whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet
 of his sail; “there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes.
 There’s white water again!—close to! Spring!”
 


 
 Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that
 the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when with a
 lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: “Stand up!” and Queequeg,
 harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.
 


 
 Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so
 close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the
 mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had
 come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants
 stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the
 mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of
 enraged serpents.
 


 
 “That’s his hump. There , there , give it to him!” whispered Starbuck.
 


 
 A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of
 Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from
 astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail
 collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by;
 something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew
 were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white
 curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended
 together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.
 


 
 Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it
 we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale,
 tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the
 water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes
 the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of
 the ocean.
 


 
 The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together;
 the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire
 upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these
 jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the live
 coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that
 storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the
 shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea
 forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as
 propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the
 lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck
 contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif
 pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope.
 There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that
 almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man
 without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
 


 
 Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat, we
 lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the
 sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly
 Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard
 a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm. The
 sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge,
 vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last
 loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much
 more than its length.
 


 
 Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it
 tossed and gaped beneath the ship’s bows like a chip at the base of a
 cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more
 till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed
 against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on
 board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from
 their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us
 up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our
 perishing,—an oar or a lance pole.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
 
 
 There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair
 we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical
 joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects
 that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing
 dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all
 events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible
 and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion
 gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and
 worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all
 these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and
 jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old
 joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man
 only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of
 his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing
 most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing
 like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial,
 desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the
 Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.
 


 
 “Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck,
 and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water;
 “Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?” Without
 much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand
 that such things did often happen.
 


 
 “Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
 oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr. Stubb, I
 think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief
 mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose
 then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy
 squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion?”
 


 
 “Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape
 Horn.”
 


 
 “Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close
 by; “you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell me
 whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an
 oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s
 jaws?”
 


 
 “Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law. I should
 like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face foremost. Ha,
 ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind that!”
 


 
 Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement of
 the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings in
 the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of common
 occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the superlatively
 critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life into the
 hands of him who steered the boat—oftentimes a fellow who at that
 very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft
 with his own frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster
 to our own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck’s driving
 on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that
 Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great heedfulness in the
 fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s
 boat; and finally considering in what a devil’s chase I was implicated,
 touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I say, I thought I
 might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said
 I, “come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”
 


 
 It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their
 last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond
 of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had
 done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present
 occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart.
 Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that
 Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so
 many months or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself; my death and
 burial were locked up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and
 contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the
 bars of a snug family vault.
 


 
 Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,
 here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the
 devil fetch the hindmost.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
 
 
 “Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had but one leg you
 would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my
 timber toe. Oh! he’s a wonderful old man!”
 


 
 “I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask. “If
 his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. That
 would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left,
 you know.”
 


 
 “I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.”
 


 
 Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering the
 paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right
 for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the
 chase. So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes,
 whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest
 of the fight.
 


 
 But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that
 with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger;
 considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and
 extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then
 comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man
 to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of
 the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
 


 
 Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his
 entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the
 chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his
 orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned
 to him as a regular headsman in the hunt—above all for Captain Ahab
 to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s crew, he well knew
 that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the
 Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a boat’s crew from them, nor had he
 in any way hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken
 private measures of his own touching all that matter. Until Cabaco’s
 published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure
 when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded the
 customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time
 after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of
 making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of the
 spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which
 when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when
 all this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an
 extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better
 withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he
 evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is
 sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for bracing the
 knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how
 often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the
 semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter’s chisel
 gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these
 things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time. But
 almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in
 Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he
 had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person.
 But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as
 to any boat’s crew being assigned to that boat.
 


 
 Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away;
 for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such
 unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown
 nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers;
 and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found
 tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, 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 Fedallah remained a
 muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this,
 by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked
 with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a
 half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority
 over him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain an indifferent air
 concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people
 in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but
 the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic
 communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent—those
 insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern
 days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal
 generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection,
 and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as
 real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and
 to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed
 consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical
 Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
 
 
 Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept
 across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape de
 Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la
 Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from
 St. Helena.
 


 
 It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
 moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and,
 by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence,
 not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in
 advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked
 celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.
 Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was
 his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with
 the same precision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales
 were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering
 for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this
 old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon,
 companions in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there
 for several successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after
 all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery,
 moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some
 winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.
 “There she blows!” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have
 quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though
 it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so
 deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively
 desired a lowering.
 


 
 Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
 t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best
 man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the
 piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving,
 lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many
 sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet;
 while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were
 struggling in her—one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive
 yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that
 night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were
 warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every
 stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this
 old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every
 eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more
 seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.
 


 
 This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days
 after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was
 descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
 disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after
 night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into
 the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing
 again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at
 every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and further in our
 van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
 


 
 Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance with
 the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the
 Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and
 wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart
 latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same
 whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense
 of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously
 beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon
 us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.
 


 
 These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous
 potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath
 all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for
 days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild,
 that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating
 itself of life before our urn-like prow.
 


 
 But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling
 around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are
 there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored
 the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the
 foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life
 went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.
 


 
 Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
 before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And
 every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and
 spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as
 though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing
 appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their
 homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black
 sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul
 were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.
 


 
 Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called of
 yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended
 us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty
 beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to
 swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air
 without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing
 its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before,
 the solitary jet would at times be descried.
 


 
 During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the
 time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck,
 manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed his
 mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and aloft
 has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await the
 issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. So,
 with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand
 firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead
 to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but
 congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the
 forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over
 its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better
 to guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
 sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened
 belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by
 painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift
 madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of
 humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the
 men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even
 when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose
 in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one
 night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw
 him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain
 and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before
 emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the
 table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents
 which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightly
 clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so that
 the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that
 swung from a beam in the ceiling.*
 


 
 *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.
 


 
 Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale,
 still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
 
 
 South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising
 ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by
 name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head,
 I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean
 fisheries—a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
 


 
 As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
 skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral
 appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her
 spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over
 with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see
 her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in
 the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived
 nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast,
 they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship
 slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to
 each other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one
 ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly
 eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while
 the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.
 


 
 “Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
 


 
 But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the
 act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand
 into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make
 himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the
 distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod
 were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first mere
 mention of the White Whale’s name to another ship, Ahab for a moment
 paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board
 the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage
 of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her
 aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home,
 he loudly hailed—“Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the
 world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and
 this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them
 to ——”
 


 
 At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in
 accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that
 for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away
 with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with
 the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings
 Ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any
 monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.
 


 
 “Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water.
 There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep
 helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But
 turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the
 wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—“Up
 helm! Keep her off round the world!”
 


 
 Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings;
 but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through
 numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we
 left behind secure, were all the time before us.
 


 
 Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for
 ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than
 any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the
 voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented
 chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all
 human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead
 us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
 
 
 The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had
 spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this not
 been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded her—judging
 by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions—if so it had been
 that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer to the
 question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not to
 consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he could
 contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought. But all this
 might remain inadequately estimated, were not something said here of the
 peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each other in foreign
 seas, and especially on a common cruising-ground.
 


 
 If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
 equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering each
 other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of them,
 cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment to
 interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and resting
 in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine
 Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying
 each other at the ends of the earth—off lone Fanning’s Island, or
 the far away King’s Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such
 circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into
 still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would
 this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one
 seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are
 personally known to each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear
 domestic things to talk about.
 


 
 For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on
 board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date
 a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files.
 And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the
 latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be
 destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this
 will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other’s track on
 the cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from
 home. For one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some
 third, and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the
 people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling
 news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all
 the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar
 congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared
 privations and perils.
 


 
 Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference; that
 is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with
 Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of
 English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they do
 occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your
 Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that
 sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers
 sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American
 whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript
 provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in
 the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing
 that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the
 English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible
 in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to
 heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself.
 


 
 So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers
 have most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas, some
 merchant ships crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will
 oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,
 mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in
 Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon
 each other’s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they
 first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a
 ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down hearty
 good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slave-ships
 meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each
 other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross
 each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is—“How many skulls?”—the
 same way that whalers hail—“How many barrels?” And that question
 once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal
 villains on both sides, and don’t like to see overmuch of each other’s
 villanous likenesses.
 


 
 But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
 free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another
 whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a “ Gam ,” a thing so utterly
 unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if
 by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat
 gamesome stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,” and such like
 pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all
 Pirates and Man-of-War’s men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a
 scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard
 to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know
 whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It
 sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And
 besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper
 foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting
 himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate
 has no solid basis to stand on.
 


 
 But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and
 down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson
 never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it.
 Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in
 constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it
 needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that
 view, let me learnedly define it.
 


 
 GAM. NOUN— A social meeting of two ( or more ) Whaleships,
 generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits
 by boats’ crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one
 ship, and the two chief mates on the other. 
 


 
 There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten
 here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so
 has the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the
 captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets
 on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself
 with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated with gay cords and
 ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort
 whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if whaling captains
 were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent
 chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such
 effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat’s crew must leave
 the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number,
 that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain,
 having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a
 pine tree. And often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of
 the whole visible world resting on him from the sides of the two ships,
 this standing captain is all alive to the importance of sustaining his
 dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is this any very easy matter; for in
 his rear is the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now and then
 in the small of his back, the after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees
 in front. He is thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only
 expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a
 sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because
 length of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make
 a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it
 would never do in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, it would never
 do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the
 slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as
 token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands
 in his trowsers’ pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy
 hands, he carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred
 instances, well authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known
 for an uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say—to
 seize hold of the nearest oarsman’s hair, and hold on there like grim
 death.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.
 
 
 ( As told at the Golden Inn. )
 


 
 The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is
 much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more
 travellers than in any other part.
 


 
 It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound
 whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by
 Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby
 Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly
 heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho’s story, which seemed
 obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted
 visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are
 said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own
 particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of
 the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab
 or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain
 of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate
 white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to
 Tashtego with Romish injunctions of 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’s
 main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the
 story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I
 now proceed to put on lasting record.
 


 
 *The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,
 still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
 


 
 For my humor’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated
 it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint’s eve,
 smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine
 cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms
 with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put, and
 which are duly answered at the time.
 


 
 “Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
 rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was
 cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward from the
 eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the
 Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it
 was observed that she made more water in her hold than common. They
 supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having
 some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those
 latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not
 being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not
 find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather
 heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners
 working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came;
 more days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it
 sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain,
 making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands,
 there to have his hull hove out and repaired.
 


 
 “Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance
 favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way,
 because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at
 them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free;
 never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole
 of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had
 all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the
 occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal
 overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked
 vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.
 


 
 “‘Lakeman!—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?’
 said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.
 


 
 “On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your
 courtesy—may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,
 gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as large
 and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla;
 this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet been
 nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly connected
 with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand
 fresh-water seas of ours,—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and
 Superior, and Michigan,—possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with
 many of the ocean’s noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of
 races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles,
 even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great
 contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime
 approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all
 round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by
 the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet
 thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to
 wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry
 wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered
 forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic
 genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and
 silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they
 mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago
 villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed
 cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by
 Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave;
 they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland,
 they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew.
 Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and
 wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for
 Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone
 Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had
 long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was
 he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman,
 fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this
 Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a
 mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible
 firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which
 is the meanest slave’s right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been
 retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far;
 but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt—but, gentlemen,
 you shall hear.
 


 
 “It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow
 for her island haven, that the Town-Ho’s leak seemed again increasing, but
 only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must
 know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example,
 some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across it; though of
 a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen to forget his
 duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and his shipmates
 would never again remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to
 the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the
 westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging
 at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable
 length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any
 other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel
 is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless
 latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.
 


 
 “Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found
 gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by
 several of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the
 upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded
 to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and
 as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his
 own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you
 can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this
 solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that
 it was only on account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were
 working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small
 gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with their feet
 continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain
 spring, gentlemen—that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck,
 and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.
 


 
 “Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional
 world of ours—watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in
 command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his
 superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he
 conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance
 he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern’s tower, and make a little
 heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all
 events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and
 a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy’s
 snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen,
 which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to
 Charlemagne’s father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as
 hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt
 knew it.
 


 
 “Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
 rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his
 gay banterings.
 


 
 “‘Aye, aye, my merry lads, it’s a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one
 of ye, and let’s have a taste. By the Lord, it’s worth bottling! I tell ye
 what, men, old Rad’s investment must go for it! he had best cut away his
 part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only
 began the job; he’s come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters,
 saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of ’em are now
 hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I
 suppose. If old Rad were here now, I’d tell him to jump overboard and
 scatter ’em. They’re playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him.
 But he’s a simple old soul,—Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say
 the rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he’d
 give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.’
 


 
 “‘Damn your eyes! what’s that pump stopping for?’ roared Radney,
 pretending not to have heard the sailors’ talk. ‘Thunder away at it!’
 


 
 “‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. ‘Lively, boys,
 lively, now!’ And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the
 men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the
 lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life’s utmost
 energies.
 


 
 “Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went
 forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery
 red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now
 what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle
 with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so
 it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him
 to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove
 some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.
 


 
 “Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship’s deck at sea is a piece of household
 work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every
 evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually
 foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of
 sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom
 would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all
 vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if
 boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that
 had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most
 athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain
 of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any
 trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the
 case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may
 understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.
 


 
 “But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as
 plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in
 his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand
 this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended
 when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for a moment, and
 as he steadfastly looked into the mate’s malignant eye and perceived the
 stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow-match silently
 burning along towards them; as he instinctively saw all this, that strange
 forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in any
 already ireful being—a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by
 really valiant men even when aggrieved—this nameless phantom
 feeling, gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.
 


 
 “Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily
 exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping the
 deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then, without at
 all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary
 sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little or nothing
 all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most domineering and
 outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile
 advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper’s club
 hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.
 


 
 “Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for
 all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could
 but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the
 conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to
 his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few
 inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding.
 


 
 “Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily
 followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his
 intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not the
 slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted
 hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to no
 purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass;
 when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had
 now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on
 the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:
 


 
 “‘Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to
 yourself.’ But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where
 the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his
 teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions.
 Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye
 with the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching his right
 hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back, told his persecutor that
 if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But,
 gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter by the gods.
 Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw
 of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood
 like a whale.
 


 
 “Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
 leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
 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?’
 


 
 “‘Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You
 must have heard of it.’
 


 
 “‘Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary
 land, we know but little of your vigorous North.’
 


 
 “‘Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha’s very fine; and ere
 proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such
 information may throw side-light upon my story.’
 


 
 “For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth
 of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most
 thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent,
 cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and
 bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches
 over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken;
 through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties;
 and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost
 like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and
 often lawless life. There’s your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your
 pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung
 shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches. For by some curious
 fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they
 ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most
 abound in holiest vicinities.
 


 
 “‘Is that a friar passing?’ said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the
 crowded plazza, with humorous concern.
 


 
 “‘Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella’s Inquisition wanes in
 Lima,’ laughed Don Sebastian. ‘Proceed, Senor.’
 


 
 “‘A moment! Pardon!’ cried another of the company. ‘In the name of all us
 Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no
 means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for
 distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look
 surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast—“Corrupt as
 Lima.” It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than
 billiard-tables, and for ever open—and “Corrupt as Lima.” So, too,
 Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St.
 Mark!—St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now,
 you pour out again.’
 


 
 “Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make a
 fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like
 Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he
 indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening
 his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is
 dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his
 slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to
 the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart
 visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on
 his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I
 thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of
 the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he
 has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a
 wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is,
 is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so
 many of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind,
 except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor
 does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many
 thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line, the
 probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between
 quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the
 waters of the most barbaric seas.
 


 
 “‘I see! I see!’ impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon
 his silvery ruffles. ‘No need to travel! The world’s one Lima. I had
 thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and
 holy as the hills.—But the story.’
 


 
 “I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the 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 revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the
 heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his
 resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all;
 they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing
 about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these
 sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade.
 


 
 “‘Come out of that, ye pirates!’ roared the captain, now menacing them
 with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. ‘Come out
 of that, ye cut-throats!’
 


 
 “Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there, defied
 the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to understand
 distinctly, that his (Steelkilt’s) death would be the signal for a
 murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his heart lest this
 might prove but too true, the captain a little desisted, but still
 commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.
 


 
 “‘Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?’ demanded their ringleader.
 


 
 “‘Turn to! turn to!—I make no promise;—to your duty! Do you
 want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!’ and
 he once more raised a pistol.
 


 
 “‘Sink the ship?’ cried Steelkilt. ‘Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us
 turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say
 ye, men?’ turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.
 


 
 “The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on
 the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:—‘It’s not our
 fault; we didn’t want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy’s
 business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the
 buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw;
 ain’t those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to
 those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the
 word; don’t be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us
 decently, and we’re your men; but we won’t be flogged.’
 


 
 “‘Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!’
 


 
 “‘Look ye, now,’ cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,
 ‘there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for
 the cruise, d’ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our
 discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don’t want a row; it’s not
 our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won’t
 be flogged.’
 


 
 “‘Turn to!’ roared the Captain.
 


 
 “Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:—‘I tell you
 what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a
 shabby rascal, we won’t lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but
 till you say the word about not flogging us, we don’t do a hand’s turn.’
 


 
 “‘Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I’ll keep ye there till
 ye’re sick of it. Down ye go.’
 


 
 “‘Shall we?’ cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against
 it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into
 their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.
 


 
 “As the Lakeman’s bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain
 and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide of
 the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for
 the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the
 companionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something
 down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them—ten in
 number—leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral.
 


 
 “All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and
 aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which
 last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking
 through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the
 men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose
 clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally
 resounded through the ship.
 


 
 “At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned
 the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was then
 lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed
 after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the
 Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days this
 was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a
 scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly
 four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to.
 The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to
 some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at
 discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the
 rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling
 and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of
 the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that
 sought to restrain them. Only three were left.
 


 
 “‘Better turn to, now?’ said the Captain with a heartless jeer.
 


 
 “‘Shut us up again, will ye!’ cried Steelkilt.
 


 
 “‘Oh certainly,’ said the Captain, and the key clicked.
 


 
 “It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven
 of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last
 hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the
 bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two
 Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their
 hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen
 mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each
 end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any
 devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he
 would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last
 night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition
 on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for
 any other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender. And what was
 more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time
 to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely
 objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two
 comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both of
 them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a time.
 And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come out.
 


 
 “Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
 separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of
 treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the
 first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby
 secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit. But when
 Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last,
 they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany, mixed their before
 secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell into a doze,
 verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences; and bound
 the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for
 the Captain at midnight.
 


 
 “Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and
 all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a few
 minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still
 struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies,
 who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe
 for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along the deck like
 dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizzen rigging,
 like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. ‘Damn ye,’
 cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, ‘the vultures would not
 touch ye, ye villains!’
 


 
 “At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had rebelled
 from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that he
 had a good mind to flog them all round—thought, upon the whole, he
 would do so—he ought to—justice demanded it; but for the
 present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a
 reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.
 


 
 “‘But as for you, ye carrion rogues,’ turning to the three men in the
 rigging—‘for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;’ and,
 seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two
 traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads
 sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.
 


 
 “‘My wrist is sprained with ye!’ he cried, at last; ‘but there is still
 rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn’t give up. Take that
 gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.’
 


 
 “For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his
 cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort
 of hiss, ‘What I say is this—and mind it well—if you flog me,
 I murder you!’
 


 
 “‘Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me’—and the Captain drew off
 with the rope to strike.
 


 
 “‘Best not,’ hissed the Lakeman.
 


 
 “‘But I must,’—and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.
 


 
 “Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain;
 who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly
 two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, ‘I
 won’t do it—let him go—cut him down: d’ye hear?’
 


 
 “But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man,
 with a bandaged head, arrested them—Radney the chief mate. Ever
 since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the
 tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole
 scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; but
 mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the captain
 dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.
 


 
 “‘You are a coward!’ hissed the Lakeman.
 


 
 “‘So I am, but take that.’ The mate was in the very act of striking, when
 another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no more,
 made good his word, spite of Steelkilt’s threat, whatever that might have
 been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and,
 sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.
 


 
 “Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor was
 heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,
 besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
 Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own
 instance they were put down in the ship’s run for salvation. Still, no
 sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that
 mainly at Steelkilt’s instigation, they had resolved to maintain the
 strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship
 reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest
 end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing—namely, not to
 sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite of her
 leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her
 mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that
 moment, as on the day his craft first struck the cruising ground; and
 Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat, and
 with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.
 


 
 “But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
 passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all
 was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who
 had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief
 mate’s watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than half
 way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted, against
 the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at
 night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt
 systematically built the plan of his revenge.
 


 
 “During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
 bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the
 boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship’s side. In this
 attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable
 vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea.
 Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm
 would come round at two o’clock, in the morning of the third day from that
 in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in
 braiding something very carefully in his watches below.
 


 
 “‘What are you making there?’ said a shipmate.
 


 
 “‘What do you think? what does it look like?’
 


 
 “‘Like a lanyard for your bag; but it’s an odd one, seems to me.’
 


 
 “‘Yes, rather oddish,’ said the Lakeman, holding it at arm’s length before
 him; ‘but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven’t enough twine,—have
 you any?’
 


 
 “But there was none in the forecastle.
 


 
 “‘Then I must get some from old Rad;’ and he rose to go aft.
 


 
 “‘You don’t mean to go a begging to him! ’ said a sailor.
 


 
 “‘Why not? Do you think he won’t do me a turn, when it’s to help himself
 in the end, shipmate?’ and going to the mate, he looked at him quietly,
 and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him—neither
 twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball,
 closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman’s monkey
 jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow.
 Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm—nigh to the
 man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to the seaman’s
 hand—that fatal hour was then to come; and in the fore-ordaining
 soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and stretched as a corpse,
 with his forehead crushed in.
 


 
 “But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed
 he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
 avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to
 take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have done.
 


 
 “It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second
 day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man,
 drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, ‘There she
 rolls! there she rolls!’ Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.
 


 
 “‘Moby Dick!’ cried Don Sebastian; ‘St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales
 have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?’
 


 
 “‘A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;—but
 that would be too long a story.’
 


 
 “‘How? how?’ cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.
 


 
 “‘Nay, Dons, Dons—nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get
 more into the air, Sirs.’
 


 
 “‘The chicha! the chicha!’ cried Don Pedro; ‘our vigorous friend looks
 faint;—fill up his empty glass!’
 


 
 “No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.—Now, gentlemen, so
 suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship—forgetful
 of the compact among the crew—in the excitement of the moment, the
 Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the
 monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from
 the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy. ‘The White Whale—the
 White Whale!’ was the cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who,
 undeterred by fearful 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.
 The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was
 his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the
 prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover,
 when the four boats were lowered, the mate’s got the start; and none
 howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at
 his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in
 hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in
 a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale’s topmost
 back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding
 foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck
 as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing
 mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale’s slippery back, the boat
 righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over
 into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the
 spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly
 seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed
 round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and
 rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.
 


 
 “Meantime, at the first tap of the boat’s bottom, the Lakeman had
 slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
 looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward
 jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and
 the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some
 tatters of Radney’s red woollen shirt, caught in the teeth that had
 destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them,
 and finally wholly disappeared.
 


 
 “In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port—a savage, solitary place—where
 no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five
 or six of the 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 harbor.
 


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


 
 “On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed
 to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the
 savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him
 to heave to, or he would run him under water. The captain presented a
 pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman
 laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked
 in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.
 


 
 “‘What do you want of me?’ cried the captain.
 


 
 “‘Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?’ demanded Steelkilt;
 ‘no lies.’
 


 
 “‘I am bound to Tahiti for more men.’
 


 
 “‘Very good. Let me board you a moment—I come in peace.’ With that
 he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale,
 stood face to face with the captain.
 


 
 “‘Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me. As
 soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island,
 and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me!’
 


 
 “‘A pretty scholar,’ laughed the Lakeman. ‘Adios, Senor!’ and leaping into
 the sea, he swam back to his comrades.
 


 
 “Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots
 of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived
 at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two
 ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of
 precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and
 so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all
 minded to work them legal retribution.
 


 
 “Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and
 the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians, who
 had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he
 returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again
 resumed his cruisings.
 


 
 “Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
 Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to
 give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that
 destroyed him. * * * *
 


 
 “‘Are you through?’ said Don Sebastian, quietly.
 


 
 “‘I am, Don.’
 


 
 “‘Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this
 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 Sebastian’s
 suit,’ cried the company, with exceeding interest.
 


 
 “‘Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?’
 


 
 “‘Nay,’ said Don Sebastian; ‘but I know a worthy priest near by, who will
 quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised? this
 may grow too serious.’
 


 
 “‘Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?’
 


 
 “‘Though there are no Auto-da-Fés in Lima now,’ said one of the company
 to another; ‘I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy.
 Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.’
 


 
 “‘Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg that
 you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you
 can.’
 


 
 * * * * * *
 


 
 “‘This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,’ said Don Sebastian,
 gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.
 


 
 “‘Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light, and
 hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.
 


 
 “‘So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye, gentlemen,
 is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true; it
 happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and
 talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.’”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
 
 
 I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something
 like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the
 whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the
 whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth
 while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imaginary
 portraits of him which even down to the present day confidently challenge
 the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the world right in this
 matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all wrong.
 


 
 It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will be
 found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever
 since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings
 of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, cups,
 and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-armor like Saladin’s,
 and a helmeted head like St. George’s; ever since then has something of
 the same sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of
 the whale, but in many scientific presentations of him.
 


 
 Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to
 be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta,
 in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of
 that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable
 avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came
 into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of
 whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred
 to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation
 of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar.
 But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give
 the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It
 looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of
 the true whale’s majestic flukes.
 


 
 But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter’s
 portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian
 Hindoo. It is Guido’s picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the
 sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange
 creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own
 “Perseus Descending,” make out one whit better. The huge corpulence of
 that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one
 inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended
 tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the
 Traitors’ Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then,
 there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale,
 as depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What
 shall be said of these? As for the book-binder’s whale winding like a
 vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor—as stamped and
 gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both old and new—that
 is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it,
 from the like figures on antique vases. Though universally denominated a
 dolphin, I nevertheless call this book-binder’s fish an attempt at a
 whale; because it was so intended when the device was first introduced. It
 was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th
 century, during the Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down
 to a comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a
 species of the Leviathan.
 


 
 In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will
 at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all manner of
 spouts, jets d’eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come
 bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original
 edition of the “Advancement of Learning” you will find some curious
 whales.
 


 
 But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those
 pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by
 those who know. In old Harris’s collection of voyages there are some
 plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671,
 entitled “A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale,
 Peter Peterson of Friesland, master.” In one of those plates the whales,
 like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with
 white bears running over their living backs. In another plate, the
 prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular
 flukes.
 


 
 Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett, a
 Post Captain in the English navy, entitled “A Voyage round Cape Horn into
 the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale
 Fisheries.” In this book is an outline purporting to be a “Picture of a
 Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed on the coast
 of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck.” I doubt not the captain had
 this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines. To mention
 but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied,
 according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would
 make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my
 gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
 


 
 Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the
 benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of
 mistake. Look at that popular work “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In the
 abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged “whale”
 and a “narwhale.” I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly
 whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one
 glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such
 a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent public of
 schoolboys.
 


 
 Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacépède, a great
 naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
 several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these are
 not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale
 (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man
 as touching that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.
 


 
 But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
 reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron.
 In 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, but a
 squash. Of course, he never had the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men
 seldom have), but whence he derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he
 got it as his scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one
 of his authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort
 of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and
 saucers inform us.
 


 
 As for the sign-painters’ whales seen in the streets hanging over the
 shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
 Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting
 on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their
 deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.
 


 
 But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
 surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been
 taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing
 of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent the noble
 animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though
 elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living Leviathan has
 never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The living whale, in
 his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in
 unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like
 a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing
 eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so
 as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of
 the highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking whale
 and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of
 those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship’s deck, such is then the
 outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise
 expression the devil himself could not catch.
 


 
 But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale,
 accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it
 is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton
 gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham’s
 skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of his
 executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old
 gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics; yet
 nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan’s articulated
 bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale
 bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the
 insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This
 peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this
 book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in
 the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the
 human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers,
 the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently
 lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial
 covering. “However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,” said
 humorous Stubb one day, “he can never be truly said to handle us without
 mittens.”
 


 
 For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs
 conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which
 must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark
 much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable
 degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely
 what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can
 derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling
 yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove
 and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too
 fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes.
 
 
 In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted
 here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to
 be found in certain books, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny,
 Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by.
 


 
 I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
 Colnett’s, Huggins’s, Frederick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. In the previous
 chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins’s is far better
 than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale’s is the best. All Beale’s drawings
 of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of
 three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His
 frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to
 excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and
 life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J.
 Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly
 engraved. That is not his fault though.
 


 
 Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they
 are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has
 but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because
 it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive
 anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living
 hunters.
 


 
 But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details not
 the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be
 anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and taken
 from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent attacks on the
 Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble Sperm Whale is
 depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath the boat from the
 profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air upon his back the
 terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of the boat is partially
 unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monster’s spine; and
 standing in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time, you
 behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the
 whale, and in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action of
 the whole thing is wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied line-tub
 floats on the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons
 obliquely bob in it; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered about
 the whale in contrasting expressions of affright; while in the black
 stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon the scene. Serious fault
 might be found with the anatomical details of this whale, but let that
 pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw so good a one.
 


 
 In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the
 barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black weedy
 bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His
 jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so abounding a
 smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking
 in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs,
 shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale
 sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the
 thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of
 tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in
 the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.
 Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable
 artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping
 unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead
 whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from
 the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.
 


 
 Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he was
 either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously
 tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for painting
 action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings 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 successive armed kings
 and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly
 unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of
 Garnery.
 


 
 The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
 things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings
 they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England’s
 experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the
 Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only
 finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale
 hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen seem
 entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such as
 the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of
 effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a
 pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving
 us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
 miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical
 engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the
 microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a
 shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals.
 I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a
 veteran), but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not
 to have procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a
 Greenland Justice of the Peace.
 


 
 In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other
 French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself “H.
 Durand.” One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present purpose,
 nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet noon-scene
 among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored, inshore, in a
 calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened sails of the ship,
 and the long leaves of the palms in the background, both drooping together
 in the breezeless air. The effect is very fine, when considered with
 reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few
 aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is quite a different
 affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of the
 Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of
 cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat,
 hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving chase
 to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use;
 three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its hole; while from a sudden
 roll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of the water, like
 a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling
 whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to
 windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains,
 seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
 
 
 On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a
 crippled beggar (or kedger , as the sailors say) holding a painted board
 before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There
 are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to
 contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched
 by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me,
 has that man held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to an
 incredulous world. But the time of his justification has now come. His
 three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, at any
 rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the
 western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a
 stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands
 ruefully contemplating his own amputation.
 


 
 Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag
 Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes,
 graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks
 wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles,
 as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they
 elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean
 leisure. Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements,
 specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they
 toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool
 of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a
 mariner’s fancy.
 


 
 Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to
 that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your
 true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a
 savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready
 at any moment to rebel against him.
 


 
 Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
 hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-club
 or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is
 as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but
 a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark’s tooth, that miraculous intricacy of
 wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady
 application.
 


 
 As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the
 same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark’s tooth, of his
 one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite
 as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the
 Greek savage, Achilles’s shield; and full of barbaric spirit and
 suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
 


 
 Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the
 noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of
 American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.
 


 
 At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by
 the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy,
 the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom
 remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned
 churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks;
 but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes
 so labelled with “ Hands off! ” you cannot examine them closely enough to
 decide upon their merit.
 


 
 In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
 cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain,
 you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan
 partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf
 of green surges.
 


 
 Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually
 girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point
 of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined
 along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see
 these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight
 again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting latitude and
 longitude of your first stand-point, else so chance-like are such
 observations of the hills, that your precise, previous stand-point would
 require a laborious re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands, which still
 remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old
 Figuera chronicled them.
 


 
 Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out
 great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as when
 long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in
 battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round
 and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first
 defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have
 boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far
 beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish.
 


 
 With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for
 spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see
 whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie
 encamped beyond my mortal sight!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 58. Brit.
 
 
 Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows of
 brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely
 feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to
 be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.
 


 
 On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from the
 attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam
 through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous
 Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated from the
 water that escaped at the lip.
 


 
 As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their
 scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters
 swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving behind them
 endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*
 


 
 *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.
 


 
 But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
 reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they
 paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more
 like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the great
 hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass
 on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking
 them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him,
 who for the first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea.
 And even when recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very
 hard really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly
 be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog
 or a horse.
 


 
 Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep
 with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old
 naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their
 kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing, this
 may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does the
 ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious
 kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any generic respect
 be said to bear comparative analogy to him.
 


 
 But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas
 have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling;
 though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that
 Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one
 superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all
 mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and
 hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a
 moment’s consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his
 science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science
 and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom,
 the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest
 frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these
 very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea
 which aboriginally belongs to it.
 


 
 The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
 vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow.
 That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of
 last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two
 thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
 


 
 Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
 miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews,
 when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and
 swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in
 precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.
 


 
 But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is
 also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who
 murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath
 spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own
 cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and
 leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy,
 no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle
 steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
 


 
 Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide
 under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden
 beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish
 brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the
 dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more,
 the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each
 other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
 


 
 Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile
 earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a
 strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
 surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular
 Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the
 half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst
 never return!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 59. Squid.
 
 
 Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her
 way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her
 keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts
 mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And
 still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet
 would be seen.
 


 
 But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural
 spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when the
 long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across
 them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered together
 as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the visible sphere a
 strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.
 


 
 In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and
 higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before
 our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a
 moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and
 silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick?
 thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once
 more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the
 negro yelled out—“There! there again! there she breaches! right
 ahead! The White Whale, the White Whale!”
 


 
 Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time the
 bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the
 bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave his
 orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction indicated
 aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.
 


 
 Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
 gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect the
 ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular whale
 he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed him;
 whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly perceive the
 white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave orders for
 lowering.
 


 
 The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all swiftly
 pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars
 suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot where
 it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all
 thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which
 the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass,
 furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-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 it had sunk, with a wild voice
 exclaimed—“Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than
 to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”
 


 
 “What was it, Sir?” said Flask.
 


 
 “The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and
 returned to their ports to tell of it.”
 


 
 But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel; the
 rest as silently following.
 


 
 Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with
 the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being so
 very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with
 portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them
 declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few of
 them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and
 form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale his
 only food. For though other species of whales find their food above water,
 and may be seen by man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains
 his whole food in unknown zones below the surface; and only by inference
 is it that any one can tell of what, precisely, that food consists. At
 times, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the
 detached arms of the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty
 and thirty feet in length. They fancy that the monster to which these arms
 belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that the
 sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in order to
 attack and tear it.
 


 
 There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
 Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in which
 the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some
 other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But much
 abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it.
 


 
 By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
 creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish,
 to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to belong,
 but only as the Anak of the tribe.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 60. The Line.
 
 
 With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as
 for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I
 have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.
 


 
 The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
 vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary
 ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to
 the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the
 sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too
 much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be
 subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no
 means adds to the rope’s durability or strength, however much it may give
 it compactness and gloss.
 


 
 Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely
 superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable
 as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add
 (since there is an æsthetics in all things), is much more handsome and
 becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of
 Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.
 


 
 The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight,
 you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one
 and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty
 pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three
 tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two
 hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away
 in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form
 one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded “sheaves,” or layers of
 concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the “heart,” or minute
 vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or
 kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody’s arm,
 leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line
 in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this
 business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards
 through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it
 from all possible wrinkles and twists.
 


 
 In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line being
 continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this; because
 these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do
 not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet in
 diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a
 craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of
 the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable
 distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When the
 painted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks
 as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present
 to the whales.
 


 
 Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
 eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub,
 and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This
 arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order
 to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring
 boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to
 carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these
 instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were,
 from the one boat to the other; though the first boat always hovers at
 hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for
 common safety’s sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way
 attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the
 end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not
 stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him
 into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever
 find her again.
 


 
 Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken
 aft from the tub, and passing round the 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 size of a common quill,
 prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight
 festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some
 ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the
 bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and
 is then attached to the short-warp—the rope which is immediately
 connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp
 goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.
 


 
 Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
 twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen
 are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the
 landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes
 sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for
 the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while
 straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant
 the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in
 play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a
 shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a
 shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer
 sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never
 heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white
 cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses; and, like the
 six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew
 pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may
 say.
 


 
 Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those
 repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of
 this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost.
 For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like
 being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in
 full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.
 It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils,
 because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and
 the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain
 self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can
 you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing
 sun himself could never pierce you out.
 


 
 Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies
 of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed,
 the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in
 itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the
 ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it
 silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual
 play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any
 other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live
 enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but
 it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals
 realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a
 philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel
 one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with
 a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
 
 
 If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to
 Queequeg it was quite a different object.
 


 
 “When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow
 of his hoisted boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.”
 


 
 The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to
 engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep
 induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through
 which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground;
 that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish,
 and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the
 Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.
 


 
 It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
 leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in
 what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that
 dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body;
 though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the
 power which first moved it is withdrawn.
 


 
 Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen
 at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last all
 three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we
 made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves,
 too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea,
 east nodded to west, and the sun over all.
 


 
 Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my
 hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me;
 with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty
 fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the
 capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,
 glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the
 trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet,
 the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm
 afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some
 enchanter’s wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once
 started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts
 of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted
 forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted
 the sparkling brine into the air.
 


 
 “Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he
 dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.
 


 
 The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and ere
 the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward,
 but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam,
 that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders
 that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers. So
 seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but
 silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the noiseless sails
 being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster
 perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then sank
 out of sight like a tower swallowed up.
 


 
 “There go flukes!” was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by
 Stubb’s producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was
 granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale
 rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker’s boat, and much nearer
 to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honor of the
 capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become aware of
 his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.
 Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at
 his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault.
 


 
 Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he
 was going “head out”; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast
 which he brewed.*
 


 
 *It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the
 entire interior of the sperm whale’s enormous head consists. Though
 apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him.
 So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when
 going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part
 of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the
 lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said
 to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a
 sharppointed New York pilot-boat.
 


 
 “Start her, start her, my men! Don’t hurry yourselves; take plenty of time—but
 start her; start her like thunder-claps, that’s all,” cried Stubb,
 spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. “Start her, now; give ’em the long
 and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all;
 but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy—only
 start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead
 perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that’s all. Start her!”
 


 
 “Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old
 war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
 involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke which
 the eager Indian gave.
 


 
 But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. “Kee-hee!
 Kee-hee!” yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat,
 like a pacing tiger in his cage.
 


 
 “Ka-la! Koo-loo!” howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful
 of Grenadier’s steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea.
 Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men
 to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like
 desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard—“Stand
 up, Tashtego!—give it to him!” The harpoon was hurled. “Stern all!”
 The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing
 along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line. An instant
 before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the
 loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen
 blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe.
 As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before
 reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of
 Stubb’s hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas
 sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like
 holding an enemy’s sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all
 the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.
 


 
 “Wet the line! wet the line!” cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated
 by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More
 turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now
 flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego
 here changed places—stem for stern—a staggering business truly
 in that rocking commotion.
 


 
 *Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated,
 that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line
 with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart
 for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
 


 
 From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of
 the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would
 have thought the craft had two keels—one cleaving the water, the
 other the air—as the boat churned on through both opposing elements
 at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy
 in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a
 little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic
 gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main
 clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall
 form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to
 bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed
 passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat
 slackened his flight.
 


 
 “Haul in—haul in!” cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
 towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet
 the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly
 planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the
 flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of
 the way of the whale’s horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another
 fling.
 


 
 The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a
 hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled
 and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing
 upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every
 face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the
 while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle
 of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited
 headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line
 attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid
 blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.
 


 
 “Pull up—pull up!” he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale
 relaxed in his wrath. “Pull up!—close to!” and the boat ranged along
 the fish’s flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his
 long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and
 churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the
 whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he
 could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of
 the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that
 unspeakable thing called his “flurry,” the monster horribly wallowed in
 his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so
 that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly
 to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the
 day.
 


 
 And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view;
 surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his
 spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush
 after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red
 wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping
 down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!
 


 
 “He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo.
 


 
 “Yes; both pipes smoked out!” and withdrawing his own from his mouth,
 Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood
 thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 62. The Dart.
 
 
 A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.
 


 
 According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes
 off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary
 steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar,
 the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to
 strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what is called a long
 dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of twenty or
 thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase, the
 harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed,
 he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not
 only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations;
 and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one’s compass, while all the
 other muscles are strained and half started—what that is none know
 but those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work
 very recklessly at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling
 state, then, with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted
 harpooneer hears the exciting cry—“Stand up, and give it to him!” He
 now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his centre half way,
 seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little strength may
 remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No wonder, taking
 the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for
 a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many hapless
 harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them
 actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm
 whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many
 ship owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer
 that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can
 you expect to find it there when most wanted!
 


 
 Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant,
 that is, when the whale starts to run, the 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 not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish
 and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last;
 he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever
 should be expected of him, except under circumstances obvious to any
 fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a slight loss of speed
 in the chase; but long experience in various whalemen of more than one
 nation has convinced me that in the vast majority of failures in the
 fishery, it has not by any means been so much the speed of the whale as
 the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has caused them.
 


 
 To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this
 world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of
 toil.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
 
 
 Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
 productive subjects, grow the chapters.
 


 
 The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It
 is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is
 perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the
 purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon,
 whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow. Thereby
 the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as
 readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It
 is customary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively
 called the first and second irons.
 


 
 But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with the
 line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one instantly
 after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming drag, one
 should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of
 the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the instantaneous,
 violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving the first iron, it
 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 line is running, hence
 that weapon must, at all events, be anticipatingly 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 thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror, skittishly
 curvetting about both boat 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 engaging 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 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 64. Stubb’s Supper.
 
 
 Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm;
 so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow 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
 laborers on the foot-path 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’s
 main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
 dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly 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’s decks, that all
 hands were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are
 being dragged along the deck, 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 stern, and by the tail to the bows, the
 whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel’s and seen through
 the darkness of the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the
 two—ship and whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks,
 whereof one reclines while the other remains standing.*
 


 
 *A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
 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 get 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.
 


 
 If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known on
 deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an unusual
 but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted 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 intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish
 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 it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general
 thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray
 the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing 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 extremity 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 the
 capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only
 banqueter on whale’s flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings with his
 own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, 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 a sea-fight, 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 live meat
 with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their
 jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the
 dead meat; and though, were you to turn 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 conceivable 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 whaleship 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.
 


 
 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, widening
 his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper;
 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 word 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. Blast me,
 if I can hear my own 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 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 sudden slap on
 the shoulder,—“Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn’t swear that way
 when you’re preaching. That’s no way to convert sinners, 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.
 


 
 “Do 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 wicked 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 goberned.
 Now, look here, bred’ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs
 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 de brigness of de mout is not
 to swaller wid, but to bit 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 willains will keep a scougin’ 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 bellies is
 bottomless; and when dey do get ’em full, dey wont 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 benediction,
 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 fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill
 your dam’ bellies ’till dey bust—and den die.”
 


 
 “Now, 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 morsel seemed a continuation 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 born in, cook!”
 


 
 “Didn’t I say de Roanoke country?” he cried sharply.
 


 
 “No, 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 noder one,” he growled, angrily, turning round
 to depart.
 


 
 “Come back, cook;—here, hand me those tongs;—now take
 that bit of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it
 should be? Take it, I say”—holding the tongs towards him—“take
 it, and taste it.”
 


 
 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 to bed berry soon,” he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
 


 
 “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 demeanor, “he hisself won’t go nowhere; but some bressed angel
 will come and fetch him.”
 


 
 “Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch
 him where?”
 


 
 “Up dere,” said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and
 keeping it there very solemnly.
 


 
 “So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when you
 are dead? But don’t you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets?
 Main-top, eh?”
 


 
 “Didn’t say dat t’all,” said Fleece, again in the sulks.
 


 
 “You said up there, didn’t you? and now look yourself, and see where your
 tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling
 through the lubber’s hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don’t get there,
 except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It’s a ticklish
 business, but must be done, or else it’s no go. But none of us are in
 heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear 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 bad, 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 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 ye 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 bow before you go.—Avast
 heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast—don’t forget.”
 


 
 “Wish, by gor! whale eat him, ’stead of him eat whale. I’m bressed if he
 ain’t more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself,” muttered the old man,
 limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 65. 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 VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a
 handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with
 barbacued 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-balls 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 Esquimaux 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 Greenland 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’
 dough-nuts 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 civilized 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 a method of absorbing 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
 flavor 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 somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a
 sort of reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu Brute!” expression.
 


 
 It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous
 that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that
 appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned:
 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 staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds.
 Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who
 is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that
 salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it
 will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of
 judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest
 geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy
 paté-de-foie-gras.
 


 
 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 civilized
 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 devouring 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 that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 66. 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. Therefore, 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 mount the deck to see that all goes
 well.
 


 
 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 carcase, 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 greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the
 Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights,
 to have looked over her side that night, 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 seaman came on
 deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately
 suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns,
 so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two
 mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant
 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 bit their own; till those entrails
 seemed swallowed over and over 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 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
 Queequeg’s hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his
 murderous jaw.
 


 
 *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.
 


 
 “Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage, agonizingly
 lifting his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de
 god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 67. 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 ponderous
 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 to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest
 point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end of 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, semicircular 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 mast-heads 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 semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the
 blubber envelopes 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
 spiralizing 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
 act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till
 its upper end grazes the main-top; 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 let down 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
 called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously 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 prepare 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 slicings, 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 slowly slackened
 away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway right
 beneath, into an unfurnished parlor 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 windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the
 blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining,
 and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general
 friction.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
 
 
 I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of
 the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen
 afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains
 unchanged; but 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, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from
 eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
 


 
 Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature’s
 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 be 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 resembling 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, but
 becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which I
 use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and
 being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with
 fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. 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 be 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 a
 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 bulk of 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 re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array,
 something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these
 marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above
 mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved 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
 connexion. 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 stript from him in long
 pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this 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 slipt 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 shuddering, 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 afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into
 the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found 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
 individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare
 virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after
 the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do 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 erections,
 how few are domed like St. Peter’s! of creatures, how few vast as the
 whale!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 69. 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
 floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the
 insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of
 screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the
 whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the
 ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem 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 vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest
 whale is free.
 


 
 Nor 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 obscuring 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! There’s orthodoxy!
 


 
 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 powerless panic to a 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 70. The Sphynx.
 
 
 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 between him and his
 subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discoloured, rolling, and
 oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under
 these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh;
 and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single
 peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully 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 embraces 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 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 element. And
 there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the
 enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on
 that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that
 blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod’s waist like the giant Holofernes’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 decapitation—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, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast
 and venerable head,” 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 which 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 familiar 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 murderers still sailed on unharmed—while
 swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a
 righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen
 enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
 syllable is thine!”
 


 
 “Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
 


 
 “Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself,
 while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That lively cry
 upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man.—Where
 away?”
 


 
 “Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to
 us!
 


 
 “Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along 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, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.
 
 
 Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster 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 be
 made.
 


 
 Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of
 the American Whale Fleet have each 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’s signal was at last responded to by the stranger’s setting her
 own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her
 yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee, and lowered a
 boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being rigged by
 Starbuck’s order to accommodate the visiting 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’s 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 this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an
 interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam’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 main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by 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.
 Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a
 conversation was sustained between the two parties; but at intervals not
 without still another interruption of a very different sort.
 


 
 Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam’s boat, was a man of a singular appearance,
 even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities make up all
 totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his
 face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow 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 Neskyeuna
 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 containing 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 assumed a steady, common-sense exterior, and
 offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam’s whaling
 voyage. They engaged 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 deliverer 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 the 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 to 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
 therefore 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 at his sole
 command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure. The
 sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, 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 is 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 occasional
 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 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.
 


 
 It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a
 whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby
 Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking 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 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 mast-heads, 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 exclamations 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, fanning 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 oarsman’s head; but the
 mate for ever sank.
 


 
 It is well to parenthesize 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 one of many marks in the
 wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to the ship.
 


 
 Mayhew having concluded his 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 aside; 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 or 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.
 


 
 “Can’st 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.”
 


 
 “Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going that
 way.”
 


 
 “Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by 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 back into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s feet. Then Gabriel
 shrieked out to 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 seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of
 the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
 affair.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 72. 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. Now 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 the same with him who endeavors 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 inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty
 it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back 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, be 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 tread-mill beneath him. 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 uncommon advantage; and no one
 had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.
 


 
 Being the savage’s bowsman, 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 holding 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 technically 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 honor
 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 perceive that
 my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that
 my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or
 misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death.
 Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for
 its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet
 still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between
 the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further
 pondering, 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 this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If
 your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you
 poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding
 caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil
 chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully 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.*
 


 
 *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 improvement
 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 of his monkey-rope holder.
 


 
 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 and more keenly allured by the before pent
 blood which began to flow from the carcass—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 pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them.
 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 another
 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 disinterested 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-muddled water, those
 indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a
 tail. But poor Queequeg, 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 precious 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, your 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 blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs up
 the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling 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 fire in this shivering
 cannibal? Ginger!—what the devil is ginger? Sea-coal? firewood?—lucifer
 matches?—tinder?—gunpowder?—what the devil is ginger, I
 say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg 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 bitters by which he blows back the life
 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 harpooneer;
 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 board; and bade me never give the harpooneers 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, but—”
 


 
 “Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of
 that sort; and this fellow’s a weazel. 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 73. 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 a while 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 gradually drifted
 into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit, gave unusual
 tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan that
 but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking anywhere near. And
 though all hands commonly disdained the capture of those inferior
 creatures; and though the Pequod was not commissioned 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 surprise 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 further and
 further away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at the
 mast-head. 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 interval passed and the boats were in
 plain sight, in the act of 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 they
 stuck to it till they did gain it; when instantly, a swift tremor was felt
 running like lightning along the keel, as the strained line, scraping
 beneath 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 stern of
 the ship towing the two boats after him, so that they performed a complete
 circuit.
 


 
 Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close 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 the smitten
 rock.
 


 
 At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
 turned upon his back 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 never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never afterwards
 capsize?”
 


 
 “Why not?
 


 
 “I don’t know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so, and
 he seems to know all about ships’ 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 board 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. Blast him! now that I think of it, he’s
 always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots.”
 


 
 “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.”
 


 
 “No 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 swap 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 swap 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 flag-ship
 once, switching his tail about devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and
 inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and asked
 the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching 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?”
 


 
 “No: 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 Pequod?”
 


 
 “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
 a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a latch-key to get
 into the admiral’s cabin, don’t you suppose he can crawl into a porthole?
 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 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 sea-toss, if you got a good chance. 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; so you suppose I’m afraid of the devil? Who’s afraid of him, except
 the old governor who daresn’t catch him and put him in double-darbies, as
 he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping 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 look-out 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, he’ll sneak off without the poor
 satisfaction of feeling his tail between 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 here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where
 fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing him.
 


 
 “Didn’t I tell you so?” said Flask; “yes, you’ll soon 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 thunder-heads 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 carcases 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 toiled on, Laplandish speculations were
 bandied among them, concerning all these passing things.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
 
 
 Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us join
 them, and lay together our own.
 


 
 Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and 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 external 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 stepping across the deck:—where, I should like to
 know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than
 here?
 


 
 In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between 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 behold
 it, you involuntarily yield the immense 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 advanced 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. Far 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 last 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 is plain
 that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he
 can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the 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 command 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 position of the
 whale’s eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid
 head, which towers between them like a great mountain 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 another 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
 subsequent scenes.
 


 
 A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this
 visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content 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 mechanically seeing whatever
 objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one’s experience will teach him,
 that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one
 glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to
 examine any two things—however large or however small—at one
 and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side and
 touch each other. But if you now 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 excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it,
 then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must
 simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive,
 combining, and subtle than man’s, that he can at the same moment of time
 attentively 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 indirectly proceeds from the
 helpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically
 opposite powers of vision must involve 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 right. While the ear of the former 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
 Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of
 cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of
 hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to “enlarge” your mind?
 Subtilize it.
 


 
 Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant
 over the sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending 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 overhead, 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, floating 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 jib-boom. 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
 extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white
 whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles,
 including 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, Queequeg
 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 oxen drag
 stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two
 teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled
 after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and
 piled away like joists for building houses.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’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 be compared 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 different
 aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and
 look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, 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,
 barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the “crown,” and the Southern
 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 interest 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! what a huge sulk and pout is
 there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter’s measurement, 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 earthquakes 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 ridge-pole 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 openmouthed 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 ridges, whereby some
 whalemen calculate the creature’s age, as the age of an oak by its
 circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from
 demonstrable, yet it has the savor 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 seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
 concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous
 “whiskers” inside of the whale’s mouth;* another, “hogs’ bristles”; a
 third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:
 “There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his
 upper chop , which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.”
 


 
 *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 these tufts impart a
 rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance.
 


 
 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 about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as you may say;
 even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, 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 Right Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing 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 thousand
 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 Right Whale have almost entirely different heads.
 To sum up, then: in the Right Whale’s there is no great well of sperm; no
 ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the
 Sperm Whale’s. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of
 bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the
 Right Whale has two external 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 the 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. Does not this whole head
 seem to speak of an enormous practical 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 76. 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 investigate
 it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated,
 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 boom-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 observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides
 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 Whale’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, though, as will soon
 be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you
 are now to be apprised 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 crow-bars. 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 it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed
 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 connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to
 atmospheric distension 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, uninjurable wall,
 and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of
 tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—by
 the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So
 that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and
 concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster;
 when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I
 trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to
 abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the
 Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not
 elevate one hair of your eye-brow. 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 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
 
 
 Now 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,* 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.
 


 
 *Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical
 mathematics. 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 lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of
 oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, 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 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 Heidelburgh 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 Heidelburgh 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 be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless,
 untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly 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 combinations, on one side, make
 quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter.
 


 
 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 78. Cistern and Buckets.
 
 
 Nimble 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 yard-arm, 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
 entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up
 comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid’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 remounting
 aloft, it again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will
 yield no more. Towards the end, 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 baling 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 moment his one-handed hold
 on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the place
 where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One
 himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular
 reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as
 the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up—my God! poor
 Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating 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 clearing the
 whip—which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles—a
 sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror 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 likely from the violent motions of the
 head.
 


 
 “Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand
 holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he would
 still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed
 down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning 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; jamming 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 whirlpool; the suddenly
 relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and
 all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the sailors’
 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 bottom of the sea!
 But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with
 a boarding-sword in his 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 further 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 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
 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 Queequeg,
 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.
 Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing,
 riding and rowing.
 


 
 I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure to seem
 incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may 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, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We 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. Not 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 little but the dense tendinous
 wall of the well—a double welded, hammered 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 undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and
 deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his
 agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running
 delivery, so it was.
 


 
 Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
 perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of 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 exceeding 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 79. 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 hopeful as for
 Lavater to have scrutinized 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. Nor 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 endeavor. 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 modifies 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 gardening, 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 nose. Dash the nose from Phidias’s marble Jove,
 and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a
 magnitude, all his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency
 which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all.
 Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been
 impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head
 in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by
 the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which
 so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest
 royal beadle on his throne.
 


 
 In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to be
 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 bull has a
 touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the
 elephant’s brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as that
 great golden seal affixed by the German emperors 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 Melancthon’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,
 ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad
 firmament of a forehead, pleated 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 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 in his pyramidical
 silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to
 the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian
 thoughts. They deified the crocodile 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 birth-right, 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. Read it if you can.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
 
 
 If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist 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 of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base.
 But in life—as we have elsewhere seen—this inclined plane is
 angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous 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 convolutions,
 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 his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear 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 (scaled 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 if from the comparative dimensions of the whale’s proper brain, you
 deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea
 for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped’s spine, you will
 be struck with the resemblance of its vertebræ to a strung necklace of
 dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It
 is a German conceit, that the vertebræ are absolutely undeveloped skulls.
 But the curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the
 first men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the
 skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebræ 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 spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being eight
 in height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. As it
 passes through the remaining vertebræ 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 reference to the Sperm
 Whale’s hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the
 larger vertebræ, 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 Sperm Whale. And that the
 great monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to know.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
 
 
 The predestinated 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, impatiently standing in the
 bows instead of the stern.
 


 
 “What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, pointing to something
 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-begging.”
 


 
 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 all heeding
 what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced
 his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning the
 conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some remarks touching
 his having to turn into his hammock at night in profound darkness—his
 last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a single flying-fish yet
 captured to supply the deficiency; concluding 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
 mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that
 without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed round
 his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
 


 
 Now, 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 continually unrolling a great wide parchment
 upon the sea.
 


 
 Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge, humped
 old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as 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. Nevertheless, 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 foul wind I ever
 knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before? it must
 be, he’s lost his tiller.”
 


 
 As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with 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 devious wake in the
 unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost that fin in
 battle, or had been born without it, it were 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 dropping an anchor overboard—we don’t
 budge an inch—we’re becalmed. Halloo, 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 Yarman! The short and long of it is, men, will ye
 spit fire or not?”
 


 
 “Oh! see the suds he makes!” cried Flask, dancing up and down—“What
 a hump—Oh, do pile on the beef—lays like a log! Oh! my lads,
 do spring—slap-jacks and quahogs 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 oil-can; perhaps with the double view of
 retarding his rivals’ 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-battle-ship 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 honor of old Gayhead? What d’ye say?”
 


 
 “I say, pull like god-dam,”—cried the Indian.
 


 
 Fiercely, 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, they took a mortal
 start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German’s quarter. An
 instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale’s
 immediate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming
 swell that he made.
 


 
 It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now
 going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented
 jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to
 this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at
 every billow that he broke, he spasmodically 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 choking 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 that but a very few moments more would give the 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 vapors of foam and
 white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale’s headlong
 rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force, that both Derick and his
 baffled harpooneer were 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—I
 saw some sharks astern—St. Bernard’s dogs, you know—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 in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury
 on a plain—makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him
 that way; and there’s danger of being pitched 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 inclined 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 sounding 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 lead-lined 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 sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is
 that often torments the Leviathan 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—in a
 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 weight of
 twenty line-of-battle ships, 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 and wrenching in agony! Not eight
 inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. 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
 board. 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 shaking of a spear!” This
 the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the prophets.
 For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had 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 appalling 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 suddenly
 vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by
 magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every
 oarsman 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 hand’s breadth
 could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back 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 flood-gates 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 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 this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying flukes, and
 the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from
 the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural
 spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its
 affrighted 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 untouched.
 


 
 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 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 transferred 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 monstrous 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
 to the body’s immensely increasing tendency to sink. However, Starbuck,
 who had the ordering of affairs, 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 of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from
 their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows
 were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift
 from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the
 submerged ends could not be at 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 something or go for
 it. No 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 fluke-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.
 


 
 Now, 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 surface. 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 noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the
 warm flush and May of 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 other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty
 Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in
 no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right 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 again
 rises, 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 Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a
 Right 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 body that a cry was heard from
 the Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering
 her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-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, that by unskilful fishermen it is often 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
 
 
 There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true
 method.
 


 
 The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to
 the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great
 honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great
 demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have
 shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I
 myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.
 


 
 The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the
 eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by
 our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the
 knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the
 distressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine
 story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, 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 exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers
 of the present day; inasmuch 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
 Perseus 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, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
 


 
 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 the sea,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly
 meaning 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 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 modern 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 incompatible with
 the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts 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 Philistines, 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 honorable company (none of whom, I
 venture to say, have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron),
 let them never eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen
 frocks and tarred trowsers 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 Hercules
 and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more ancient
 Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versâ; certainly they are
 very similar. If I claim the demi-god 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 Vishnoo, one of
 the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine
 Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten
 earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale.
 When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate
 the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to
 Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose
 perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning
 the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the
 shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at
 the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and
 sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes.
 Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is
 called a horseman?
 


 
 Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there’s a member-roll
 for you! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like that?
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 83. 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 traditions did not make those
 traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.
 


 
 One old Sag-Harbor 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 Jebb’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-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his want
 of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in
 reference to his incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric juices. But
 this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist
 supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating 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 straightway 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 craft are nowadays
 christened the “Shark,” the “Gull,” the “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-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still another
 reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right: Jonah was
 swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he
 was vomited up somewhere within three days’ journey of Nineveh, a city on
 the Tigris, very much more than three days’ journey 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 shallow for any whale to swim
 in. Besides, this idea of Jonah’s weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so
 early a day would wrest the honor 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-Harbor only evinced his foolish
 pride of reason—a thing still more reprehensible in him, 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. For 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 magnification 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 honor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous
 lamp that burnt without any oil.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 84. 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 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; crawling 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 fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the
 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 furious.
 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 manœuvre 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 accurately
 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 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 coolness 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; wrapt 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 till the
 weapon stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He
 minds you somewhat of a juggler, 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!” cried Stubb. “’Tis July’s immortal
 Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old Orleans
 whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad,
 I’d have ye hold a canakin 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 repeated, the
 spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash. The
 agonized 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 85. The Fountain.
 
 
 That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of
 ages before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the
 sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
 many sprinkling or mistifying 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 P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it
 should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all,
 really water, or nothing but vapor—this is surely a noteworthy
 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 its 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 degree 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
 connexion 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 indispensable
 to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element,
 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 then 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
 systematically lives, by intervals, his full 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 his spine he is supplied with a remarkable
 involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when
 he quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood. So
 that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a
 surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the waterless
 desert carries 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
 inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings out , as
 the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon 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. Now, 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 individuals these rates are different; but in any one
 they are alike. Now, 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 rising 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. Not 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 serving
 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 Sunday 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 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 power of smelling. But
 owing to the mystery of the spout—whether it be water or whether it
 be vapor—no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this
 head. Sure it is, nevertheless, 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 downward
 retention of air or the upward exclusion of water, therefore 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, horizontally, 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 is the
 mere vapor 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 cannot 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 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 central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping
 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 times 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 vapor; or how do you know that they are not those
 identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is
 countersunk 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 be over curious touching the
 precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be peering
 into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to
 this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into
 slight contact with the outer, vapory 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 spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the
 investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout
 alone.
 


 
 Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
 hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides other
 reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations 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 ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil,
 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
 undulation 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 additional 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 vapor, engendered by his incommunicable
 contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes 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 vapor.
 And so, through all the thick mists 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
 
 
 Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, 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
 its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The
 compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat 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 considerably exceed twenty feet across.
 


 
 The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; 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 running 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.
 


 
 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 imposingly 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 its
 charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the
 naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed 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 practical 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 be
 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. Scroll-wise coiled
 forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this
 which 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. In striking at a
 boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is only
 inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed 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 buoyancy 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
 received in the fishery, that they are accounted mere child’s play. Some
 one 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 elephant’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 side to side upon the surface 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 this tail any
 prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me 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 almost think a great
 gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapor
 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 completely 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 —somewhere else to be
 described—this peaking of the whale’s flukes is perhaps 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 from 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 archangels.
 Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky
 and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east, all heading
 towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert 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 all
 beings. For according to King Juba, the 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 mightiest 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 much as an Indian
 juggler tosses his balls.*
 


 
 *Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale 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 is the spout. It is well known that the elephant
 will often draw up water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it, jet
 it forth in a stream.
 


 
 The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability
 to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though 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 Free-Mason 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 but go skin deep; I know him
 not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how
 understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has
 none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face
 shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and
 hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
 
 
 The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from
 the territories of Birmah, 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, form 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 standing
 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 empire: 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,
 it seems a significant provision of nature, that such treasures, by the
 very formation of the land, should at least 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 entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and
 the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the
 obsequious homage of lowered top-sails 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 a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these 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 whaling 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
 presumed 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. Nay. 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. She has a whole lake’s
 contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not
 altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. 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 off the western coast of Java,
 in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of the
 ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an
 excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more
 upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admonished to
 keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of the land soon 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 companies, as in
 former times, are now frequently met with in extensive herds, sometimes
 embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost 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 sail for weeks and months together, without
 being greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly saluted by what
 sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
 


 
 Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and
 forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a
 continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the
 noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right
 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 vapory 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, descried of a balmy
 autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
 


 
 As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,
 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 semicircle, and
 swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.
 


 
 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 deploy into 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 stun-sail piled on
 stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathans 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.
 It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling something
 like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come and
 go; for they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing. 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!”
 


 
 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,
 to make 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 bethought 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 him 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 at
 last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging
 at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers 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
 several hours’ pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase, when a
 general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating token that they
 were now at last under the influence of that strange perplexity of inert
 irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say
 he is gallied. The compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto
 rapidly and steadily swimming, 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
 irregular 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 buffaloes 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 remorselessly 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 motion, yet
 it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced 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 no wise unprecedented; 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 striving 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 sheering off from
 this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away from
 that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, 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
 dromedary 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 cooling himself
 with his own fan-like extremity.
 


 
 All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented 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 being looped, it can
 in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly among gallied whales
 that this drugg is used. For then, more whales 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. The first and second were 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 not
 that as we advanced into the herd, our whale’s way greatly diminished;
 moreover, that as we went still further and further 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 circles, and saw
 successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and
 round, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder
 to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have over-arched the
 middle ones, and so have gone round on their backs. Owing to the density
 of the crowd of reposing whales, more immediately surrounding 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.
 


 
 Now, 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 purposely 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 confidence, or else a still becharmed panic
 which it was impossible not to marvel at. Like household dogs they came
 snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till it
 almost seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated them. Queequeg
 patted their foreheads; 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, suspended in
 those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers 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 at us, as if
 we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their
 sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little
 infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might
 have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He
 was a little frisky; though as yet 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 arrived 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 the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds 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 young Leviathan amours in
 the deep.*
 


 
 *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 precious parts
 in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the mother’s pouring
 milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk is very
 sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with
 strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute more
 hominum .
 


 
 And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and
 affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and
 fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely 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 mildness 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 powerful 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 whale wounded (as we
 afterwards learned) in this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had
 broken away from the boat, carrying 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 agonizing 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 in the coils of the harpoon-line round his
 tail, the cutting-spade itself 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 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 vanished; 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 stern.
 


 
 “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 endeavor
 we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving 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 sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes close by.
 


 
 Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon
 resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having 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 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,—the more whales the less fish. Of all the
 drugged whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for the
 time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft
 than the Pequod.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 88. 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 inducing 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 average-sized male. They are
 comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen
 yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the
 whole they are hereditarily entitled to en bon 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 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 cheating 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 lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
 interesting 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 warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured
 having the deep scars of these encounters,—furrowed heads, broken
 teeth, scolloped 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 tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious
 Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines. Granting other
 whales to be in sight, the fishermen 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 babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In
 good time, nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and
 dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn 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 impotent,
 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 amorous 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 schoolmaster. 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 bestowed upon the harem itself,
 but some have surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of
 Ottoman whale, must have read the 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 herself; 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, previously
 mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while those
 female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or
 forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of
 all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;
 excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and
 these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.
 


 
 The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a
 mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness,
 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 characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a Forty-barrel-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 themselves to fall a prey.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 89. 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
 fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.
 


 
 It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company, a
 whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed and
 captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised 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, undisputed law applicable to all
 cases.
 


 
 Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative enactment,
 was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General 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 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 engraven 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 expound
 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 waifing it
 plainly evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as
 their intention so to do.
 


 
 These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen
 themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks—the
 Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and
 honorable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases, where
 it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
 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; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had
 succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of
 their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat
 itself. 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. And when those defendants were remonstrated
 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 attached to the
 whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for
 the recovery of the value of their whale, line, harpoons, 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. Erskine was on the other side; and he then supported it by saying,
 that though the gentleman had originally harpooned the lady, and had 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
 re-harpooned her, the lady then became that subsequent gentleman’s
 property, along with whatever harpoon might have been found sticking in
 her.
 


 
 Now 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; but that with regard to the controverted whale, harpoons, 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 made 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. Now the defendants 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 in 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 jurisprudence; 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.
 


 
 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 serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession 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 but a Fast-Fish? What is the
 ruinous discount which Mordecai, 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 seized from the scant bread and cheese of
 hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven
 without any of Savesoul’s help) 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
 internationally and universally applicable.
 


 
 What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the
 Spanish standard by way of waifing 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?
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
 
 
 “De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.” Bracton,
 l. 3, 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 King, 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. Now 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.
 Now 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 emoluments 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.
 


 
 Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their
 trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their fat
 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 ale
 with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up steps
 a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, 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 seize 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 bold 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 expense, 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 bed-ridden 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 particular
 lights, the case might by a bare 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. Is this the still militant
 old man, standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands
 coercing alms of beggars?
 


 
 It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to
 the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire
 then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that
 right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives us the
 reason for it. Says Plowdon, 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.
 


 
 But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason
 for that, ye lawyers!
 


 
 In his treatise 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 be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this was
 written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right
 whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this same bone 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 revenue. I
 know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by inference
 it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
 
 
 “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, vapory, mid-day 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.
 


 
 “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 vapors 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 French colours from
 his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and
 hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside
 must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that has
 died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It
 may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a mass must exhale;
 worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are incompetent
 to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that
 no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are there
 those who will still do 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 Frenchman
 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 almost 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 cutting 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 these Crappoes of
 Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering 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 leavings,
 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 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
 taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was 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 head boards, in large gilt
 letters, he read “Bouton de Rose,”—Rose-button, or Rose-bud; and
 this was the romantic name of this aromatic 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 rose-bud, eh?” he cried with his hand 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.
 


 
 “Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, 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 back 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!” Upon 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 bag.
 


 
 “What’s the matter with your nose, there?” said Stubb. “Broke it?”
 


 
 “I wish it was broken, or that I didn’t have any nose at 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-Rose?”
 


 
 “What in the devil’s name do you want here?” roared the Guernseyman,
 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, Rose-bud, that it’s all nonsense trying to get any 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; but, 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, were getting the
 heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow and
 talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor. All their noses
 upwardly projected from their faces like so many jib-booms. Now and then
 pairs of them would drop their work, and run up to the mast-head 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 door, which was held ajar from within. This
 was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating 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 unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him
 carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the
 slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace
 on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him, so
 that the two quickly concocted a little plan for both circumventing and
 satirizing the Captain, without his at all dreaming 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 ostentatiously 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, “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 says, Monsieur,” said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his
 captain, “that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain and
 chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a
 blasted whale they had brought alongside.”
 


 
 Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.
 


 
 “What 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 baboon.”
 


 
 “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 returned 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 service to
 us.”
 


 
 Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties
 (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 interpreter.
 


 
 “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 says, Monsieur, that his principles won’t admit of his drinking; 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
 it’s so calm they won’t drift.”
 


 
 By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed
 the Guernsey-man to this effect,—that having a long tow-line 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 Frenchman’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
 tow-line.
 


 
 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 Roman 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 beginning 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 handfuls of
 something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old cheese;
 very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with your thumb;
 it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
 
 
 Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an
 article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin
 was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject.
 For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise
 origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem 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, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces 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 pastiles, precious candles,
 hair-powders, 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 flavor it.
 


 
 Who would 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
 laborers do in blasting rocks.
 


 
 I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain
 hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors’
 trowsers 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 incorruption; how that we
 are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And 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-savor,
 Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.
 


 
 I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot,
 owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and
 which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered
 as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman’s two
 whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion 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
 Greenland 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 in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and
 the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any
 other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and
 unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is
 given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city
 grave-yard, for the foundations 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 Smeerenberg, which
 latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von 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 be 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 savor. 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, 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 but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means
 creatures of ill odor; 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 dispenses a perfume,
 as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then
 shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude?
 Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent
 with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander
 the Great?
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
 
 
 It was but 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; and which ended in providing the sometimes 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 ship-keepers, whose province it is to work
 the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing,
 these ship-keepers 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
 so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-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 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 festivities with finer,
 freer relish than any other race. For blacks, the year’s calendar should
 show naught but 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 become 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
 even-tide, 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 unnatural gases. Then come out
 those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; 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 nervousness; but
 happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and
 therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing
 him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness 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 happened,
 in this instance, to be right under poor Pip’s seat. The involuntary
 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 its 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 irregular
 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 suddenly 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 benevolence.
 


 
 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, bounteous, 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. No 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 castaway, though the loftiest and the
 brightest.
 


 
 Now, 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? No; 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
 quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards
 oarsmen jeopardized 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 side, turned, and gave chase; and 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 miserably. 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, 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 multitudinous, 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, indifferent
 as his God.
 


 
 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 94. 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 previously
 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 employed 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 crystallized 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 sweetener! such a softener!
 such a delicious molifier! 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.
 


 
 As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
 exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
 indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among
 those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within
 the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their
 opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that
 uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the smell of spring
 violets; I declare 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 whatsoever.
 


 
 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 unwittingly squeezing my
 co-laborers’ 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 their hands, and
 looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my
 dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or
 know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all
 round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze
 ourselves 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 fireside, 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 spermaceti.
 


 
 Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things 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 tapering
 part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is
 tough with congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—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, supposing
 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 affair, most frequently found in the tubs 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 right whalemen, but
 sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the
 dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland
 or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls
 who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
 


 
 Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale’s vocabulary.
 But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman’s nipper is a short
 firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part 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 blandishments, 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 stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper
 time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment 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-gaffman 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 boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet
 of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and
 lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself,
 perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is
 sharp as hone can make it; the spademan’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 95. The Cassock.
 
 
 Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
 post-mortemizing 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. Not the wondrous
 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
 than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and
 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 worshipping 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 15th
 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 it. The mincer now stands
 before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to
 all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while
 employed in the peculiar functions of his office.
 


 
 That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots;
 an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted endwise
 against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the
 minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator’s desk. Arrayed
 in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves;
 what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were this
 mincer!*
 


 
 *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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
 
 
 Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished
 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 secured 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 hatchway. 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
 punch-bowls. During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl
 into them and coil themselves 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 Pequod, 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 fire-board 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 inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel
 inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water as
 fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct
 from the rear wall. And here let us 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 odor about it, such as may lurk
 in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day
 of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.
 


 
 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 pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold
 Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets
 of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and folded them
 in conflagrations.
 


 
 The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide 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, curling, out of the doors
 to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled 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 further 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 uncivilized laughter
 forked upwards 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 bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all
 sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, 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 interval,
 in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the
 ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me,
 capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred
 visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable
 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 jaw-bone 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 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 illuminating it. Nothing
 seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of
 redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing
 I stood on was not so much bound 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, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is
 the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself
 about, and was fronting the ship’s stern, with my back 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; accept 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
 morn 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 undeveloped. 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-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and
 therefore jolly;—not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones,
 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 congregation
 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 is woe; but
 there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill 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 97. The Lamp.
 
 
 Had you descended from the Pequod’s try-works to the Pequod’s forecastle,
 where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment you would
 have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of
 canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular oaken
 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 contrivances ashore. It
 is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so
 as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on
 the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
 
 
 Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off descried
 from the mast-head; 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, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti,
 oil, and bone pass unscathed through the fire;—but now it remains to
 conclude 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; but, 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 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 besooted all the bulwarks; the
 mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great
 leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening.
 


 
 But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this
 self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works, you
 would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most
 scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a
 singularly 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 back 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, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out
 the daintiest Holland.
 


 
 Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and
 humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;
 propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not to
 taking 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 mast heads, stand three men intent 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 uninterrupted labors,
 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 themselves 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. For 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 99. The Doubloon.
 
 
 Ere 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 before the mainmast, then, as the same
 riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore
 the same aspect of nailed firmness, 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 preserved its Quito
 glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed by
 ruthless hands, and through the livelong 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 disks and
 stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in
 luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to
 derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, 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 its round border it bore the letters, 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 up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows
 no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes’
 summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing
 cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the
 signs 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.”
 


 
 “No 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 inspectingly. 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
 Righteousness 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.”
 


 
 “There now’s the old Mogul,” soliloquized 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 voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain, your
 doubloons of Peru, your doubloons 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 Equator that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda! let me
 read it once. Halloa! here’s signs and wonders truly! That, now, is what
 old Bowditch 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
 book. Let’s see now. Signs and wonders; and the sun, he’s always among
 ’em. Hem, hem, hem; here they are—here they go—all alive:—Aries,
 or the Ram; 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 is, you books must know your places. You’ll
 do to give us the bare words and facts, but 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 is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant
 in wonders! 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, Almanack! To begin: there’s Aries, or the Ram—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—he gives a few
 fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, 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 the rear; we are curing the
 wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer,
 is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the
 battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and
 headlong we are tossed; when 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 horse-shoe 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 old witch in
 Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign;
 for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what’s the horse-shoe sign?
 The lion is the horse-shoe sign—the roaring and devouring lion.
 Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee.”
 


 
 “There’s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in
 one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—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 vicinity 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 trowsers. 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 horrible to me. He too has been watching all of these interpreters—myself
 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 crow,
 especially when I stand a’top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw!
 caw! caw! Ain’t I a crow? And where’s the scare-crow? There he stands; two
 bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the
 sleeves of an old jacket.”
 


 
 “Wonder if he means me?—complimentary!—poor lad!—I could
 go 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 in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and find
 a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh, the
 gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green miser’ll hoard ye soon!
 Hish! hish! God goes ’mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and
 cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your
 hoe-cake done!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 100. 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 this 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!”
 


 
 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 excitement 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 high up towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it
 half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship
 of course being altogether unsupplied 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
 circumstance 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
 officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the perpendicular
 ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair of
 tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink
 them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea
 bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange
 captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, “I see, I
 see!—avast 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 comprehending 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 running 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 his ivory leg,
 and crossing the ivory arm (like 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 did’st 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 that 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
 crows’ feet and wrinkles.”
 


 
 “It was he, it was he!” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended
 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-humoredly. “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—I know him.”
 


 
 “How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do not know;
 but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
 but we didn’t know it then; so that when we afterwards 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 hap-hazard line would get loose, or the
 tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I 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 saying, 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 flailings, 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 like a flash; and the barb of that cursed
 second iron towing 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 ript 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 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
 trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a
 marlingspike 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 his 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 observing,
 sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite of my best
 and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth
 was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon 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 threatened, 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 marlingspike—“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 tell you how that came here; he knows.”
 


 
 “No, 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 Englishmen.
 


 
 “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.”
 


 
 “Did’st 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 to get
 the right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically
 bowing to each Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that
 the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed 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 feints. But sometimes he is like
 the old juggling fellow, formerly 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 ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome 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 heading?”
 


 
 “Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly
 walking round 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 put.
 “What’s the matter? He was heading 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 101. The Decanter.
 
 
 Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she
 hailed from 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 fish-documents 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 Coffins 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
 civilized 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 and American, and thus the vast
 Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But not content with
 this good deed, the indefatigable 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 induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling
 voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain,
 the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service; how much
 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 tasting cruise to the remote
 waters of Japan. That ship—well called the “Syren”—made a
 noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great Japanese Whaling
 Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was
 commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer.
 


 
 All honor to the Enderbies, 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 honor, being a very fast
 sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight
 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 bowlines; 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. However, 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 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 it was 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 swallowed. 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 the forecastle was not very light, and 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 though—were such famous, hospitable
 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 laughing? 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 extant in
 the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching 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 Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an
 ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must
 be about whalers. The title was, “Dan Coopman,” wherefore I concluded that
 this must be the invaluable memoirs 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. Snodhead, 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
 Merchant.” 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 whalemen; from
 which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:
 


 
 400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock
 fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of
 butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & 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
 incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic
 application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own,
 touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low
 Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery.
 In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and 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. Now, 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
 precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks’ allowance,
 exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. Now, 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 somewhat improbable. Yet they
 did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very far North, 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 mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might
 ensue to Nantucket and New 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
 
 
 Hitherto, in descriptively 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 behooves me now to unbutton him still
 further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and
 casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones,
 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 oarsman in the fishery,
 pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? Did
 erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures 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, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings,
 making up the frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats,
 dairy-rooms, 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. For
 being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of
 Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the
 lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side 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, chiselled 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 latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
 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 bones 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 vertebræ 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 its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific
 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 it,
 whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and 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 were active. Through the lacings of the 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!
 Nay—the shuttle flies—the figures float from forth the loom;
 the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he
 weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, 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; himself 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 ye
 make him, then?” But hereupon a fierce contest 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.
 


 
 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 tell me, in
 Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have
 some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I have heard
 that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the
 proprietors call “the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale
 in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, 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 belonged,
 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, in all his bony cavities—spread out his ribs like
 a gigantic fan—and swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be
 put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show
 round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford
 thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the
 spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his
 cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.
 


 
 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 preserving
 such 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 remain—I did
 not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all
 enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.
 
 
 In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain
 statement, 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 Scoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized
 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 feet in length, and something less than forty feet
 in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety
 tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably
 outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one
 hundred inhabitants.
 


 
 Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this
 leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman’s imagination?
 


 
 Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-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
 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 otherwise, 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 successively
 longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the 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 footpath
 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 his 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. Now, the greatest 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. No. Only in the
 heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings 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. No speedy enterprise. But now it’s done,
 it looks much like Pompey’s Pillar.
 


 
 There are forty and odd vertebræ in all, which in the skeleton are not
 locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks 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, but they had been lost by some
 little cannibal urchins, the priest’s children, 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
 
 
 From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme 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 measures 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 orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.
 


 
 Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves 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 archæological, 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 lexicographer’s
 uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon 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 placard 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, not excluding its suburbs. 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. No 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 the 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 intercepted
 links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose remote
 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 precisely 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 England, in
 Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among
 the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, 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 belonged 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 departed 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 rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his
 paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in
 substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of
 the globe have blotted out of existence.
 


 
 When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws,
 ribs, and vertebræ, all characterized 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 antichronical Leviathans, 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 began with
 man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering
 glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions 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 Himmalehs. Who
 can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood
 than the Pharaoh’s. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake
 hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced
 existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been
 before all time, must needs exist after all humane 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 tablets, 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 antiquity 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 Rafters and Beams of
 which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous 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 Rocks that shoot two Miles into the Sea, and
 wound the Whales when they light upon ’em. They keep a Whale’s Rib 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 Rib (says John Leo) 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s 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 a distinct geological period prior to
 man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those belonging to
 its latter formations 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 authority, 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 be, 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 bulk, 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, Cooke’s
 naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy of Sciences setting
 down certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one
 hundred and twenty yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And
 Lacépède, 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? No. The whale of 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 so. Because I
 cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian 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 his socks; and while the
 cattle and other animals 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 look-outs
 at the mast-heads 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 inglorious an
 end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales 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
 horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but 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 consequence, 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 remain
 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 a charmed 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 battalions. But
 though for some time past a number of these whales, not 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 is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness 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 4,000 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 outlast all hunting, since he has a pasture
 to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both
 Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea
 combined.
 


 
 Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity 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 grave-yards, 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 countless 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 106. 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 lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that
 his ivory leg had received a half-splintering 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 inflexibly enough); then, the already
 shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench, that though it
 still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem
 it entirely trustworthy.
 


 
 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. For it had not
 been very long prior to the Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he had
 been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some
 unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb
 having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and
 all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the
 agonizing wound was entirely cured.
 


 
 Nor, 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. For, not to hint of this: that it is an
 inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural
 enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world,
 but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all
 hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely
 beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the
 grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality 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 heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some
 men, an archangelic 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, hay-making 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 birth-mark in
 the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
 


 
 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’s 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.
 


 
 And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without delay
 set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him 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 107. The Carpenter.
 
 
 Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
 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 furnishing an example of the
 high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate; hence,
 he now comes in person on this stage.
 


 
 Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging to
 whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent, 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 uncivilized and
 far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in ordinary duties:—repairing
 stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars,
 inserting bull’s eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks,
 and other miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special
 business; he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of
 conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.
 


 
 The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,
 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 into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway 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 vermillion 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 shark-bone ear-rings: 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 precisely so. For nothing was this man
 more remarkable, than for a certain 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 appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;—yet
 was it oddly dashed 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 life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro,
 not only had gathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever
 small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He was a
 stript 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 uncompromisedness in him involved a
 sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to
 work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been
 tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all 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, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers,
 nail-filers, countersinkers. 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 omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was,
 after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common
 soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its
 duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, 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 soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning wheel,
 which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a sentry-box
 and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep
 himself awake.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
 
 
 The Deck—First Night Watch.
 
 
 ( Carpenter standing before his 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 bone! 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 bone, 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 parlor.
 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, manmaker!
 


 
 Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length. Let
 me measure, sir.
 


 
 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 bones—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 be the
 remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter, when he’s through
 with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel shoulder-blades;
 there’s a pedlar aboard with a crushing 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? No, but put a sky-light on top of his head
 to illuminate inwards. There, take the order, and away.
 


 
 Now, 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. No,
 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 is worse than presented pistols.
 


 
 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, carpenter;—or
 would’st thou rather work in clay?
 


 
 Sir?—Clay? clay, sir? That’s mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.
 


 
 The 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, 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, thinking thing
 may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely 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 mayst not thou, carpenter, 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.
 


 
 Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.—How long before
 the leg is done?
 


 
 Perhaps an hour, sir.
 


 
 Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me ( turns to go ). Oh, 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 inter-indebtedness 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 Prætorians 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! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always 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 jaw-bone 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’m 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
 under the chin pretty quick, and there’s a great cry for life-boats. And
 here’s the heron’s leg! long and slim, sure enough! Now, 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 before the resurrection fellow comes a-calling with his
 horn for all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go round collecting old
 beer barrels, to fill ’em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a
 real live leg, filed down to nothing but the core; he’ll be standing on
 this to-morrow; he’ll be 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 109. 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.*
 


 
 *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.
 


 
 Now, 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—Niphon,
 Matsmai, 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 Burtons and break out? Now 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.”
 


 
 “I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.”
 


 
 “And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! 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 commander; 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 almost seemed
 not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation of
 itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself; “A
 better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would quickly
 enough resent in a younger man; aye, 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
 forbearing! Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto,
 Captain Ahab?”
 


 
 Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most
 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; beware of thyself,
 old man.”
 


 
 “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 art but too good a fellow, Starbuck,” he said lowly to the mate;
 then raising his voice to the crew: “Furl the t’gallant-sails, and
 close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton, and
 break out in the main-hold.”
 


 
 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, imperiously forbade
 the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient, in the
 important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his orders were
 executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
 
 
 Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold 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; and so
 ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons,
 that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing
 coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, 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 to get
 about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over
 empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted
 demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all
 Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them
 then.
 


 
 Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
 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 be 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, but—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 clumsiest casks and
 see to their stowage. To be 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 cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless,
 seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of
 lustre; and mildly but 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 like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter,
 expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of
 Eternity. An awe that cannot be 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. For 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, whose mysterious
 shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, 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 flood-tide lifted him higher and
 higher towards his destined heaven.
 


 
 Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what
 he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour 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 Nantucket 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. He
 added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock,
 according 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 lee-way adown the dim ages.
 


 
 Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter 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 Island
 sailor.
 


 
 Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and 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 at
 its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to
 work.
 


 
 When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he
 lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring 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 without 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 be 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 slily 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 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 he must be very sad;
 for look! he’s left his tambourine behind;—I found it. Rig-a-dig,
 dig, dig! Now, 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.—Rig-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. No, 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 the 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 a word, it was Queequeg’s
 conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not
 kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,
 unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
 


 
 Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
 that while a sick, civilized 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 sitting 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 bit, 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 coffin for a sea-chest; and
 emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many
 spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque
 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 this
 tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer 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 beat 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 tantalization of the gods!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 111. 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 youth was
 answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of
 blue.
 


 
 There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose 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 continents, the waves should rise
 and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades
 and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call
 lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in
 their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made 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, unknown Archipelagoes, and
 impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, 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 mizen 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 towards 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 forehead’s veins swelled like overladen brooks; in
 his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, “Stern all!
 the White Whale spouts thick blood!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 112. 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 be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, harpoons, and
 lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled.
 Nevertheless, this old man’s was a patient hammer wielded by a patient
 arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance 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 but painful appearing
 yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited 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 bitter winter’s midnight, on the road
 running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly 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 uncatastrophied fifth act of
 the grief of his life’s drama.
 


 
 He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly
 encountered that thing in sorrow’s technicals called ruin. He had been an
 artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a 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 ignorantly 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. Now, for prudent, most wise, and
 economic reasons, the blacksmith’s shop was in the basement of his
 dwelling, 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 husband’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
 Labor’s iron 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 tearless 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
 church-yard grass; her children 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 region of the strange Untried; it 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 left in them some interior compunctions 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 Pacifics, 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 abhorring, 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 113. The Forge.
 
 
 With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about
 mid-day, 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 hovering 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 scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting
 for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou
 scorch a scar.”
 


 
 “Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to
 me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is
 not mad. Thou should’st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad?
 How can’st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee,
 that thou can’st not go mad?—What wert thou making there?”
 


 
 “Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.”
 


 
 “And can’st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard
 usage as it had?”
 


 
 “I think so, sir.”
 


 
 “And I suppose thou can’st smoothe 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 leaning with
 both hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here— here —can ye
 smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across his
 ribbed brow; “if thou could’st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my
 head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer!
 Can’st thou smoothe 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; something that will stick 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, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best
 and stubbornest 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 me
 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 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 his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, 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 silently, and bowing over
 his head towards the fire, seemed invoking 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.
 


 
 “Would’st 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.
 


 
 “No, 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 made in the heathen flesh, and the
 White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.
 


 
 “Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously
 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 harp-string, 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 hickory pole,
 both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin,
 light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh,
 Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange
 mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy
 ship, and mocked it!
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
 
 
 Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising
 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, or
 paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes
 calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success for their
 pains.
 


 
 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 hearth-stone
 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 towards the sea; that he
 regards 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’ horses only show their erected ears, while their hidden
 bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.
 


 
 The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; 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, interpenetrate, 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 earthy 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 these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of
 life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for
 every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do
 not advance through fixed gradations, 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 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 harbor, 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, Starbuck 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 cannibal ways. Let
 faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”
 


 
 And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same golden
 light:—
 


 
 “I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that he
 has always been jolly!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
 
 
 And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing 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, previous 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 long lower jaw of the
 last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours were
 flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her
 three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her
 top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender 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; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in 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 additional 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 the cabin
 table itself had been knocked into 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 ornamented 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 Bastille, 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 ship’s
 elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was full before
 him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual diversion.
 


 
 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 wakes—one
 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
 glass and a bottle in the air.
 


 
 “Hast seen the White Whale?” gritted Ahab in reply.
 


 
 “No; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,” said the other
 good-humoredly. “Come aboard!”
 


 
 “Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?”
 


 
 “Not 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 homeward-bound.”
 


 
 “How wondrous familiar is a fool!” muttered Ahab; then aloud, “Thou art a
 full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, 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 thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the 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 Nantucket soundings.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
 
 
 Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favourites
 sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the
 rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it
 with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, 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 sterned off
 from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from 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 sights. Look!
 here, far water-locked; 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 unverdured seas; thou
 art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to 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 sun, that only
 calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock
 me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable 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, O 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!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 117. 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 spout-hole; 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 like
 the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven 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.”
 


 
 “Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:—a hearse and its plumes
 floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! 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 118. 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 helmsman 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 bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his
 wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his latitude.
 


 
 Now, 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 of
 unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors 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 its 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 leg, Ahab soon
 calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant. Then falling
 into a moment’s revery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to
 himself: “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 be? Or
 canst thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living?
 Where is Moby Dick? This instant thou must be eyeing 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 beholding 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 impotence 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,
 O sun! Level by nature to this earth’s horizon 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 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 seamen 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-heads, 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. Starbuck—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!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 119. 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
 tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese
 seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will
 sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a
 dazed and sleepy town.
 


 
 Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn 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
 tempest 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 lashing 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 teetering 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!
 
 
 “Avast Stubb,” cried Starbuck, “let the Typhoon sing, and strike his 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 tell you what it 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 doxology 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 pointing 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
 stand-point 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 Nantucket,”
 soliloquized 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, following 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 may avoid all
 contact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept constantly towing there,
 it would be liable to many mishaps, besides interfering 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 admonished to
 vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux, to
 light Ahab to his post. “Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and aft.
 Quick!”
 


 
 “Avast!” cried Ahab; “let’s have fair play here, though we be the weaker
 side. Yet I’ll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that
 all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir.”
 


 
 “Look aloft!” cried Starbuck. “The corpusants! the corpusants!”
 


 
 All the yard-arms 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
 slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and
 immediately shifting his tone he cried—“The corpusants 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-yard-arms, 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. Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic
 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 corpusants; while lit up by the preternatural 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.”
 


 
 “No, no, it wasn’t; I said the corpusants 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: I take that mast-head 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 beginning 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 corpusants 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 overhanging rigging, where they
 had just been engaged securing a spar, a number 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 running skeletons in Herculaneum, others
 remained rooted to the deck; 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 mainmast links there;
 I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood against
 fire! So.”
 


 
 Then turning—the last link 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 trinity of flames.
 


 
 “Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian 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 now 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 unconditional,
 unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified 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-freighted 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 lengthwise 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 eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten
 brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet
 blindfold, 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 the flames! Oh,
 thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but 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; certainly knowest not thy
 beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou
 knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. 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 incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated
 grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and
 lick the sky! I leap with 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 had 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
 homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”
 


 
 Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the braces—though
 not a sail was left aloft. For 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 snatching 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 extinguished the flame.
 


 
 As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of
 some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so
 much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so
 at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did run from him in a
 terror of dismay.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
 
 
 ( Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him. )
 


 
 “We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose
 and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?”
 


 
 “Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail 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 table-lands 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 main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! 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 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
 
 
 ( Stubb and Flask 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, but you
 will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how 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 yourself; 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 hydrants, 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 between 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 timber-head, that no harm can come to the holder
 of the rod, unless the mast is first struck? What are you talking about,
 then? Not 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 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. Tying 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 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 be worn in all storms afloat. The tails
 tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d’ye see. Same with
 cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs, Flask. No more
 monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I must mount a swallow-tail, and
 drive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes my tarpaulin overboard;
 Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly!
 This is a nasty night, lad.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
 
 
 ( The main-top-sail 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? Um, um, um. We don’t want thunder; we want rum; give
 us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 123. The Musket.
 
 
 During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod’s
 jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its
 spasmodic motions, even though preventer 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 shuttlecock to
 the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses,
 at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the 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 anyone
 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 engaged forward and
 the other aft—the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and
 main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to
 leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes 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 to steer, if practicable, was once more
 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 meanwhile, 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-ye-ho, cheerly men! ” the crew singing for joy, that so promising
 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 any 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
 mechanically 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 it was hooped round by all the roar of the
 elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as they
 stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck 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 instant 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 at me!—the very one; this one—I
 hold 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, gropes he 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
 come 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 withstand thee, then, old man. Not
 reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this
 thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands, this is all thou
 breathest. Aye, and say’st 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 hideous
 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 murderer when its
 lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering 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 survive to hug his wife and child again.—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 124. The Needle.
 
 
 Next 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 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 silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time
 the tetering 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 reined 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 compasses; 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 infallibly going West.
 


 
 But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad 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 than
 one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as
 developed in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one with
 the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at,
 that such things should be. Instances where the lightning 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 original 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 exactly
 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 feelings—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 fain have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is
 lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without a
 pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles. Quick!”
 


 
 Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to
 do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to
 revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile 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 awaited 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 indispensable to the
 magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment 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, exclaimed,—“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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 125. 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 confident reliance
 upon 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 frequently 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 lee side, 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 projecting
 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.”
 


 
 “’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.”
 


 
 “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 now’s a patched professor in Queen Nature’s
 granite-founded College; but methinks he’s too subservient. Where wert
 thou born?”
 


 
 “In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.”
 


 
 “Excellent! Thou’st hit the world by that.”
 


 
 “I know not, sir, but I was born there.”
 


 
 “In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it’s good. Here’s a man
 from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned 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 log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long
 dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In
 turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing
 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, 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 ye haven’t fished him up here, fisherman. It drags hard;
 I guess he’s holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him 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 snow-line. 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 touchest 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 shark-skin,” 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 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.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
 
 
 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 impelled
 by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed
 the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate 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 listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry
 remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the crew said
 it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained
 unappalled. 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 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 peeringly 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 morning. At sun-rise
 this man went from his hammock to his mast-head 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 it 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 life-buoy—a long slender cask—was dropped from the stern,
 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 that 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 of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look 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 they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they had heard the
 night before. But again the old Manxman said nay.
 


 
 The lost life-buoy 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 stern unprovided with a buoy, when by certain strange
 signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint concerning his coffin.
 


 
 “A life-buoy of a coffin!” cried Starbuck, starting.
 


 
 “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 it up; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, after a
 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 his hand as
 with a pitch-pot.
 


 
 “Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and no
 more.—Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me.”
 


 
 “He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks.
 Now 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 life-buoy 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 tinkerings; 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 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 be tied up in the rigging, ere they would do the
 job. But I’m made of 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 make 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 the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too
 confounded 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. Any way, I’ll have me thirty
 separate, Turk’s-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging 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 127. The Deck.
 
 
 ( The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench 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 humor more genially than that boy.—Middle aisle of
 a church! What’s here?”
 


 
 “Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
 hatchway!”
 


 
 “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, intermeddling,
 monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
 next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those
 same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a
 jack-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 grave-digger 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 grave-digger made music must have been because 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 in all
 things makes the sounding-board is this—there’s naught beneath. And
 yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
 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 silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself? Look
 at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.”
 


 
 “He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
 latitudes. I’ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos,
 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!”
 


 
 ( Ahab to himself .)
 


 
 “There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded 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 wag, 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 life-buoy
 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. Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk
 this over; I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown
 conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 128. 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.
 


 
 “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?”
 


 
 “Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?”
 


 
 Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question; and
 would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger captain
 himself, having stopped his vessel’s way, was seen descending her side. A
 few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequod’s main-chains,
 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
 advancing. “How was it?”
 


 
 It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous, 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 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 the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it.
 In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and then a swift gleam
 of bubbling white water; and after that nothing more; whence it was
 concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely 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 necessitated 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 other man aloft on the look-out. But though when
 she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of
 the absent ones when 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—if there be no other
 way—for eight-and-forty hours only—only that—you must,
 oh, you must, and you shall do this thing.”
 


 
 “His son!” cried Stubb, “oh, it’s his son he’s lost! I take back the coat
 and watch—what says Ahab? 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 boat’s crews, at the same time, but on the other hand,
 separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase, there
 had 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, when placed between
 jeopardized 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 immemorially 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 a rope-yarn”; then 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 binnacle 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 she beat against a head
 sea; and again it pushed her before it; while 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, woeful way, you plainly saw
 that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort.
 She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
 
 
 ( 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.”
 


 
 “No, 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 there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!—Met! True art
 thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless
 thee; and if it come to that,—God for ever save 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. Now
 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 odd feeling, now,
 when a black boy’s host to white men with gold lace upon their coats!—Monsieurs,
 have ye seen one Pip?—a little negro lad, five feet high, hang-dog
 look, and cowardly! Jumped from a whale-boat once;—seen him? No!
 Well then, fill up again, captains, and let’s drink shame upon all
 cowards! I name no names. Shame upon them! 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 stern strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and
 oysters come to join me.”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 130. 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 longitude
 where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had been
 spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick;—and
 now that all his successive meetings with various 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, central
 gaze; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly 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 too, all humor, forced or natural,
 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 Parsee’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 hovering 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
 main-mast and the mizen; 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, 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
 his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and 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 starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by
 the mainmast; but still fixedly 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 mast-heads!”—and all through the day, till
 after sunset and after twilight, the same 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 slided by, after meeting the
 children-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 main-mast 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 clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad
 upon the sea for miles and miles,—ahead, astern, this side, and
 that,—within the wide expanded 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 is seen of them at 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 fatality, 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 one only man who
 had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the slightest degree
 approaching to decision—one of those too, whose faithfulness on the
 look-out 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 hands.
 


 
 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 close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen 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 spiralized downwards, 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 any one 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 mizen-mast-head, 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
 bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his
 prize.
 


 
 An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace it,
 and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of
 Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good.
 Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far
 in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of
 that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from
 that vast height into the sea.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
 
 
 The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the
 life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably
 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 quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the
 spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.
 


 
 Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, 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?”
 


 
 “Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with his
 trumpet he pointed to the wreck.
 


 
 “Hast killed him?”
 


 
 “The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,” answered the
 other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered
 sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.
 


 
 “Not 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 lightning 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 thee, old man—see’st thou that”—pointing to the
 hammock—“I 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 turning to his
 crew—“Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and lift
 the body; so, then—Oh! God”—advancing towards 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 life-buoy
 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 our sad burial; ye but turn us your
 taffrail to show us your coffin!”
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 132. 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.
 


 
 Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air
 to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling
 line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at
 the equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms,
 with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
 


 
 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 forehead of heaven.
 


 
 Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
 creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how
 oblivious were ye of old Ahab’s close-coiled woe! But so have I seen
 little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around
 their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the
 marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
 


 
 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 step-mother 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 not to touch him,
 or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.
 


 
 Ahab turned.
 


 
 “Starbuck!”
 


 
 “Sir.”
 


 
 “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—a
 boy-harpooneer of eighteen! 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 Ahab
 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 entrance to any sympathy from the
 green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery
 of solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected,
 not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed
 upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!—when
 the poorest landsman 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 but 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 arm 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 deadly faint, bowed, and humped, 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
 mockery 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 the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is
 the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. 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, play-fellow 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. I have seen them—some summer days in 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 abroad 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 Nantucket! 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 is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
 cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands
 me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and
 crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready
 to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I 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 thinking, 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 handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this
 unsounded sea! Look! see yon 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 swaths—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 motionlessly
 leaning over the same rail.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day.
 
 
 That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at
 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
 odor, 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 dog-vane, and then ascertaining the
 precise bearing of the odor 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 vindicated 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 mast-heads! Call all hands!”
 


 
 Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle
 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 swaying
 him to the main royal-mast head; 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 main-top-sail and
 top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air. “There she blows!—there
 she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”
 


 
 Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
 look-outs, 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 look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him on
 the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian’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.
 


 
 “I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I
 cried out,” said Tashtego.
 


 
 “Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate
 reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the
 White Whale first. There she blows!—there she blows!—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! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats
 there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; 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 paddles 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 shells, their light prows sped through the sea;
 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 breathless hunter came
 so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire 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 projecting head beyond.
 Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening
 white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, 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 gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate
 with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff 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 pennons.
 


 
 A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness,
 invested 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, not that great majesty
 Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.
 


 
 On each soft side—coincident with the parted swell, that but once
 leaving him, then flowed so wide away—on each bright side, the whale
 shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters who
 namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to
 assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of
 tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all who
 for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way thou
 may’st have bejuggled 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 wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the
 fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant his whole
 marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia’s Natural Bridge, and
 warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed
 himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping
 on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly 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 reappearance.
 


 
 “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 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.
 


 
 “The birds!—the birds!” cried Tashtego.
 


 
 In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now
 all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began
 fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,
 expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could discover
 no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its
 depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white
 weasel, with 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 glittering 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 stern.
 


 
 Now, 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 transplanted himself, as it were,
 in an instant, shooting his pleated 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 row-lock. 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 the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as
 a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and
 crossed his arms; but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each
 other’s heads to gain the uttermost stern.
 


 
 And now, 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 frail gunwales 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.
 


 
 Ripplingly 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 spindled 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 confluent
 waves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered
 spray still higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled
 Channel billows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly
 to overleap its summit with their scud.
 


 
 *This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation
 (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise
 of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously
 described. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively
 view whatever objects may be encircling him.
 


 
 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 fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and
 mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not
 succor him; more than enough was it for them to look to themselves. For so
 revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s aspect, and so planetarily
 swift the 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 jeopardized
 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
 direful zone, whose centre had now become the old man’s head.
 


 
 Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship’s
 mast heads; 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
 that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from 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 blood-shot, 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 time, lying all
 crushed in the bottom of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden under foot of
 herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate
 sounds from out ravines.
 


 
 But this intensity of his physical prostration did but 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 life-time
 aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous 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 leaning on one
 bended arm—“is it safe?”
 


 
 “Aye, sir, for 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 see him!
 there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—Hands
 off from me! The eternal sap runs up 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 that second boat; and the chase is 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; swimming with a velocity which
 plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the
 chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, 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 intermediate 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 hoisting everything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and
 sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings
 of an albatross; the Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick. At
 the well known, methodic intervals, the whale’s glittering spout was
 regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be
 reported as 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 to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched 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 outright to
 man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give
 an old wives’ 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 neighbors! Cold, cold—I shiver!—How
 now? Aloft there! 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 remained 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
 stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before 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 fore-mast head, and see it manned till morning.”—Then
 advancing towards the doubloon in the main-mast—“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 rousing
 himself to see how the night wore on.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day.
 
 
 At day-break, the three mast-heads 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 all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought for;—the
 top-gallant sails!—aye, they should have been kept on her all night.
 But no matter—’tis but resting for the rush.”
 


 
 Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular 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 among the Nantucket 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 progression 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 of the cape at present
 visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen
 headland, eventually to be 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 as the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern 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 or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions when these
 Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, according to the
 observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so many hours hence
 this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this
 or 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 his port? Inferable from these statements, are many
 collateral subtile matters touching the chase of whales.
 


 
 The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-ball,
 missent, becomes a plough-share 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,—for by live-oaks! my spine’s a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait
 that leaves no dust behind!”
 


 
 “There she blows—she blows!—she blows!—right ahead!” was
 now the mast-head 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 watergate 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 it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and 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 individualities of the
 crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltiness, all
 varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal
 goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.
 


 
 The rigging lived. The mast-heads, 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 was 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 indolent spoutings; not by
 the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White
 Whale 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 defiance.
 


 
 “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 and fading away from its first sparkling intensity,
 to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.
 


 
 “Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!” cried Ahab, “thy hour and
 thy harpoon are at hand!—Down! down 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 away,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat—a 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 sidelong 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 a 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 skilfully manœuvred, incessantly 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
 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 Stubb
 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 boiling 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 to rescue whom
 he could;—in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand concreted
 perils,—Ahab’s yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by
 invisible wires,—as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the
 sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its bottom, and
 sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell again—gunwale
 downwards—and Ahab and his men struggled out from under it, like
 seals from a sea-side 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 flukes
 from 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 pleated forehead through 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 on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles;
 livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable 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 clinging to his boat’s broken half,
 which afforded a comparatively easy float; nor did it so 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, ship keepers! 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?”
 


 
 “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 company, the
 Parsee 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—I
 thought I saw him dragging 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 dart it!—’tis in the fish!—Aloft there!
 Keep him nailed—Quick!—all hands to the rigging of the boats—collect
 the oars—harpooneers! the irons, the irons!—hoist the royals
 higher—a pull on all the sheets!—helm there! steady, steady
 for your life! I’ll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive
 straight through it, but I’ll slay him yet!”
 


 
 “Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck;
 “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 warnings:—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 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. Fool! 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—tomorrow
 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 yesterday I talked the same to
 Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to
 drive out of others’ 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. I’ll ,
 I’ll solve it, though!”
 


 
 When dusk 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; sat due
 eastward for the earliest sun.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.
 
 
 The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
 solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the
 daylight look-outs, 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 this morning the first of its throwing open to them, 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 beat 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 turned
 to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment
 growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it’s like that sort of common
 grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy 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 somewhere 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
 but 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 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 mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser
 currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the
 land swift 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 oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, 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 look
 outs! 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 Starbuck 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 disobey my God in obeying him!”
 


 
 “Stand by to sway me up!” cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket. “We
 should meet him soon.”
 


 
 “Aye, aye, sir,” and straightway Starbuck did Ahab’s bidding, and once
 more Ahab swung on high.
 


 
 A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held
 long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the
 weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three
 mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it.
 


 
 “Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! 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 top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But let me have
 one more good round look aloft here at the 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 mast-head! What’s this?—green? aye, 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 pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will 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, O
 Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head—keep
 a good eye upon the whale, the while I’m gone. We’ll talk to-morrow, nay,
 to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail.”
 


 
 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, Starbuck.”
 


 
 “Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.”
 


 
 “Some ships sail 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 am old;—shake hands with me, man.”
 


 
 Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.
 


 
 “Oh, my captain, my captain!—noble heart—go not—go not!—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 molesting 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 third
 day?—For when three days flow together in one continuous intense
 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 between—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!—stave it off—move, move! speak
 aloud!—Mast-head there! See ye my boy’s hand on the hill?—Crazed;—aloft
 there!—keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:—mark well the
 whale!—Ho! again!—drive off that hawk! see! he pecks—he tears
 the vane”—pointing to the red flag flying at the
 main-truck—“Ha! he soars away with it!—Where’s the old man
 now? see’st thou that sight, oh Ahab!—shudder, shudder!”
 


 
 The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-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 maintaining 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 lengthwise, but
 obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it
 hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back
 into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters 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 forward to the
 attack; but maddened by yesterday’s fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby
 Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven.
 The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad white forehead,
 beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together; as head on, he came
 churning his tail among the boats; and once more flailed them apart;
 spilling out the 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 back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which,
 during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines
 around him, the half torn 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 but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily
 swimming 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. He seemed swimming with 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 sliding 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 mast-heads; while the
 oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been
 hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing 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 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 marking that the vane or flag was gone from the
 main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, to
 descend again for another 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
 muttered—“whether these sharks swim to feast on the 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 once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was,
 three of the oarsmen—who foreknew 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 combing wave, hurled themselves bodily
 inboard again; the third man helplessly dropping 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 evolution,
 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 advancing prow,
 smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.
 


 
 Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. “I grow blind; hands! stretch
 out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is’t night?”
 


 
 “The whale! The ship!” cried the cringing oarsmen.
 


 
 “Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O 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 bow-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
 to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.
 


 
 Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s mast-head hammer
 remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as
 with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own
 forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, 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 a woman’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. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He
 turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose
 duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!”
 


 
 “Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help
 Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!
 Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own unwinking eye?
 And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would
 it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look
 ye, sun, 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, but
 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, 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 coppers will now
 come to her, for the voyage is up.”
 


 
 From 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 overspreading
 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 bull-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 topmost grief. Ho, ho! from
 all 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 coffins and all hearses to one common pool!
 and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while 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 igniting
 velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to
 clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck,
 and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out
 of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy
 eye-splice 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 gaseous 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 inanimate, all round
 and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of
 sight.
 


 
 But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the 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 between the hammer and the wood;
 and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage
 beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird
 of heaven, with archangelic 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.
 


 
 Now 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.
 


 
 
 
 


 
 




 
 
 Epilogue
 
 
 “AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE” Job.
 
 
 The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one
 did survive the wreck.
 


 
 It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the
 Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that bowsman
 assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men
 were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating
 on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the
 halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly,
 drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a
 creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the
 button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like
 another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital centre, the black
 bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring,
 and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin
 life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side.
 Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on
 a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with
 padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks.
 On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It
 was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her
 missing children, only found another orphan.
 



 
 
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