This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized

by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the

information in books and make it universally accessible.

https://books.google.com
 MOBY DICK

HERMAN MELVILLE

Google play
KD12476
-
#
 MOBY - DICK

OR

The White Whale

 FAMOUS SEA STORIES
BY
HERMAN MELVILLE

MOBY DICK
Or, " The White Whale."

TYPEE
A Real Romance of the South Seas.

OMOO
A Narrative of Adventures in the South
Seas ; a sequel to " Typee. "

WHITE JACKET
Or, " The World on a Man-of-war."

MARDI
And a Voyage Thither.

Each, one volume, cloth decorative,

illustrated, $1.90

THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY

53 BEACON ST. BOSTON, MASS.
A Burnham Shute
e ue form . "
"The thick mists were dimly parted by a hug , vag
-Page 215.
FRONTISPIECE.
 1
T

2
0
Moby Dick
or

The White Whale

BY
HERMAN MELVILLE
Author of " Typee," " Omoo," " White Jacket," etc.

BOSTON
THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 Beacon Street

Sammo
m

gue form .”
Page 215 .
KD12476

HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

Copyright, 1892,
By Elizabeth S. Melville
1

Made in U. S. A.

Fifth Impression, November, 1920

Sixth Impression , June, 1921
Seventh Impression, December, 1921
Eighth Impression, February, 1922

PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY

BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A.
 IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
ΤΟ
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1
 CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. LOOMINGS 7
II. THE CARPET-BAG 12
III. THE SPOUTER-INN 16
IV. THE COUNTERPANE 29
V. BREAKFAST 33
VI. THE STREET 35
VII. THE CHAPEL 37
VIII. THE PULPIT 40

H
IX. THE SERMON 43
X. A BosOM FRIEND 51
XI. NIGHTGOWN 55
XII. BIOGRAPHICAL 57
59
XIII. WHEELBARROW
XIV. NANTUCKET 63
XV. CHOWDER 65
XVI. THE SHIP 68
XVII. THE RAMADAN 81
XVIII. HIS MARK 87
XIX. THE PROPHET 90
XX. ALL ASTIR • 94
XXI. GOING ABOARD 96
XXII. MERRY CHRISTMAS 99
XXIII. THE LEE SHORE • 103
XXIV. THE ADVOCATE 104
XXV. POSTSCRIPT 109
XXVI. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 110
XXVII. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 113
XXVIII. AHAB 117
XXIX . ENTER AHAB ; TO HIM, STUBB 120
XXX. THE PIPE 123
124
XXXI. QUEEN MAB
126
XXXII. CETOLOGY
139
XXXIII . THE SPECKSYNDER
A2 ix
X MOBY- DICK

CHAPTER PAGE
XXXIV. THE CABIN-TABLE · 141
XXXV. THE MAST-HEAD · 147
XXXVI . THE QUARTER-DECK • 153
XXXVII. SUNSET · 160
XXXVIII. DUSK 161
XXXIX . FIRST NIGHT-WATCH · 162
XL. MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE • 163
XLI. MOBY DICK · 169
XLII . THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE 178
XLIII. HARK ! . · 186
XLIV. THE CHART · 187
XLV. THE AFFIDAVIT · 192
XLVI. SURMISES 201
XLVII . THE MAT-MAKER · 203
XLVIII . THE FIRST LOWERING · 206
XLIX. THE HYENA 216
L. AHAB'S BOAT AND CREW. FEDALLAH 218
LI. THE SPIRIT-SPOUT • 220
LII. THE ALBATROSS • 224
LIII. THE GAM 226
LIV . THE TOWN-HO'S STORY 230
LV. OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF
WHALES · · 249
LVI. OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF
WHALES, AND THE TRUE PICTURES
OF WHALING SCENES • 254
LVII. OF WHALES IN PAINT ; IN TEETH ; IN
WOOD ; IN SHEET-IRON ; IN STONE ;
IN MOUNTAINS ; IN STARS 257
LVIII. BRIT 260
LIX . SQUID 262
LX. THE LINE 265
LXI. STUBB KILLS A WHALE 268
LXII. THE DART • 273
LXIII. THE CROTCH 275
LXIV . STUBB'S SUPPER 276
LXV . THE WHALE AS A DISH 283
LXVI. THE SHARK MASSACRE 286
LXVII. CUTTING IN . 287
LXVIII. THE BLANKET 289
 CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER PAGE
LXIX. THE FUNERAL 292
LXX. THE SPHYNX 293
LXXI. THE JEROBOAM'S STORY 296
LXXII. THE MONKEY-ROPE 301
LXXIII. STUBB AND FLASK KILL A RIGHT
WHALE ; AND THEN HAVE A TALK
OVER HIM 306
LXXIV. THE SPERM WHALE'S HEAD -CON
TRASTED VIEW 311
LXXV. THE RIGHT WHALE'S HEAD CON
TRASTED VIEW 315
LXXVI. THE BATTERING-RAM · 318
LXXVII . THE GREAT HEIDELBURGH TUN 320
LXXVIII. CISTERN AND BUCKETS 322
LXXIX. THE PRAIRIE 326
LXXX . THE NUT 328
LXXXI. THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN 331
LXXXII. THE HONOR AND GLORY OF WHALING 341
LXXXIII . JONAH HISTORICALLY REGARDED • 344
LXXXIV. PITCHPOLING 346
LXXXV. THE FOUNTAIN · 348
LXXXVI. THE TAIL 353
LXXXVII. THE GRAND ARMADA 357
LXXXVIII . SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 369
LXXXIX . FAST-FISH AND LOOSE-FISH 372
XC. HEADS OR TAILS 376
XCI . THE PEQUOD MEETS THE ROSE-BUD 379
XCII. AMBERGRIS 385
XCIII. THE CASTAWAY 388
XCIV. A SQUEEZE OF THE HAND 392
XCV. THE CASSOCK • 395
XCVI. THE TRY-WORKS • 396
XCVII. THE LAMP 401
XCVIII. STOWING DOWN AND CLEARING UP . 401
XCIX. THE DOUBLOON • • 404
C. LEG AND ARM • 410
CI. THE DECANTER 416
CII. A BoWER IN THE ARSACIDES 421
CIII. MEASUREMENT OF THE WHALE'S
SKELETON · 425

A3
xii MOBY- DICK

CHAPTER PAGE
CIV. THE FOSSIL WHALE 427
CV. DOES THE WHALE'S MAGNITU
DIMINISH ? ―――― WILL HE PERISH ? • 431
CVI. AHAB'S LEG · 435
CVII. THE CARPENTER 437
CVIII. AHAB AND THE CARPENTER 440
CIX . AHAB AND STARBUCK IN THE CABIN . 444
CX. QUEEQUEG IN HIS COFFIN • · 446
CXI. THE PACIFIC 452
CXII. THE BLACKSMITH 453
CXIII. THE FORGE 455
ICXIV. THE GILDER · 459
CXV. THE PEQUOD MEETS THE BACHELOR · 460
CXVI. THE DYING WHALE · • 463
CXVII. THE WHALE WATCH 464
CXVIII . THE QUADRANT 465
CXIX. THE CANDLES 468
CXX. THE DECK TOWARDS THE END OF THE
FIRST NIGHT WATCH · 474
CXXI. MIDNIGHT. THE FORECASTLE BUL
WARKS · 475
CXXII. MIDNIGHT ALOFT. — THUNDER AND
LIGHTNING . 476
CXXIII. THE MUSKET 476
CXXIV. THE NEEDLE 479
CXXV. THE LOG AND LINE 483
CXXVI. THE LIFE-BUOY 486
CXXVII. THE DECK • 489
CXXVIII . THE PEQUOD MEETS THE RACHEL 491
CXXIX . THE CABIN • 494
CXXX . THE HAT 496
CXXXI . THE PEQUOD MEETS THE DELIGHT · 500
CXXXII. THE SYMPHONY 501
CXXXIII. THE CHASE ――― FIRST DAY 505
CXXXIV. THE CHASE ―――――― SECOND DAY 514
CXXXV . THE CHASE - THIRD DAY 522
EPILOGUE 533
ETYMOLOGY 537
EXTRACTS 538
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
" THE THICK MISTS WERE DIMLY PARTED BY A HUGE,
VAGUE FORM " (Page 215) · Frontispiece
666' AYE, THE PIQUOD 999 91
THAT SHIP THERE
" NEXT INSTANT, THE LUCKLESS MATE WAS SMITTEN
BODILY INTO THE AIR "9 • • 299
" BOTH JAWS, LIKE ENORMOUS SHEARS , BIT THE CRAFT
"" с 510
COMPLETELY IN TWAIN
 MOBY DICK .

CHAPTER I.

LOOMINGS.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago— never mind how long

precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and noth
ing 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 be
fore 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 down -town 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
8 MOBY DICK.

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 ! Noth
ing 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
Į
possibly can without falling in. And there they stand
miles of them— leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes
and alleys, streets andavenues—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 rev
eries —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 Amer
ican 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 forever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dream
iest, 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 dis
tant 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
uponthe magic stream before him . Go visit the Prairies in
 MOBY DICK. 9

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 Nia
gara 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 Per
sians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a sep
arate 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 our
selves 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, pas
sengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome — don't sleep of
nights do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing ;
no, I never go as a passenger ; nor, though I am something
of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain,
or a cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such
offices to those who like them . For my part, I abominate
all honourable 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 respect
fully , not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I
10 MOBY DICK.

will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyp

tians 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 unpleas
ant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly
if you come of an old established familyin 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 tran
sition 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 re
spectfully 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 know
ing 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.
T
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 uncomforta
ble 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 mar
vellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to
be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a
 MOBY DICK. 11

monied man enter heaven. Ah ! how cheerfully we con

sign ourselves to perdition !
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the
wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck.
For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent
than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the
Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the 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 com
monalty 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 mer
chant 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 anyone 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 be
tween more extensive performances . I take it that this
part of the bill must have run something like this :

" Grand Contested Election for the Presidency ofthe 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 magnifi
cent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in
genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I can
not 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 dis
criminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea
of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mys
terious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and
12 MOBY DICK.

distant seas where he rolled his island bulk ; the undeliv

erable, 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 pur
pose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, end
less processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all,
one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

―――
CHAPTER II.

THE CARPET-BA G.

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

it under my arm , and started for Cape Horn and the Pa
cific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived
in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in December.
Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet
for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reach,
ing 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 boister
ous 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
 MOBY DICK. 13

the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else

but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red
Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan ?
And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adven
turous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobble-stones —so goes the story—to throw at the whales,
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, follow
ing 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 shoul
dering 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 partic
ular.
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the
sign of " The Crossed Harpoons "—but it looked too expen
sive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red win
dows 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 water
ward, 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
14 MOBY DICK.

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 ashbox 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." How
ever, 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 I
jet of misty spray, and these words underneath—" The
Spouter-Inn :—Peter Coffin."
Coffin ?—Spouter ?—Rather ominous in that particular
connection, thought I. But it is a common name in Nan
tucket, 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 long
ings, 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
 MOBY DICK. 15

"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 improve
ments 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 shiver
ings, 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 curb
stone 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.
16 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER III.

THE SPOUTER-INN.

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found your

self in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned
wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some con
demned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil-paint
ing so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that
in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was
only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it,
and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any
way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unac
countable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you
almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of
the New England hags, had endeavoured to delineate chaos
Bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation,
and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open
the little window towards the back of the entry, you at
last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, 1
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. 1
Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimagi
nable 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 ice
bound stream of Time . But at last all these fancies yielded
to that one portentous something in the picture's midst.
That once found out, and all the rest were plain . But stop ;
does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish ? even
the great leviathan himself ?
 MOBY DICK. 17

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 im
paling 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 imple
ment. 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 cork
screw 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 furi
ously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table cov
ered with cracked glass- cases, filled with dusty rarities
gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks . Project
ing 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 de
canters, bottles, flasks ; and in those jaws of swift destruc
18 MOBY DICK.

tion, 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 vil
lainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered down
wards 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 sea
men 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 un
occupied. " But avast," he added, tapping his forehead,
"you haint no objections to sharing a harpooner'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 har
pooner might be, and that if he (the landlord ) really had
no other place for me, and the harpooner was not de
cidedly 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
 MOBY DICK. 19

coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most dire.

ful manner.
"My boy," said the landlord, " you'll have the night
mare to a dead sartainty."
"Landlord," I whispered, "that ain't the harpooner, is
it ?"
"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny,
"the harpooner is a dark complexioned chap. He never
eats dumplings, he don't—he eats nothing but steaks, and
likes 'em rare .""
"The devil he does," says I. " Where is that harpooner ?
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' voy
age, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys ; now we'll have the
latest news from the Feejees."
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry ; the
door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners
enough. Enveloped in their shaggy 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 mo
lasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds
and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long stand
ing, 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.
20 MOBY DICK.

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat

aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilar
ity 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 reminis
cences that did not seem to give him much joy . His voice
at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his
fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall moun
taineers 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 Bulk
ington ?" 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 harpooner, 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 harpooner, the more I
abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair
to presume that being a harpooner, his linen or woollen,
as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly
 MOBY DICK. 21

none of the finest. I began to twitch all over . Besides , it

was getting late, and my decent harpooner 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 har
pooner. 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 table
cloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"
feeling of the knots and notches. "But wait a bit, Skrim
shander ; 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 throw
ing 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, leav
ing a little interval between, for my back to settle down in.
But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold
air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan
would never do at all, especially as another current from
the rickety door met the one from the window, and both
together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the
immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend
the night.
The devil fetch that harpooner, 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
harpooner might be standing in the entry, all ready to
knock me down !
22 MOBY DICK.

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
harpooner. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile ; he must be drop
ping 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 har
pooner.
"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. I
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 ped
dling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so
late, unless, may be can't sell his head."
"Can't sell his head ?—What sort of a bamboozingly
story is this you are telling me ? " getting into a towering
rage. "Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this har
pooner 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
99
green.'
" May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a tooth
pick, "but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere
harpooner 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? "
66
Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I
guess ."
 MOBY DICK. 23

"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 harpooner. And about this harpooner, 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 who you design
for my bedfellow—a sort of connection, landlord, which is
an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I
now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what
this harpooner 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
harpooner 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 harpooner I have
been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas,
where he brought 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 harpooner who stayed out of a Saturday night
clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal
business as selling the heads of dead idolaters ?
"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooner is a dan
99
gerous 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 room for two to kick
24 MOBY DICK.

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 sprawl
ing 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 irreso
lute ; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed
"I vum it's Sunday—you won't see that harpooner 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 harpooners 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 har
pooner's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of land trunk. Like
wise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on
the shelf over the fireplace, and a tall harpoon standing at
the head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest ? I took it up, and held it
close to the lamplight, 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 some
thing 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 harpooner would get
 MOBY DICK. 25

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 harpooner 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 think
ing about this head-peddling harpooner, 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 harpooner'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 blow
ing 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 harpooner, the
infernal head-pedlar . But I lay perfectly still, and resolved
not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one
hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the
stranger entered the room, and without looking towards
the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the
floor in one corner, and then began working away at the
knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in
the room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept
it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the
bag's mouth. This accomplished , however, he turned round
—when, good heavens ! what a sight ! Such a face ! It
was of a dark, purplish, yellow color, 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
26 MOBY DICK.

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 knewnot 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 tattoed by
them. I concluded that this harpooner, 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. How
ever, 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 harpooner never noticed me at all. But,
after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced
fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk,
and a sealskin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on
the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the
New Zealand head—a ghastly thing enough—and crammed
it down into the bag. He now took off his hat a new
beaver hat— when I came nigh singing out with fresh sur
prise. There was no hair on his head— none to speak of at
least—nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his fore
head. 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 ras
cal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the
parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and con
founded 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
 MOBY DICK. 27

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 es
caped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his
very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs
were running up the trunks of young palms . It was now
quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other
shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so
landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it.
A pedlar of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own
brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens ! look
at that tomahawk !
But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage
went about something that completely fascinated my atten
tion, 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 pol
ished 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 fireplace, and removing the
papered fireboard, sets up this little hunchbacked image,
like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs
and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought
this fireplace made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel
for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden im
age, 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 apply
ing 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 (where
by he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last suc
ceeded 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
28 MOBY DICK.

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 man
ner. 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 uncomfortable
ness, 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 ! "
"Speake-e ! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e ! "
again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of
the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till
I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven,
at that moment the landlord came into the room light in
hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again. " Quee
queg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head."
 MOBY DICK. 29

"Stop your grinning," shouted I, " and why didn't you

tell me that that infernal harpooner was a cannibal ? "
"I thought ye know'd it ;—didn't I tell ye, he was a ped
dlin' 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 tattoo
ings 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 dan
gerous. 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.
66
"Good-night, landlord," said I, " you may go."
I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COUNTERPAN E.

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Quee

queg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affec
tionate 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
30 MOBY DICK.

-owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethod

ically 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 my
self 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 . Six
teen 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 sud
denly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particu
lar 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, feel
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 31

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, un
imaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand
belonged, seemed closely seated by my bedside . For what
seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most
awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand ; yet ever
thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the hor
rid spell would be broken. I knew not how this conscious
ness at last glided away from me ; but waking in the morn
ing, 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—" Quee
queg ! "—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 counter
pane, 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 rub
bing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I
came to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing
something about me seemed slowly dawning over him.
Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious mis
givings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious
32 MOBY DICK.

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 under
stand 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 watch
ing all his toilette motions : for the time my curiosity get
ting 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-bye, 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 in
ferred 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 state—neither
caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilised to
show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible man
ner. His education was not yet completed. He was an
undergraduate . If he had not been a small degree civilised,
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 — prob
ably 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, stav
 MOBY DICK. 33

ing 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 pos
sible. 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, con
tented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest,
arms, and hands . He then donned his waistcoat, and tak
ing 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 Roger'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 V.

BREAKFAST.

I Quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar- room

accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished
no malice towards him, though he had been skylarking
with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow.
However, a good laugh 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 cheer
fully 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.
3
34 MOBY DICK.

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 har
pooners, 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 com
pany. Not always, though : Ledyard, the great New Eng
land traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one ; of all men,
they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But per
haps 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 circum
stance 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 break
fast-table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes
 MOBY DICK. 35

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 breed
ing. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified
his bringing his harpoon in to breakfast with him , and using
it there without ceremony ; reaching over the table with it.
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 gen
teelly.
We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here ;
how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his un
divided 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 VI.

THE STREET.

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

outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the
polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon
departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the
streets of New Bedford.
In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport
will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nonde
scripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chest
nut 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 ;
36 MOBY DICK.

savages outright ; many of whom yet carry on their bones

unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feejeeans, Tongatabooars, Erroman
goans, Pannangians, and Brighgians, and, besides the wild
specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about
the streets, you will see other sights still more curious,
certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town
scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all
athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly
young, of stalwart frames ; fellows who have felled
forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale
lance . Many are as green as the Green 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 an
other 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 harpoon
ers, 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 per
haps 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 ?
 MOBY DICK. 37

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
April, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chest
nuts, 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 superin
duced 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 VII.

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
38 MOBY DICK.

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 wor
shipper 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 fol
lowing, but I do not pretend to quote :

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

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
Forming one of the boats' crews
OF
THE SHIP ELIZA,
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
On the Off-shore Ground in the
pacific,
December 31st, 1839.
this marble
Is here placed by their surviving
shipmates .

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 3d, 1833.
this tablet
Is erected to his Memory
BY
HIS WIDOW.
 MOBY DICK. 39

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 in
credulous 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, there
fore, 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 fish
ery, 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-for
feitures upon immortals ; in what eternal, unstirring par
alysis, 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 main
tain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss ; why all the living
so strive to hush all the dead ; wherefore but the rumour
of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these
things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and
even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital
hope.
40 MOBY DICK.

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. Me
thinks 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 VIII.

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 regard
ful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently at
tested that this tine 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
a sailor and a harpooner 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 develop
ing bloom—the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath
February's snow. No one having previously heard his his
tory, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without
 MOBY DICK. 41

the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted

clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventu
rous 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 ab
sorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by
one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent cor
ner : 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 with
out 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 hand
some 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 rep
utation 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
42 MOBY DICK.

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 connections ? Yes, for replenished
with the meat and wine of the world, to the faithful man of
God, this pulpit, I see, is a self- containing stronghold— a
lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water with
in the walls .
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of
the place, borrowed from the chaplain's former seafarings .
Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit,
the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large
painting representing a gallant ship beating against a ter
rible 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.
 1939959
MOBY DICK. 43

CHAPTER IX.

THE SERMON.

Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming

authority ordered the scattered people to condense. " Star
board 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 songs forever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power."
44 MOBY DICK.

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 sea- line sound ! what a pregnant lesson to us
is this prophet ! What a noble thing is that canticle in the
fish's belly! How 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 endeavours to persuade .
And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves ; and it is
in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obey
ing 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 un
heeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have
been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That's the opin
ion 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
 MOBY DICK. 45

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 Gomor
rah, 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, hur
riedly 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 the 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
16 MOBY DICK.

sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scru

tinising 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 pas
senger.' 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 discern
ment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it
only in the penniless . In this world, shipmates, sinthat 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 look'st like it,' says the Cap
6
tain, 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 bowel's 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.
 MOBY DICK. 47

The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah ; as lying in his berth

his tormented eyes roll around the place, and this thus far
successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.
But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appalls
him . The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. Oh !
6
so my conscience hangs in me ! ' he groans, straight up
ward, 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 con
science is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it ; so,
after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of pon
derous 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 con
traband 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 clat
tering 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,
48 MOBY DICK.

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 behaviour of poor Jonah. The
eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from ;
whereas, they not only receive an answer to those ques
tions, 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 indig
nant gale howls louder ; then, with one hand raised invok
ingly 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
 MOBY DICK. 49

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 deliv
erance. 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 be
fore 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, stand
ing 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 sin
ners ; 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 ;
50 MOBY DICK.

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 engulfed, 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 multitu
dinously murmuring of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty's
bidding. And what was that, shipmates ? To preach the
Truth to the face of Falsehood ! That was it !
"This, shipmates , this is that other lesson ; and woe to that
pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom
this world charms from Gospel duty ! Woe to him who
seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed
them into a gale ! Woe to him who seeks to please rather
than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to
him than goodness ! Woe to him who, in this world, courts
not dishonour ! Woe to him who would not be true, even
though to be 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 up
ward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and
commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inex
orable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet sup
port 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
 MOBY DICK. 51

Judges. Delight, —top-gallant delight is to him, who ac

knowledges 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 cov
ered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling,
till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the
place.

CHAPTER X.

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 ofhis ;
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 theimage ; 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
toa long-drawn gurgling whistle ofastonishment. 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 multi
tude of pages was excited.
With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though
52 MOBY DICK.

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 , re
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 fore
head was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked
more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not ven
ture to decide ; but certain it was his head was phrenologi
cally an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it re
minded 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 cannibalisti
cally developed.
Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending
meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the case
ment, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself
with so much as a single glance ; but appeared wholly oc
cupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book.
Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together
the night previous, and especially considering the affec
tionate 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 ofhis 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 ; pre
serving the utmost serenity ; content with his own compan.
 MOBY DICK. 53

ionship ; 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 dyspetic 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 even
ing shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and
peering in upon us silent, solitary twain ; the storm boom
ing 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 civilised hypocrisies and bland de
ceits . 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 .
Wethen turned over the book together, and I endeavoured
to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the mean
ing of the few pictures that were in it . Thus I soon en
gaged 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
54 MOBY DICK.

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 friend
ship 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
I
embalmed head ; took out his enormous tobacco wallet,
and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dol 1
I
lars in silver ; then spreading them on the table, and me I
chanically 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 other
wise.
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
 MOBY DICK. 55

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 XI.

NIGHTGOWN.

We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short

intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throw
ing 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 daybreak was yet
some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful ; so much so that our recum
bent 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 comfort
able, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said
to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me
in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head
be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in general conscious
ness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be fur
nished 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
56 MOBY DICK.

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 experi
enced 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 shoul
ders,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 .
 MOBY DICK. 57

CHAPTER XII.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, 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 Harbour 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
capsised 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 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
58 MOBY DICK.

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 whale
man 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 Harbour ;
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 baptised again.
For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow
his wild oats in all four oceans . They had made a har
pooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre
now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touch
ing 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 inten
tion 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
 MOBY DICK. 59

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 experi
enced 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 XIII.

WHEELBARROW.

Next morning , Monday, after disposing of the embalmed

head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and com
rade's bill ; using, however, my comrade's money. The
grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amaz
ingly 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 com
panied 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 started ; not at Quee
queg 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 par
60 MOBY DICK.

ticular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of as

sured 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
1
wise obliged to furnish them—even so, Queequeg, for his 1
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 Harbour. The owners of his ship, it seems,
had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his 1
boarding-house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing 1
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 bar
row and marches up the wharf. " Why," said I, " Quee
queg, 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 1
at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and
being assigned the post of honour, places 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 ban
quet 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 think
ing himself—being Captain of a ship—as having plain. 1
precedence over a mere island King, especially in the
 MOBY DICK. 61

was of as King's own house—the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his

and deeply hands in the punchbowl ;—taking it I suppose for a huge
like many finger-glass. " Now," said Queequeg, " what you tink
he farmers' now ?—Didn't our people laugh ? "
hough in no At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board
queg, for his the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet
on. river. On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets,
he told me a their ice- covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air.
had ever seen. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon
ship, it seems, her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale
y chest to his ships lay silent and safely moored at last ; while from others
but the thing came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of
ing the precise fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new
equeg puts his cruises were on the start ; that one most perilous and long
ulders the bar voyage ended, only begins a second ; and a second ended,
said I, " Quee only begins a third, and so on, forever and for aye. Such
that, one would is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly
effort.
the people of his Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed
ng feasts express fresh ; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows,
a large stained as a young colt his snortings . How I snuffed that Tartar
nchbowl always air !—how I spurned that turnpike earth that common
-aided mat where highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels
→rchant-ship once and hoofs ; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of
rom all accounts, the sea which will permit no records .
least for a sea At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink
le wedding feast and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart ; he
ss just turned of showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew; and
were assembled our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast ; ducked
marches in, and and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan . Side
es himself over ways leaning, we sideways darted ; every ropeyarn ting
High Priest and ling like a wire ; the two tall masts buckling like Indian
Grace being said, canes in land tornadoes . So full of this reeling scene were
I as we though we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some
such times look time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers ,
ontrary, copying a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow
rer of all feasts beings should be so companionable ; as though a white man
opens the ban were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro.
island : that is, But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by
ingers into the their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and
Seeing himself centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young
saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the
lony, and think
bumpkin's hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon,
s having plain
the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost
pecially in the
62 MOBY DICK.

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.
66
Capting! Capting ! " yelled the bumpkin, running to
wards 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
sh-e ; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e ; Queequeg kill-e
big whale ! "
" Look you," roared the Captain, " I'll kill-e you, you can
aboard here ; so
nibal, if you try99 any more of your tricks
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, com
pletely sweeping the entire afterpart 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 consterna
tion, 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, Quee
queg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a
 MOBY DICK. 63

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. Ilooked at the grand
and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The
greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicu
larly 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 XIV.

NANTUCKET.

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the men

tioning ; 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
64 MOBY DICK.

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 snowshoes ; 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 Eng
land 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, launch
ing a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery
world ; put an incessant belt of circumnavigation round it ;
peeped in at Behring's Straits ; and in all seasons and all
oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated
mass that has survived the flood ; most monstrous and most
mountainous ! That Himmalehan, salt- sea 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-her
mits, 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
 MOBY DICK. 65

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 them
selves, without seeking to draw their living from the bot
tomless 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 plan
tation. 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 bil
lows ; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land,
furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very
pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.

CHAPTER XV.

CHOWDER.

It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss

came snugly to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore ;
so we could attend to no 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 sort, 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 ware
house 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
5
66 MOBY DICK.

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 under
stood Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard. How
ever, 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 crosstrees 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 mis
giving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to
the two remaining horns ; yes, two of them, one for Quee
queg, and one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my
Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port ; tomb
stones 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, stand
ing 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, “ ɔr 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—" m 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 ? "
 MOBY DICK. 67

But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man

In the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry,
and seeming to hear nothing but the word " clam," Mrs.
Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the
kitchen, and bawling out " clam for two," disappeared .
" Queequeg," said I, " do you think that we can make
out a supper for us both on one clam ?"
However, a warm savoury steam from the kitchen served
to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us . But
when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was de
lightfully 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 announce
ment, 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 sav
oury steam came forth again, but with a different flavour,
and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us .
We resumed business ; and while plying our spoons in
the bowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this 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 vertebræ ; and Hosea Hussey had his ac
count books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was
a fishy flavour to the milk, too, which I could not at all ac
count 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.
68 MOBY DICK.

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 her
ring by way of variety."

CHAPTER XVI.

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 every
way, that instead of our going together among the whaling
fleet in harbour, 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 imme
diately ship myself, for the present irrespective of Quee
queg.
I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Quee
queg placed great confidence in the excellence of Yojo's
judgment and surprising forecast of things ; and cherished
 MOBY DICK.
69
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 ; 1 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 se
curely. But as all my remonstrances produced no effect
upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce ; and accord
ingly prepared to set about this business with a determined
rushing sort of energy and vigour, 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 Japan
ese 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 com
plexion 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
70 MOBY DICK.

old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and

wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canter
bury Cathedral where Beckett bled . But to all these her old
antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertain
ing 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 canni
bal 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 til
ler 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 Pottowattamie Sachem's head. A trian
gular opening faced towards the bows of the ship so that the
insider commanded a complete view forward.
 MOBY DICK. 71

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? "
66
" Nothing, sir ; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn .
I've been several
" voyages in the merchant service, and I
think that
"Marchant service be damned . Talk not that lingo to
me. Dost see that leg ? I'll take that leg away from thy
stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me
again. Marchant service 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 Cap
tain, 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 inuendoes, this old
seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of
72 MOBY DICK.

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 sup
plied 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 your
self 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."
 MOBY DICK. 73

"Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon

down a live whale's throat, and then jump after it ? An
swer, 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 re
quest, not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humor
ously 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 per
ceived 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 ; considera
ble horizon though, and there's a squall coming up, I
think."
66
Well, what dost 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 Cap
tain Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was one of the
largest owners of the vessel ; the other shares, as is some
times 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
74 MOBY DICK.

foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nan

tucket 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 Nan
tucketers, was a Quaker, the island having been originally
settled by that sect ; and to this day its inhabitants in gen
eral 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 unout
grown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character,
not unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan
Roman. And when these things unite in a man of greatly
superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponder
ous 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 circum
stances, he have what seems a half wilful over- ruling mor
bidness 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, re
tired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg —who cared
 MOBY DICK. 75

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 edu
cated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quaker
ism, 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 Peleg. Though refus
ing, 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 harpooner 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. In
dolence and idleness perished from before him . His own
76 MOBY DICK.

person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian charac

ter. 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, espe
cially 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 im
portance 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 consider
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 77

heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay—that is, the

275th part of the clear nett proceeds of the voyage, what
ever 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 accumu
late 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 dis
trustful 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, es
pecially 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
78 MOBY DICK.

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.
66 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 hundreth,"
said Peleg,"2 " do ye hear that, Bildad ! The three hundreth
lay, I say.'
Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards
him said, " Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart ; but
thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners
of this ship—widows and orphans, many of them—and that
if we too abundantly reward the labours of this young man,
we may be taking the bread from those widows and those
orphans. The seven hundred and seventy- seventh lay,
Captain Peleg."
"Thou, Bildad ! " roared Peleg, starting up and clatter
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 79

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 him
self.
"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 doubt
ing 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 un
seen 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 pro
longed, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly
brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing
80 MOBY DICK.

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. Anyhow, 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 Gay Head, said that the name would
somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like
her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's
a lie. I know Captain Ahab well ; I've sailed with him as
mate years ago ; I know what he is a good man— not a
pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man
something like me —only there's a good deal more of him.
Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly ; and I know
that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind
for a spell ; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his
 C
MOBY DICK. 81

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 direc
tions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE RAMADAN.

AS Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation ,

was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till
towards nightfall ; for I cherish the greatest respect to
wards 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.
6
82 MOBY DICK.

I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be char

itable 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 per
formances 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 apo
plectic fit. I looked through the keyhole ; but the door open
ing into an odd corner of the room, the keyhole 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 land
lady 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 downstairs, 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-keep
ing . La ! la, ma'am !—Mistress ! murder ! Mrs. Hussey ! apo
plexy !"—and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen,
I following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one
 MOBY DICK. 83

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 upstairs again
empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard
pot and vinegar- cruet, and the entire castor of her coun
tenance.
"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 Quee
queg'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 parlour ; ' —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 re
mained 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 ;
84 MOBY DICK.

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 the top of his
head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat
like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.
" Queequeg," said I, going up to him, " Queequeg, what's
the matter with you ? "
" He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has he ? " said the
landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him ; I
almost felt like pushing him over, so as to change his posi
tion, for it was almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully
and unnaturally constrained ; especially, as in all probabil
ity he had been sitting so for upwards of eight or ten hours,
going too without his regular meals.
"Mrs. Hussey," said I, " he's alive at all events ; so leave
us, if you please, and I will see to this strange affair myself."
Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavoured to pre
vail upon Queequeg to take a chair ; but in vain. There he
sat ; and all he could do--for all my polite arts and blandish
ments he would not move a peg, nor say a single word,
nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in the slight
est 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 forever, thank God, and his Ramadan
only comes once a year ; and I don't believe it's very punc
tual then.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listen
ing to the long stories of some sailors who had just come
from a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it (that is, a
short whaling- voyage in a schooner or brig, confined to the
north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only) ; after listening
to these plum -puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, I went
upstairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Quee
queg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termi
nation . But no ; there he was just where I had left him ;
he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow vexed with
 MOBY DICK. 85

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 your
self ; 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— sit
ting 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 per
son'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 primi
tive religions, and coming down to the various religions of
the present time, during which time I laboured to show
Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged
ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark non
sense ; 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 ex
86 MOBY DICK.

tremely 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 religion
ists 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 im
portant 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
abou 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 pro
digiously 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.
 MOBY DICK. 87

CHAPTER XVIII.

HIS MARK.

AS we were walking down the end of the wharf towards

the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in
his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying
he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and further
more 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 ? "
66
Why," said I, " he's a member of the first Congrega
tional Church." Here be it said, that many tattooed sav
ages 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 put
ting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and
leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at
Queequeg.
" Howlong hath he been a member ? " he then said, turn
ing to me ; "not very long, I rather guess , young man."
" No," said Peleg, " and he hasn't been baptised 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
88 MOBY DICK.

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 noways 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 brac
ing his left knee, and posing 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
takin sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bil
dad'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 harpooner yet out of Nantucket."
 MOBY DICK. 89

So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy

Queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship's com
pany 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,
99 blast ye ! dost thou sign thy name or make
thy mark ?
But at this question , Queequeg, who had twice or thrice
before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked noways
abashed ; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper,
in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a queer round
figure which was tattooed upon his arm ; so that through
Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his 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 ; ifthou still
clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech
thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman . Spurn the idol
Bel, and the hideous dragon ; turn from the wrath to come ;
mind thine eye, I say ; oh ! goodness gracious ! steer clear
of the fiery pit ! "
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's
language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and do
mestic phrases.
" Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling
our harpooner," cried Peleg . " Pious harpooners never
make good voyagers—it takes the shark out of ' em ; no
harpooner is worth a straw who ain't pretty sharkish.
There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat
header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard ; he joined
the meeting, and never came to good . He got so fright
ened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered
90 MOBY DICK.

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 ty
phoon 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 pock
ets, " hear him, all of ye. Think of that ! When every
moment we thought the ship would sink ! Death and the
Judgment then ? What ? With all three masts making
such an everlasting thundering against the side ; and every
sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and
the Judgment then ? No ! no time to think about Death
then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of ;
and how to save all hands—how to rig jury-masts — how to
get into the nearest port ; that was what I was thinking
of."
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked
on deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very
quietly overlooking some sail-makers who were mending a
top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up
a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, which other I
wise might have been wasted .

CHAPTER XIX.

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 oc
cupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were
But 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 trow
sers ; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A
Burnhun Shute

" Aye, the Piquod - that ship there.' "

 MOBY DICK. 91

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 T, 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 in
sane 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."
92 MOBY DICK.

"That's true, that's true—yes, both true enough. But

you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl ; 爨
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 1
nights ; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the 1
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 mat
ters 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 1
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 im
portant to tell us, out with it ; but if you are only trying
to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game ; that's all
I have to say." I
" 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."

1
 MOBY DICK. 93

" 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 comment
ing, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor ;
and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be
a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred
yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and 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-hint
ing, 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 cal
bash ; 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 re
traced 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 hum
bug.

#Mis
s
94 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER XX.

ALL ASTIR.

A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard

the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended,
but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas,
and coils of rigging ; in short, everything betokened that
the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain
Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam
keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands : Bildad did all
the purchasing and providing at the stores ; and the men
employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till
long after nightfall.
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 sail 11
ing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving,
however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they 1
always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship 1
did not sail for several days. But no wonder ; there was
a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many
things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully
equipped.
Every one knows what a multitude of things — beds ,
saucepans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs , napkins,
nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the busi
ness of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which neces
sitates 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 ves
sels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with
whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling
voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution
of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at
the remote harbours usually frequented , it must be remem
bered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed
to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction
 MOBY DICK. 95

and loss of the very things upon which the success of the
voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars,
and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everything, almost,
but a spare Captain and duplicate ship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest stor
age 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 boards 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 deter
mined 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 con
cerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of
well-saved dollars.
But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quaker
ess 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 con
cluded 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
96 MOBY DICK.

every day ; meantime, the two Captains, Peleg and

Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the ves
sel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with
myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I
did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a
voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to
be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out
upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong,
it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the
matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even
from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said
nothing, and tried to think nothing.
At last it was given out that some time next day the ship
would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I
took a very early start.

CHAPTER XXI.

GOING ABOARD.

It was nearly six o'clock, but only 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 , 66 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 oblige my friend and me by with
 MOBY DICK. 97

drawing. 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 every
thing in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin
entrance was locked within ; the hatches were all on, and
lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the fore
castle, 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
7
98 MOBY DICK.

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 neaving
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,
ow ng to the absence of settees and sofas of all so 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 re
ceived the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet
side of it over the sleeper's head.
" What's that for, Queequeg ? "
" Perry easy, kill-e ; oh ! perry easy ! "
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about
his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses
both brained his foes and soothed his soul , when we were
directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapour
now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell
upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness ; then
seemed troubled in the nose ; then revolved over once or
twice ; then sat up and rubbed his eyes.
" Holloa ! " he breathed at last, " who 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.
 MOBY DICK. 99

" What Captain ?—Ahab ? "

"Who but him indeed ? "
I was going to ask him some further questions concern
ing Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck.
" 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 XXII .

MERRY CHRISTMAS .

At length, toward noon, upon the final dismissal of the

ship's riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out
from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had
come off in a whaleboat, 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
100 MOBY DICK.

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 oc
cupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And
here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to
his other offices, was one of the licensed pilots of the port-—
he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in
order to save the 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
 MOBY DICK. 101

the perils we both ran , in starting on the voyage with such

devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with
the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some sal
vation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy- seventh lay!
when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning
round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in
the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity.
That was my first kick.
" Is that the way they heave in the marchant service ? "
he roared. " Spring, thou sheep-head ; spring, and break
thy backbone ! Why don't ye spring, I say, all of ye
spring ! Quohag ! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers ;
spring there, Scotch-cap ; spring, thou green pants.
Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out ! " And
so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there
using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept
leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg
must have been drinking something to-day.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we
glided . It was a sharp, cold Christmas ; and as the short
northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost
broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased
us in ice, as in polished armour. The long rows of teeth on
the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight ; and like the
white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving
icicles depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever
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.
102 MOBY DICK.

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 ship
mate 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 brim
ful 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, con
vulsively 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 care
ful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stake the boats needlessly,
ye harpooners ; 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
 MOBY DICK. 103

spare staves . Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker !

Don't whale it too much a' Lord's day, men ; but don't miss
a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts .
Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb ; it was a little
leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask ,
beware of fornication. Good- bye, good-bye ! Don't keep
that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck ; it'll
spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the pound
it was, and mind ye, if ―"
99
"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 XXIII .

THE LEE SHORE.

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a

tall, new-landed mariner, encountered in New Bedford at
the inn.
When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust
her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who
should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington ! I looked
with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who
in midwinter just landed from a four years ' dangerous voy
age, 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 miser
ably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain
give succour ; the port is pitiful ; in the port is safety, com
fort, 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 hos
104 MOBY DICK.

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

Į
T

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ADVOCATE.

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this busi

ness of whaling ; and as this business of whaling has some
how come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather
unpoetical and disreputable pursuit ; therefore, I am all
anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby
done to us hunters of whales . 4
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous
to establish the fact, that among people at large, the busi
ness 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 harpooner, say ; and if in
emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials
 MOBY DICK. 105
S. W. F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such
a procedure would be deemed pre- eminently presuming
and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines
honouring us whalemen, is this : they think that, at best,
our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business ; and
that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by
all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true.
But butchers, also, and butchers, of the bloodiest badge
have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invari
ably delights to honour. And as for the matter of the alleged
uncleanliness of our business , ye shall soon be initiated into
certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which,
upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm 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 con
ceit 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 outnum
ber 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
106 MOBY DICK.

dollars ; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,

000 ; and every year importing into our harbours a well
reaped harvest of $7,000,000 . How comes all this, if there
be not something puissant in whaling ?
But this is not the half ; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot,
for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which
within the last sixty years has operated more 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 remot
est 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 harbours , let
them fire salutes to the honour and the glory of the whale
ship, which originally showed them the way, and first in
terpreted between them and the savages . They may cele
brate 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 chap
ters 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 whale
man who first broke through the jealous policy of the
Spanish crown, touching those colonies ; and, if space per
 MOBY DICK. 107

mitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whale

men 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, Aus
tralia, was given to the enlightened world by the whale
man. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutch
man, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestifer
ously 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 mission
aries to their first destinations . If that double -bolted land,
Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship
alone to whom the credit will be due ; for already she is on
the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whal
ing 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 narra
tive 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 Ben
jamin 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 harpooners — all
kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
108 MOBY DICK.

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

*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.

 MOBY DICK. 109

CHAPTER XXV.

POSTSCRIPT.

In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance

naught but substantiated facts . But after embattling his
facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not un
reasonable 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
ofstate, 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 corona
tion, 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 ofthis 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,
nortrain 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!
110 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER XXVI.

KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES .

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of

Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earn
est 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 chronome
ter, 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
I
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, some
how, 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
 MOBY DICK. 111

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 " care
ful " 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 . Be
sides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling,
courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like
her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted.
Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after
sundown ; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much
persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am
here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and
not to be killed by them for theirs ; and that hundreds of
men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom
was his own father's ? Where, in the bottomless deeps ,
could he find the torn limbs of his brother ?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given
to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said ; the courage
of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless , still flourish,
must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in reason
able 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
112 MOBY DICK.

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 glow
ing 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 valour-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 omni
presence, our divine equality !
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and casta
ways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark ;
weave round them tragic graces ; if even the most mourn
ful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at
times lift himself to the exalted mounts ; if I shall touch
that workman's arm with some ethereal light ; if I shall
spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun ; then
against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou Just
Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of
humanity over all my kind ! Bear me out in it, thou great
democratic God ! who didst not refuse to the swart convict,
Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl ; Thou who didst clothe with
doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and
paupered arm of old Cervantes ; Thou who didst pick up
Andrew Jackson fromthe pebbles ; who didst hurl him upon
a warhorse ; who didst thunder him higher than a throne !
Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cull
est Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons ;
bear me out in it, O God!
 MOBY DICK. 113

CHAPTER XXVII.

KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES.

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape

Cod ; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape
Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky ; neither craven nor valiant,
taking perils as they came with an indifferent air ; and while
engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling
away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged
for the year. Good-humoured, easy, and careless, he pre
sided 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-humour of his ; that thing must
have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little
pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would
almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk
without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row
of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy
reach of his hand ; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked
8
114 MOBY DICK.

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 mor
tals 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 pugna
cious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think
that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily
affronted him ; and therefore, it was a sort of point of
honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered .
So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many
marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways ; and so
dead to anything like an 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 con
cussions of those battering seas.
Now these three mates— Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were
momentous men . They it was who by universal prescrip
tion commanded three of the Pequod's boats as headsmen.
In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would
 MOBY DICK. 115

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 harpooners were flingers
of javelins .
And since in this famous fishery, each mate or heads
man, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by
his boatsteerer or harpooner, who in certain conjunctures
provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has
been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault ; and more
over, 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 harpooners 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 Nan
tucket with many of her most daring harpooners . 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 wood
land, 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 harpooners was Daggoo, a gigantic,
coal-black negro- savage, with a lion -like tread— an Ahasu
erus 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
116 MOBY DICK.

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 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 Ameri
cans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are . Here
in 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 fore
castle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine ;
 MOBY DICK. 117

prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great

quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and
beat his tambourine in glory ; called a coward here, hailed
a hero there !

CHAPTER XXVIII .

AHAB.

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 unin
vitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not
have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand
them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile
at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of
the wharves. But whatever it was of 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 har
pooners, 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,
118 MOBY DICK.

which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colour

less misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in
every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more
likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way,
could not readily be found, and they were every one of
them Americans ; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape
man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from
out her harbour, for a space we had biting Polar weather,
though all the time running away from it to the south
ward ; 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 apprehensions ; Captain Ahab stood upon
his quarter-deck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about
him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man
cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly
wasted all the limbs without consuming 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 Per
seus . 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
 MOBY DICK. 119

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 discern
ment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him
when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tran
quilly 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 over
bearing 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 com
ing 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 in
finity 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 visi
ble 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
120 MOBY DICK.

the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead win
try bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded.
And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost contin
ually in the air ; but, as yet, for all that he said, or percep
tibly 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 com
petent 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 persuasive
ness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed
gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the
red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the
wintry, misanthropic woods ; even the barest, ruggedest,
most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some
few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants ;
so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful al
lurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth
the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would
have soon flowered out in a smile.

CHAPTER XXIX.

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
 MOBY DICK. 121

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 consider
ating touch of humanity was in him ; for at times like these,
he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck ; be
cause to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches
of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating
crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would
have been of the crunching teeth of sharks . But once, the
mood was on him too deep for common regardings ; and as
with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship
from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the odd second mate came
up from below, and with a certain unassured, deprecating
humourousness, 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 did'st
not know Ahab then.
"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb, " said Ahab, " that thou
122 MOBY DICK.

wouldst wad me that fashion ? But go thy ways ; I had

forgot. Below to thy nightly grave ; where such as ye sleep
between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last .— Down,
dog, and kennel ! "
Starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of
the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless
a moment ; then said excitedly, " I am not used to
be spoken to that way, sir ; I do but less than half like it,
""
sir.'
"Avast ! " gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and
violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate
temptation .
"No, sir ; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, " I will not
tamely be called a dog, sir."
" Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an
ass, and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee ! "
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such
overbearing 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 descend
ing 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 ain't in his bed now, either, more than three hours out
of the twenty-four ; and he don't sleep then . Didn't that
Dough- Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he
always finds the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled
and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the
coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of
frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it ? A
hot old man ! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call
a conscience ; it's a kind of Tic-dolly-row they say worse
nor a toothache. Well, well ; I don't know what it is, but
the Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles ; I
wonder what he goes into the after-hold for, every night,
as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects ; what's that for, Í
 MOBY DICK. 123

should like to know? Who's made appointments with him

in the hold ? Ain't that queer, now ? But there's no tell
ing, 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 hear 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 XXX.

THE PIPE.

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while lean

ing over the bulwarks ; and then, as had been usual with
him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below
for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at
the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather
side of the deck, he sat and smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish
kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the
narwhal. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on
that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty
it symbolised ? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of
the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed , during which the thick vapor
came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs , which
124 MOBY DICK.

blew back again into his face, "How now," he soliloquised

at last, withdrawing the tube, " this smoking no longer
soothes. Oh, my pipe ! hard must it go with me if thy
charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling,
not pleasuring, —aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward
all the while ; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs,
as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest
and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this
'pipe ? This thing that is meant for 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 XXXI.

QUEEN MAB.

Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

" Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You
know the old man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me
with it ; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my
little man, I kicked my leg right off ! And then, presto !
Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept
kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you
know how curious all dreams are—through all this rage
that I was in, I somehow seemed to be 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 be
tween 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 contra
dictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to
myself, ' what's his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone cane.
 MOBY DICK, 125

Yes,' thinks I, it was only a playful cudgelling— in fact,

only a whaleboning that he gave me--not a base kick. Be
sides,' thinks I, ' look at it once ; why, the end of it—the
foot part—what a small sort of end it is ; whereas, if a
broad-footed farmer kicked me, there's a devilish broad in
sult. 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 bad
ger-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.
6
' 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. 6 Very
good,' says he he used his ivory leg, didn't he ? ' ' Yes,
6
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 honour ; I consider it an
honour. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest
lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and
made garter-knights of ; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye
were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Re
member what I say ; be kicked by him ; account his kicks
honours ; and on no account kick back ; for you can't help
yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid ? ' With
that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer
fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored ; rolled over ;
 1

126 MOBY DICK.

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'."
66
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 that old man alone ; never speak to him, whatever he
says . Halloa ! what's that he shouts ? Hark ! "
Mast-head, there ! Look sharp, all of ye ! there are
whales hereabouts ! If ye see a white one, split your lungs
for him ! "
"What d'ye think of that now, Flask ? ain't there a small
drop of something queer about that, eh ? A white whale
did ye mark that, man ? Look ye— there's something spe
cial in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has that
that's bloody on his mind. But, mum ; he comes this way."

CHAPTER XXXII.

CETOLOGY.

Already we are boldly launched upon the deep ; but

soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensi
ties . 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 in
dispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of
the more special leviathanic revelations and illusions of all
sorts which are to follow.
It is some systematised exhibition of the whale in his
broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet
is it no easy task. The classification of the constituents of
a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the
best and latest authorities have laid down.
" No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that
which is entitled Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A. D.
1820.
"It is not my intention , were it in my power, to enter
into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the
cetacea into groups and families . Utter con
 MOBY DICK. 127

fusion 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 ofthe
cetacea ." " A field strewn with thorns." " All these in
complete 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 knowledges there be little, yet
of books there are plenty ; and so in some small degree,
with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the
men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen,
who have at large or in little, written of the whale . Run
over a few :—The Authors of the Bible ; Aristotle ; Pliny ;
Aldrovandi ; Sir Thomas Browne ; Gesner ; Ray ; Linnæus ;
Rondeletius ; Willoughby ; Green ; Artedi ; Sibbald ; Bris
son ; Marten ; Lacépède ; Bonneterre ; Desmarest ; Baron
Cuvier ; Frederick Cuvier ; John Hunter ; Owen ; Scores
by ; Beale ; Bennett ; J. Ross Browne ; the Author of
Miriam Coffin ; Olmstead ; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to
what ultimate generalising 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 harpooner and whaleman. I
mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of the Green
land 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 Green
land 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 !
128 MOBY DICK.

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 Beal's and Bennett's ; both in their time surgeons
to English South- Sea whale-ships, and both exact and reli
able 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 con
fined to scientific description . As yet, however, the sperm
whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any liter
ature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an un
written 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 depart
ments by subsequent labourers . As no better man advances
to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor.
endeavours. I promise nothing complete ; because any
human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very
reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute
anatomical description of the various species, or— in this
place at least to much of any description. My object here
is simply to project the draught of a systematisation of
cetology. I am the architect, not the builder.
But it is a ponderous task ; no ordinary letter-sorter in
the Post-office is equal to it . To grope down into the bot
tom 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 shads, alewives and herring, against
 MOBY DICK. 129

Linnæus's express edict, were still found dividing the posses

sion of the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have ban
ished 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 ex
ternals, 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
* I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lama
tins 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 pas
ports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.
130 MOBY DICK.

must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now,

then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
First : According to magnitude I divide the whales into
three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into Chapters), and
these shall comprehend them all, both small and large.
I. The FOLIO WHALE ;. II the OCTAVO WHALE ; III . the
Duodecimo Whale.
As the type of the Folio I present the Sperm Whale ; of
the Octave, the Grampus ; ofthe 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 inhabit
ant ofthe globe ; the most formidable of all whales to encoun
ter ; 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 ac
cidentally 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
humour of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable
of the word literally expresses . In those times, also, sper
maceti 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.
 MOBY DICK. 131

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 spe
cially known as " whale oil," an inferior article in com
merce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately des
ignated by all the following titles : The Whale ; the Green
land 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 Eng
lish whalemen ; the Baliene Ordinaire of the French whale
men ; 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 sub
divisions based upon the most inconclusive differences ,
that some departments of natural history become so repel
lingly 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 de
rives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is
some three or four feet long, growing vertically from the
132 MOBY DICK.

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 ris
ing 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 sev
eral 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 allu
sions 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 peculiar
ities 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
 MOBY DICK. 133

these has baleen ; but there again the similitude ceases.

And it is just the same with the other parts above men
tioned . In various sorts of whales, they form such irreg
ular combinations ; or, in the case of any one of them de
tached, such an irregular isolation ; as utterly to defy all
general methodisation formed upon such a basis. On this
rock every one of the whale-naturalists has split.
But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal
parts of the whale, in his anatomy—there, at least, we shall
be able to hit the right classification. 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 Green
land whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the
various leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions.
a fiftieth part as available to the systematiser as those ex
ternal ones already enumerated. What then remains ?
nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their en
tire 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 prac
ticable . To proceed .
BOOKI. (Folio), Chapter IV. (Hump- Back).— This whale
is often seen on the northern American coast. He has been
frequently captured there, and towed into harbour. He has
a great pack on him like a pedlar ; 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).—An
other retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless
got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his pro
founder divings . He is seldom seen ; at least I have never
134 MOBY DICK.

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 at present may be numbered :—I.,
the Grampus ; II., the Black Fish ; III., the Narwhal ;
IV., the Thrasher ; V., the Killer.
BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter I. (Grampus).—Though this
fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has
furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen
of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales.
But possessing all the grand 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 black
ness is the rule among almost all whales . So, call him the
Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known,
and from the circumstances that the inner angles of his lips
are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephisto
phelian grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen
or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all lat
itudes . 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

*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of
the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in
figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its diminished form does
not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
 MOBY DICK. 135

supply of cheap oil for domestic employment-as some

frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite
alonebythemselves, burn unsavoury tallow instead of odour
ous wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these
whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. ( Octavo), Chapter III. (Narwhal), that is,
Nostril whale.—Another instance of a curiously named
whale, so named I 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, grow
ing 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 Narwhal 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 Narwhal, 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 Narwhal—however that may be— it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading
pamphlets. The Narwhal 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 re
turn from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly
wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Green
wich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames ;
"when Sir Martin returned from that voyage," saith Black
136 MOBY DICK.

Letter, " on bended knees he presented to her highness a

prodigious long horn of the Narwhal, 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, pertain
ing to a land beast of the unicorn nature.
The Narwhal has a very picturesque , leopard-like look,
being of a milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and
oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clear and
fine ; but there is little of it , and he is seldom hunted . He
is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
BOOK II . ( Octavo), 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 Feejee
fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the
lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is
worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never
heard what sort of oil he has. Exceptions might be taken.
to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of
its indistinctness . For we are all killers , on land and on
sea ; Bonapartes and Sharks included .
BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter V. (Thrasher).—This gentle
man 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 com
monly 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 I. (Huzza Porpoise.
 MOBY DICK. 137

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 al
ways 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 de
light 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, inthe
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 quite a
neat and gentlemanlike fig e. He has no fins on his back
(most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sen
timental 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
138 MOBY DICK.

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 forecastle ap
pellations ; 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 Duode
cimo 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 noth
ing.
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 draught— nay, but the draught of a draught.
Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience !
 MOBY DICK. 139

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE SPECKSYNDER.

Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as

good a place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity
on shipboard, arising from the existence of the harpooner
class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other
marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooner's voca
tion is evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch
Fishery, two centuries and more ago, the command of a
whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now
called the captain, but was divided between him and an
officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means
Fat- Cutter ; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to
Chief Harpooner. In those days, the captain's authority
was restricted to the navigation and general management
of the vessel ; while over the whale-hunting department
and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooner
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 Harpooner ; and as such , is
one of the Captain's more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless
as upon the good conduct of the harpooners 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 ; there
fore 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
140 MOBY DICK.

of the American whalers the harpooners 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 com
municating 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 inter
est 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 punc
tilious 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 pur
ple, 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 para
mount 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 them
 MOBY DICK. 141

selves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for
ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the
world's hustings ; and leaves the highest honours that this
air can give, to those men who become famous more
through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden hand
ful 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 hous
ings are denied me. Oh, Ahab, what shall be grand in
thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived
for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air !

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE CABIN-TABLE .

It is noon ; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his

pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin- scuttle, announces
dinner to his lord and master ; who, sitting in the lee
quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the
sun ; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the
smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily
purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his com
plete inattention to the tidings, you would think that
moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently,
catching hold of the mizzen shrouds, he swings himself to
142 MOBY DICK.

the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, " Din.

ner, 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 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 re
straint ; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks'in all sort of
directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp
but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's
head ; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap
up into the mizzen-top for a shelf, he goes down rollicking,
so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing
all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses,
ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilari
ous little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the char
acter 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 com
mander ; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next
moment go down to their customary dinner in that same
commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not
to say deprecatory and humble air 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 in
dividual influence for the time ; that man's royalty of state
transcends Belshazzar's for Belshazzar was not the greatest.
 MOBY DICK. 143

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
nowithstanding. Now, ifto 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 sup
pose that for the world they would have profaned that
moment with the slightest observation, even upon so
neutral a topic as the weather. No ! And when reaching
out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was
locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards
him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms ;
and cut it tenderly ; and a little startled if, perchance, the
knifegrazed against the plate ; and chewed it noiselessly ; and
swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the
Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Em
peror 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 con
versation ; 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 him
self, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in
the first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubt
less, never more would he have been able to hold his head
up in this honest world ; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab
ever forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the
chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it . Least
ofall, 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
144 MOBY DICK.

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 other
wise 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 forever 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 skylight, sitting
silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be
called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After their
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 harpooners 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 harpooners.
While their masters, the mates , seemed afraid of the sound
of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooners chewed
their food with such a relish that there was a report to it.
They dined like lords ; they filled their bellies like Indian
 MOBY DICK. 145

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 humour,
assisted Dough-Boy's memory by snatching him up bodily,
and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher,
while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle
preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very
nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this 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 con
tinual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooners
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 Tash
tego, 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 mouth
fuls 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
10
146 MOBY DICK.

hanging around him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the

palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooners car
ried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons ;
and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostenta
tiously sharpen their knives ; that grating sound did not at
all tend to tranquillise poor Dough-Boy. How could he
forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must cer
tainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indis
cretions. 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 nom
inally lived there ; still, being anything but sedentary in
their habits, they were scarcely ever in it except at meal
times, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed
through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most
American whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline 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
harpooners 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 com
panionship ; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nom
inally 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 inclem
ent, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved
trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its
gloom !
 MOBY DICK. 147

CHAPTER XXXV .

THE MAST-HEAD.

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due

rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came
round .
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned
almost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port ;
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 draw,
ing 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 Egyp
tians . 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 : atheory 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 mod
ern 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
148 MOBY DICK.

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 sing
ing out upon discovering any strange sight. There is Napo
leon ; who, upon the top of the column of Vendôme, stands
with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air ;
careless, now, who rules the decks below ; whether Louis Phil
ippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington,
too, stands high aloft on his towering main -mast in Balti
more, 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 ob
scured 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 sunrise to sunset ; the seamen taking their regular
turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two
 MOBY DICK. 149

hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceeding

ly 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 ac
counts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary
excitements ; you hear of no domestic afflictions ; bankrupt
securities ; fall of stocks ; are never troubled with the
thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your
meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks,
and your bill of fare is immutable .
In one of those southern whalemen, on a long three or
four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various
hours you spend at the 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 fleshly tabernacle,
and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of
it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant
pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter) ; so a watch
coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or
additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or
150 MOBY DICK.

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 fire
side narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled " A Voyage among
the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incident
ally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of
Old Greenland ; " in this admirable volume, all standers of
mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial
account of the then recently invented crow's- nest of the
Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft.
He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honour of himself ; he
being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all
ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our
own children after our own names (we fathers being the
original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we
denominate after 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 narwhals, or vagrant sea
unicorns infesting those waters ; for you cannot success
fully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance
of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very dif
ferent thing. Now, it was plainly a labour of love for
Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed
conveniences of his crow's-nest ; but though he so enlarges
upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very
scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest,
with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of
counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the
 MOBY DICK. 151

" local attraction " of all binnacle magnets ; an error ascri

bable 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," " azi
muth 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 replen
ished 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 study
ing the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within
three or four perches of the pole.
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed
aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were ; yet that
disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely con
trasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South
fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rig
ging 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 com
pletely 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
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
152 MOBY DICK.

ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint
of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all un
needed. 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 honourable ambition,
as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales
than otherwise. But all in vain ; those young Platonists
have a notion that their vision is imperfect ; they are short
sighted ; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve ? They
have left their opera-glasses at home.
"Why, thou monkey," said a harpooner to one of these
lads, " we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and
thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as
hen's teeth whenever thou art up here." Perhaps they
were ; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in
the far horizon ; but lulled into such an opium-like listless
ness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded
youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that
at last he loses his identity ; takes the mystic ocean at his
feet for the visible image of that deep , blue, bottomless soul,
pervading mankind and nature : and every strange, half
seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him ; every dimly
discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form , seems
to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only
people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this
enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came ;
becomes diffused through time and space ; like Crammer'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 im
parted 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
 MOBY DICK. 153

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 sum
mer sea, no more to rise forever. Heed it well, ye Pan
theists !

CHAPTER XXXVI.

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 footprints—the footprints of his one un
sleeping, 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 move
ment.
" 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 pur
pose 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
154 MOBY DICK.

auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he

ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
" Sir! " said the mate, astonished at an order seldom
or never given on shipboard except in some extraordinary
case.
" Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. " Mast- heads ,
there ! come down ! "
When the entire ship's company were assembled, and
with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were
eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon
when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing
over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the
crew, started from his standpoint ; and as though not a soul
were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck.
With bent head and half-slouched hat he 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 : 1
"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men ? " I
66
' 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 approv
ing, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout ;
while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other,
as if marvelling how it was that they themselves be
came 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."
 MOBY DICK. 155

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 with
out using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to
himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and in
articulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the
wheels of his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced to
wards 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 tar
paulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.
" It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw
down the top-maul ; " a white whale. Skin your eyes 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.
66
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, 99even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain
Ahab ?
" And he have one, two, tree—oh ! good many iron in
him hide, too, Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, " all
twisketee be-twisk, like him—him—" faltering hard for a
word, and screwing his hand round and round as through
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
156 MOBY DICK.

of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shear

ing; 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
razed me ; made a poor pegging lubber of me forever and
a day !" Then tossing both arms, with measureless impreca
tions he shouted out : " Aye, aye ! and I'll chase him round
I
Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway
:
Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him I
up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men ! to chase
that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides I
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, run
ning 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
 MOBY DICK. 157

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 blas
phemous."
" 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 pris
oner 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 others ; 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, breath
ing 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 yon
der 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,
158 MOBY DICK.

surely he will not hang back, when every foremost hand has
clutched a whetstone ? Ah ! constrainings seize thee ; I see !
the billow lifts thee ! Speak, but speak !—Aye, aye ! thy
silence, then, that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from
my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Star
buck now is mine ; cannot oppose me now, without re
bellion." I
"God keep me !—keep us all ! " murmured Starbuck,
lowly. I
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 vibra
tions 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 warn
ings ! 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 har
pooners, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then
ranging them before him near the capstan, with their har
poons 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 excel
lently. It spiralizes in ye ; forks out at the serpent-snap
ping 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 !

1
 MOBY DICK. 159

"Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round

this capstan ; and ye mates, flank me with your lances ; and
ye harpooners, 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, were't not thou St. Vitus' imp
away, thou ague!
66
Advance, ye mates ! Cross your lances full before me.
Well done ! Let me touch the axis." So saying, with ex
tended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at
their crossed centre ; while so doing, suddenly and ner
vously 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 harpooners . Disdain the task ? What, when
the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara
for ewer ? Oh, my sweet cardinals ! your own condescen
sion, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye ; ye will it .
Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooners ! "
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooners 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 cupbearers, advance. The irons !
take them ; hold them while I fill ! Forthwith, slowly
going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon
socket with the fiery waters from the pewter.
" Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murder
ous chalices ! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties
160 MOBY DICK.

to this indissoluble league. Ha ! Starbuck ! but the deed is

done ! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it . Drink !
ye harpooners ! 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 re
plenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew ;
when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed ;
and Ahab retired within his cabin.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

SUNSET.

The cabin ; by the stern windows : Ahab sitting alone, and

gazing out.

I leave a white and turbid wake ; pale waters, paler

cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell
to whelm my track ; let them ; but first I pass .
Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm
waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue.
The diver sun— slow dived from noon, —goes down ; my
soul mounts up ! she wearies with her endless hill. Is,
then, the crown too heavy that I wear ? this Iron Crown of
Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem ; I, the
wearer, see not its far flashings ; but darkly feel that I
wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron— that I
know— not gold. 'Tis split, too— that I feel ; the jagged
edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid
metal ; 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 per
ception, I lack the low, enjoying power ; damned) most
 MOBY DICK. 161

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 stub
born, at the least ; but my one cogged circle fits into all
their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like
so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me ; and
I their match. Oh, hard ! that to fire others, the match
itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed ,
and what I've willed, I'll do ! They think me mad— Star
buck 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 ful
filler 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
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 you 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 XXXVIII .

DUSK.

By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

My soul is more than matched ; she's overmanned ; and

by a madman ! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground
arms on such a field ! But he drilled deep down, and
blasted all my reason out of me ! I think I see his impious
end ; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the
ineffable thing has tied me to him ; tows me with a cablə
11
162 MOBY DICK.

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 ofrevelry from the forecastle.
Oh, God ! to sail with such a heathen crew that have
small touch of human mothers in them ! Whelped some
where by the sharkish sea. The white whale is their demi
gorgon. Hark ! the infernal orgies ! that revelry is for Į
ward ! mark the unfaltering silence aft ! Methinks it pic #
1
tures 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, I
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 XXXIX.

FIRST NIGHT-WATCH.

FORE-TOP.

(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)

HA! ha ha ha ! hem ! clear my throat ! —I've been

thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final con
 MOBY DICK. 163

sequence. Why so ? Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest

answer to all that's queer ; and come what will, one com
fort's always left—that unfailing comfort is, it's all pre
destinated . I heard not all his talk with Starbuck ; but to
my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other
evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too . I
twigged it, knew it ; had had the gift, might readily have
prophesied it for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I
saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb—that's my title— well,
Stubb, what of it, Stubb ? Here's a carcase. I know not
all that may be coming, 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 harpooners , 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 XL.

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 diges
tion ! Take a tonic, follow me !
(Sings, and all follow.)
164 MOBY DICK.

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 !
Math's Voice From The Quarter-deck.
Eight bells there, forward !
2d 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 be
low! Tumble up !
DUTCH SAILOR.
Grand snoozing to-night, maty ; fat night for that. I
marked this in our old Mogul's wine ; it's quite as deaden
ing 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 !
 MOBY DICK. 165

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 come's 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 ofrigging. 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.
166 MOBY DICK.

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 beats
head-winds round corners . O Christ ! to think of the
green navies and the green-skulled crews ! Well, well ;
belike the whole world's a ball, as you scholars have it ;
and so 'tis right to make one ball-room 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 chassée with them
evermore ! There's naught so sweet on earth— heaven may
not match it !—as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms
in the dance, when the over-arbouring arms hide such ripe,
bursting grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR.
(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
 MOBY DICK. 167

thence ; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me !--not tho

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, helms
man ! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave
hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our cap
tain has his birth-mark ; 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, harpooner, thy race is
168 MOBY DICK.

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 some
what 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
 MOBY DICK. 169

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 climb
ing 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 ana
conda 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 XLI.
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 ear 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 unac
companied, 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 Bail
of any sort ; the inordinate length of each separate voyage ;
the irregularity of the times of sailing from home ; all these,
170 MOBY DICK.

with other circumstances, direct and indirect, long ob

structed 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 re
pulses, 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 rumours of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and
still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly
encounters. For not only do fabulous rumours naturally
grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,
-as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi ; but, in mari
time life, far more than in that of terra firms, wild rumours
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 mari
time life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the ru
mours which sometimes circulate there. For not only are
whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and su
 MOBY DICK. 171

perstitiousness 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 chisled 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
rumours 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 unbor
rowed from anything that visibly appears. So that in
many cases such a panic did he finally strike, that few who
by those rumours, at least, had heard of the White Whale,
few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils
of his jaw.
But there were still other and more vital practical influ
ences at work. Not even at the present day has the origi
nal 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, espe
cially 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 them .
And as if the now tested reality of his might had in
 MOBY DICK.

rmer 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 fero
cious 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 re
ports 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 Eight
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 re
markable 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 in
stant 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

•
 MOBY DICK. 173

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 ex
perience 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 under
ground passage) ; these fabulous narrations are almost
fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman.
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 ubiqui
tous, 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 unensan
guined billows hundred of leagues away, his unsullied jet
would once more be seen.
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings , there
was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character
of the 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 wrin
174 MOBY DICK.

kled 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, intelli
gent 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 pur
suers,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 afore
thought 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 sweep
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 175

or Malay, could have smote him with more seeing malice.

Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that
almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindic
tiveness 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 assail
able 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 agonising bodily laceration, 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
176 MOBY DICK.

his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rock

ings 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 still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy
subsided not, but deepeningly contracted ; like the un
abated 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 con
centrated 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 re
mains unhinted. But vain to popularise 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 royal
ties ; and from your grim sire only will the old State-secret
come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely :
 MOBY DICK. 177

all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet

without power to kill, or change, or shun the fact ; he like
wise 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 Nan
tucketer 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 brood
ing on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that far from
distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on ac
count of such dark symptoms, the calculating people ofthat
prudent isle were inclined to harbour the conceit, that for
those very reasons he was all the better qualified and set
on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the
bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched with
out, 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 ap
palling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be
corporally 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, cer
tain 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 -engross
ing 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, chas
ing 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
12
178 MOBY DICK.

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 subter
ranean 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 bandonment of the time and
place ; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale,
could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.

CHAPTER XLII.

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 en
hances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its
own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls ; and though
various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal
pre-eminence in this hue ; even the barbaric, grand old
 MOBY DICK. 179

kings of Pegu placing the title " Lord of the White Ele
phants " above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of
dominion ; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the
same snow-white 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 master
ship 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 symbolisings, this
same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things
—the innocence of brides, the benignity of age ; though
among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt
of wampum was the deepest pledge of honour ; though in
many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in
the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state
of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds ; though
even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it
has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and
power ; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked
flame being held the holiest on the altar ; and in the Greek
mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a
snow-white bull ; and though to the noble Iroquois , the
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 fidel.
ity ; 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 honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive some
thing in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more
of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in
blood.
 180 MOBY DICK.

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 trans
cendent horrors they are ? That ghastly whiteness it is
which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loath
some 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.*
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.✝
*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 white
ness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness
of that brute ; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be
said, only arises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferocious
ness 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 bythe 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 funereal
music. Now in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this
shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him
Requin.
✝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. Wonderous
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! I never had heard that name before ; is it conceivable that
 MOBY DICK. 181

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 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, Ido
but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and
the poet.
I assert, then, that in the wonderous 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 gray 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!
182 MOBY DICK.

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 pal
pable 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 experi
ence of all mankind fail to bear witness to the supernatural
ism of this hue. It cannot well be doubted, that the one
visible quality in the aspect of the dead which most appals
the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there ; as if indeed
that pallor were much like the badge of consternation in
the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And from
that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of
the shroud in which we wrap them . Nor even in our super
stitions 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 idealised significance it calls up a
peculiar apparition of the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is
mortal man to account for it? To analyse it, would
 MOBY DICK. 183

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 a great part stripped of all
direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful,
but, nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery,
however 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 neighbours—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 long
itudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spec
tralness 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 forest, 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 ?
184 MOBY DICK.

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 phenome
non 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 univer
sality. What I mean by these two statements may per
haps 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 cir
cumstances, 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 back
 MOBY DICK. 185

woodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference

views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no
shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of white
ness . Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Ant
arctic seas ; where at times, by some infernal trick of leger
demain 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 splin
tered crosses .
But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about
whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul ;
though surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.
Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peace
ful 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 white
ness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the
soul ; and more strange and far more portentous — why, as
186 MOBY DICK.

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 heart
less voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs
us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when be
holding the white depths of the milky way ? Or is it, that
as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visi
ble 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 philoso
phers, 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 substance, but only laid on from with
out ; 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, forever remains white or
colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon
matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with
its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe
lies before us a leper ; and like wilful travellers in Lapland,
who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their
eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the
monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect
around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was
the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt ?

CHAPTER XLIII.

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.
 MOBY DICK. 187

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 neighbour, a Cholo, the words above.
" Hist ! did you hear that noise, Cabaco ? "
"Take the bucket, will ye, Archy ? what noise d'ye
mean ?"
" There it is again—under the hatches—don't you hear it
—a cough—it sounded like a cough."
" Cough be damned ! Pass along that return bucket."
" There again—there it is !—it sounds like two or three
sleepers 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 morn
ing watch, that there was something of that sort in the
wind."
"Tish ! the bucket ! "

CHAPTER XLIV.

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,
188 MOBY DICK.

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 outlines 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 soli
tude 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 sub
stituted. 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 periodical
ness 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 migra
tions 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 con
struct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.*
* Since the above was written , the statement is happily borne out by an
 MOBY DICK. 189

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 exacti
tude, 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 con
fidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well
known separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to en
counter 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 solita

official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observa

tory, 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,"
190 MOBY DICK,

ries 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 pro
longed abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplish
ing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has
only been made to whatever wayside, antecedent, extra
prospects were his, ere a particular set time or place were
attained, when all possibilities would become probabilities,
and, as Ahab fondly thought, every 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 encoun
ters 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 brood
ing 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 tranquilise
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 en
deavour then could enable her commander to make the
great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then run
ning 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
 MOBY DICK. 191

impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscel

laneous 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 Le
vanter and Simoom, 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 bound
less 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 ponder
ing 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 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 weak
ness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest
 4 MOBY DICK.

okens of its intensity. For, at such times, Ahab, the

scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white
whale ; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not
the agent that so caused 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 characterising mind, which at other times employed it
for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought es
cape 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, there
fore 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 , inde
pendent 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 ob
ject 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 XLV.

THE AFFIDAVIT .

SO far as what there may be of a narrative in this book ;

and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very inter
esting 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.
 MOBY DICK. 193

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, my
self, have known three instances similar to this ; that is in
two ofthem 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 im
peach.
Second : 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
13
194 MOBY DICK.

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, system
atically 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 Nar
ragansett 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.
 MOBY DICK. 195

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 ofthe 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 th 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 Pa
cific, 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 twofold 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 es
196 MOBY DICK.

tablished 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 escap
ing 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 ship
wrecked 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 manoeuvres which he made were necessary. His
aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury.
He came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered , and
in which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge
for their sufferings." Again : " At all events, the whole circumstances
taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at
the time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on
the part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall),
induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion."
Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a
black night in an open boat, 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 con
 MOBY DICK. 197

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 harbour of Oahu,
Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the
Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amaz
ing strength ascribed to them by the professional gentle
men 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 inter
view 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 at
tached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern's famous Dis
covery 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
templation, 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."
198 MOBY DICK.

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 al
most 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, con
cluding that we had struck upon some rock ; instead of
this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity
and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf applied immediately to
the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had re
ceived 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 command
ing 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 honour 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 adven
ture, 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 Fernandez . " In our way thither,"
he says , "about four o'clock in the morning, when we were
about one hundred and fifty leagues from the Main of Amer
ica, 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
 MOBY DICK. 199

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 sub
stantiate 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 with
stand all the lances hurled at him from its decks . The
English ship Pusil Hall can tell a story on that head ; and,
as for his strength, let me say, that there have been ex
amples 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 .
200 MOBY DICK.

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 neighbouring 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 connected with
it. Even now I am certain that those seas are not, and per
haps never can be, in the present constitution of things, a
place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further in
vestigations 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 Darda
nelles, 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 pecul
iar substance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the
right whale. But I have every reason to eve 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.
 MOBY DICK. 201

CHAPTER XLVI.

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 aban
don the collateral prosecution ofthe voyage. Or at least ifthis
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 multi
plied 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 ad
ditional considerations which, though not so strictly accord
ing 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 Star
buck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spirit
ual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves
intellectual mastership ; for to the purely spiritual, the in
tellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Star
buck'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 disin
tegrate 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 relapse of rebellion against his captain's
202 MOBY DICK.

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 super
lative 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 with
drawn 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 arc evanescent. The permanent constitu
tional 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- erran
tism 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 tra
verse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sep
ulchre, 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 prom
ise 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
 MOBY DICK. 203

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 in
fluence which it was possible for his crew to be sub
jected 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 custo
mary usages ; and not only that, but force himself to evince
all his well known passionate interest in the general pur
suit of his profession.
Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hail
ing the three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a
bright look-out, and not omit reporting even a porpoise.
This vigilance was not long without reward.

CHAPTER XLVII.

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 some
how 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.
204 MOBY DICK.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the

mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of
marline between the long yarns of the warps, using my
own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing side
ways, 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, unchang
ing 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 im
pulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slant
ingly, 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, andnecessity
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
 MOBY DICK. 205

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 marvel
lous 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 shad
ows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming.
"There she blows ! there ! there ! there ! she blows ! she
blows ! "
66 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 whale
men 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 re
ported 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 them
selves on board an enemy's ship.
206 MOBY DICK.

But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was

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

CHAPTER XLVIII.

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 in
vested 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,
 MOBY DICK. 207

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 row
ing 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 raga
muffin 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,
208 MOBY DICK.

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, marl
ing-spikes ! "
Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, be
cause he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in
general, and especially in inculcating the religion of row
ing. But you must not suppose from this specimen of his
sermonisings 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 invoca
tions 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 steer
ing 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 humourists , 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 pull
ing 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 speak
ing 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," soliloquised Stubb, when
the boats diverged, " as soon as I clapt eye on ' em, I thought
 MOBY DICK. 209

so. Aye, and that's what he went into the after-hold for,
60 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 boat 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 ap
pearance, 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 hori
zontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fed
allah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had
thrown aside his blackjacket, 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 stead
ily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lower
ings 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,

14
210 MOBY DICK.

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 breath
lessly still ; its commander recklessly standing upon the
top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of post rooted in the
keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern
platform . It is used for catching turns with the whale line.
Its stop is not more spacious than the palm of a man's
hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed
perched at the 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 him
self volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal.
99
"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
 MOBY DICK. 211

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 Dag
goo was yet more curious ; for sustaining himself with a
cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the
noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his
fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed
a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider.
Though truly vivacious, tumultuous ostentatious little
Flask would now and then stamp with impatience ; but
not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro's
lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping
the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter
her tides and her seasons for that.
Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far
gazing solicitudes . The whales might have made one of
their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere
fright ; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in
such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing
interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband,
where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded
it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end ; but
hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sand
paper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose
eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars,
suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his
seat, crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, " Down, down
all, and give way !—there they are ! "
To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring,
would have been visible at that moment ; nothing but a
troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered
puffs of vapour 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 vapour they spouted seemed
their forerunning couriers and detached flying out
riders .
All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that
one spot of troubled water and air. But it bade fair
212 MOBY DICK.

to outstrip them ; it flew on and on, as a mass of inter

blending 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 thunder
bolts ! 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
fell to rearing and plung
off upon the sea ; and finally fell
ing 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.
 MOBY DICK. 213

Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific

allusions of Flask to " that whale," as he called the fictitious
monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalising his
boat's bow with his tail—these allusions of his were at times
so vivid and 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 pro
nouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no
limbs but arms, in these critical moments.
It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe ! The vast
swells of the omnipotent sea ; the surging, hollow roar they
made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic
bowls in a boundless bowling-green ; the brief suspended
agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife
like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threaten
ing 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 harpooners, 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 emo
tions than that man does, who for the first time finds him
self pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted
sperm whale .
The dancing white water made by the chase was now be
coming more and more visible, owing to the increasing dark
ness of the dun cloud -shadows flung upon the sea. The jets
of vapour 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 rowlocks .
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of
mist ; neither ship nor boat to be seen.
214 MOBY DICK.

" Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still fur

ther 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, har
poon 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 stir
ring 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 ! " whis
pered Starbuck.
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat ; it was the
darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commo
tion came an invisible push from astern, while forward the
boat seemed striking on a ledge ; the sail collapsed and ex
ploded ; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near by ; some
thing 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 un
harmed. 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 fur
nace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the
driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows
 MOBY DICK. 215

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 for
lorn 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
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.
216 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER XLIX.

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 per
suasions, 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 momen
tous, 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 but
toned 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. Star
buck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose
then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set
 MOBY DICK. 217

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 unalter
able law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarman to break
his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's
jaws ? "
"Can't you twist that smaller ?" said Flask. "Yes, that's
the law. I should like to see a boat's crew backing water
up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha ! the whale would give
them squint for squint, mind that ! "
Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a delib
erate 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
218 MOBY DICK.

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 L.

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
66 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 cap
tain to jeopardise that life in the active perils of the chase.
So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their
eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried
into the thickest of the fight.
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 whaleboat 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
 MOBY DICK. 219

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 knewthat 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 solicit
ously 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 so
licitude 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 pre
parative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to
the ultimate chase of Moby Dick ; for he had already re
vealed 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 re
mained 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
220 MOBY DICK.

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 unsub
duable excitement in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the sub
ordinate 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 civilised,
domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams, and that but dimly ; but the like of whom now and
then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities,
especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent
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 mem
ory of the first man was a distinct recollection , and all men
his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each
other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon
why they were created and to what end ; when though,
according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the
daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rab
bins, indulged in mundane amours.

CHAPTER LI.

THE SPIR -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 .
 MOBY DICK. 221

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 pre
cision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of
whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred
would venture a lowering for them. You may think with
what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental
perched aloft at such unusual hours ; his turban and the
moon, companions in one sky. But when, after spending
his uniform interval there for several successive nights
without uttering a single sound ; when, after all this silence,
his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery,
moonlit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as
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, upheav
ing, 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 yawningly to
somehorizontalgoal. And had you watched Ahab's face that
night, you would have thought that in him also two differ
ent 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
222 MOBY DICK.

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 ad
vancing still further and further in our van, this solitary
jet seemed forever 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 venge
ful 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 new
the inscrutable sea-ravens . And every morning, perched on
 MOBY DICK. 223

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 Tor
mentoto, as called of yore ; for long allured by the perfidious
silence that before had attended us, we found ourselves
launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings trans
formed 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 pas
sively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and
crew become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg in
serted 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
224 MOBY DICK.

would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could

Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going
down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he
saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor
screwed chair ; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm
from which he had some time before emerged, still slowly
dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the table
beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and
currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern
swung from his tightly clenched hand. Though the body
was erect, the head was thrown back so that the closed eyes
were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung
from a beam in the ceiling. *
Terrible old man ! thought Starbuck with a shudder,
sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy pur
pose.

CHAPTER LII.

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 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 cruis
ing. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed
* 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.
 MOBY DICK. 225

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 bul
warks, 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 dis
tance 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
15
226 MOBY DICK.

inspire proud feelings ; but whereto does all that circum

navigation 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 forever 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 LIII.

THE GAM.

The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board ofthe

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 subse
quent 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 meet
ing 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 ;
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 inter
change 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
 MOBY DICK. 227

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 impor
tance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concern
ing whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the cruis
ing-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 lan
guage, 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 ; re
garding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript, pro
vincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant . But where this superi
ority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would
be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collec
tively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in
ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English
228 MOBY DICK.

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 fini
cal 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 pro
digious 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 straight
way steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides,
and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villainous
likenesses .
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable,
sociable, free-and-easy whaler ! What does the whaler do
when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather?
She has a " Gam," a thing so utterly unknown to all other
ships that they never heard of the name even ; and 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 is it 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 con
clude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a
whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to
stand on.
 MOBY DICK. 229

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. Never
theless, this same expressive word has now for many years
been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born
Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be
incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me
learnedly define it.
GAM. Noun—A social meeting of two (or more) Whale
ships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchang
inghails, 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 any
where 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 com
plete boat's crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat
steerer or harpooner 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 sinall of his back, the after-oar reciprocat
ing 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 cor
responding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two
230 MOBY DICK.

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 steady
inghimselfthe slightest particle by catching hold of anything
with his hands ; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self
command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers'
pockets ; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy
hands, he carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless
there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too,
where the captain has been known for an uncommonly
critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say—to seize
hold of the nearest oarsman's hair, and hold on there like
grim death.

CHAPTER LIV.

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 Poly
nesians . 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 circum
stance 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
* The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast
head , still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terra
pin.
 MOBY DICK. 231

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 re
vealed so much of it in that way, that when he was
wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Never
theless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those
seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of
it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they
governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among
themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's
main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker
thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship,
the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on
lasting record.
For my humour's sake, I shall preserve the style in
which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of
my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the
thick gilt-tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine
cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on
the closer terms with me ; and hence the interluding
questions they occasionally put, and which are duly
answered at the time.
" Some two years prior to my first learning the events
which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the
Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in
your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from
the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere
to the northward of the Line. One morning upon hand
ling 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, mak
232 MOBY DICK.

ing all sail, stood away for the nearest harbour among the
islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.
"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the com
monest 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 pros
perous 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 swing
ing 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 in
terflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours ,
—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michi
gan, possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of
the ocean's noblest traits ; with many of its rimmed varie
ties of races and of climes. They contain round archipela
goes 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 Mack
inaw ; they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval vic
tories ; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barba
rians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry
wigwams ; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient
and unentered forests , where the gaunt pines stand like
serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies ; those same
woods harbouring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken
 MOBY DICK. 233

creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emper

ors ; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleve
land, 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 mid
night 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 back
woods 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 day or two at the furthest after
pointing her prow for her island haven, that the Town- Ho's
leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an
hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know
that in a settled and civilised ocean like our Atlantic, for
example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole
way across it ; though of a still, sleepy night, should the
officer of the 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 sub
siding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas
far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether
unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles
in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length ; that
is, if it lie along tolerably accessible coast, or if any other
reasonable retreat is 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 .
234 MOBY DICK.

"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 be
trayed 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
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 pulverise that subaltern's
tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit
of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a
tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flow
ing 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 Charle
magne, 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 lets have a taste. By the Lord, it's
worth bottling ! I'll tell you what, men, old Rad's invest
ment 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
 MOBY DICK. 235

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 in
vested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor
devil like me the model of his nose.'
" Damn your eyes ! what's that pump stopping for ?'
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 cozen
ing 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 matter 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- IIo that had been de
vided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps ; and being
the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been reg
ularly assigned captain of one of the gangs ; consequently
he should have been freed from any trivial business not
236 MOBY DICK.

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 silent
ly 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 re
pugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men
even when aggrieved this nameless phantom feeling, gen
tlemen, 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 un
conditionally reiterating his command ; meanwhile advanc
ing 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 ham
mer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding
him to do his bidding.
"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the wind
lass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing ham
mer, deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. See
ing, 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 ;
 MOBY DICK. 237

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 humour, 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 creep
ingly drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the ham
mer 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 com
rades were standing their mast-heads. 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, cul
tivated 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 contrast
ing scenery of those noble Mohawk counties ; and espe
238 MOBY DICK.

cially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand al

most like milestones, flows one continual stream of Vene
tianly 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 metropol
itan 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 piazza, with humourous con
cern.
" Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisi
"
tion wanes in Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. Proceed,
Senor .'
A moment ! Pardon ! ' cried another of the company.
'In the name of all us Limees, I but desire to express to
you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your
delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Ven
ice 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 forever
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 Ca
naller 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, ripen
ing 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 in
nocence 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 re
deeming 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
 MOBY DICK. 239

plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wild

ness 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, spill
ing 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 harpooners, 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 fore
castle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this at
tempt, 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, smoke him along to the
quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolv
ing border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it
with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resent
ment. 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 them
selves 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
240 MOBY DICK.

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
 MOBY DICK. 241

their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the
steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the
companion-way. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain
whispered something down the crack, closed it, and turned
the key upon them—ten in number—leaving on deck some
twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral.
" All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the
officers, forward and aft, especially about the forecastle
scuttle and fore hatchway at which last place it was feared
the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the
bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in
peace ; the men who still remained at their duty toiling
hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals
through the dreary night dismally resounded through the
ship.
" At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on
the deck, summoned the prisoners to work ; but with a yell
they refused. Water was then lowered down to them,
and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it ;
when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it,
the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every
day for three days this was repeated ; but on the fourth
morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was
heard, as the customary summons was delivered ; and
suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying
they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air,
and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of
ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at
discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated
his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a
terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where
he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the
mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms
below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.
" Better turn to now ? ' said the Captain with a heart
less 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 de
fection 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
16
242 MOBY DICK.

burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the gar

rison ; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long
crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end)
run a muck from the bowsprit to the taffrail ; and if by any
devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For
himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined
him or not. That was the last night he should spend
in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition
on the part of the other two ; they swore they were ready for
that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but
a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted upon
being the first man on deck, when the time to make the
rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely ob
jected, 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 on 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 fore
most in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three,
though the last of the ten, to surrender ; and thereby secure
whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit.
But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to
lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle
chemistry of villainy, mixed their before secret treacheries
together ; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally
opened their souls to each other in three sentences ; and
bound the sleeper with cords and gagged him with cords,
and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight .
" Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for
the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooners 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 honour of securing a man who had been fully
ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged
along the deck like dead cattle ; and, side by side, were seized
up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and
there they hung till morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Cap
tain, pacing to and fro before them, ( the vultures would
not touch ye, ye villains !'
 MOBY DICK. 243

"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, con
sidering their timely surrender, he would let them go with
a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the ver
nacular.
" 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 tremu
lous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twist
"
ing 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.
244 MOBY DICK.

He paused : and then pausing no more, made good his word,

spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that might have been.
The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned
to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron
pumps clanged as before.
" Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired
below, a clamour was heard in the forecastle ; and the two
trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin door, say
ing they durst not consort with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs,
and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own in
stance 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 instiga
tion they had resolved to maintain the strictest peaceful
ness, 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 consider.
able vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down be
tween this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and
found that his next trick at the helm would come round at
 MOBY DICK. 245

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 totake
out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would
have done.
"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morn
ing 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 ? '
246 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
C
phrensy. The White Whale—the White Whale ! ' was
the cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, un
deterred 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 com
mand. 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 harpooner 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 ;
 MOBY DICK. 247

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 civilised creature resided. There,
headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremast
men deliberately deserted among the palms ; eventually, as
it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages,
and setting sail for some other harbour.
"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the
captain called upon the Islanders to assist him in the
laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the
leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their danger
ous 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 cap
tain 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 whaleboat, 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.
248 MOBY DICK.

" 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 ! '
666
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 for
mer 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 civilised 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 Steekilt 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.
666 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 unques
tionable 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.
 MOBY DICK. 249

" 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 Sabastian, 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 honour the story I have
told ye, gentlemen , is in substance and its great items, true.
I know it to be true ; it happened on this ball ; I trod the
ship ; I knewthe crew ; I have99 seen and talked with Steelkilt
since the death of Radney.'

CHAPTER LV.

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.
250 MOBY DICK.

It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial de

lusions 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 tem
ples, 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 main
tain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemo
rial 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 palm of the true
whale's majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Chris
tian painter's portrait of this fish ; for he succeeds no better
than the antediluvian Hindoo . It is Guido's picture of Per
seus 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 that 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 bookbinder's whale winding like a vine.
stalk round the stalk of a descending anchor—as stamped
and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both
 MOBY DICK. 251

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 never
theless call this bookbinder's fish an attempt at a whale ;
because it was so intended when the device was first intro
duced . It was introduced by an old Italian publisher some
where about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learn
ing ; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively
late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a spe
cies 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
e his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original
m edition of the " Advancement of Learning " you will find
Te some curious whales.
-re But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us
ཤྲཱ
ལྔ
ཎྜ
ཛྰ
ལྔ
༧
ཎྜ

glance at those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober,

on scientific delineations, by those who know. In old Harris's
the collection of voyages there are some plates of whales ex
and tracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A. D. 1671 , entitled
hat "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in
he the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one
of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are rep
resented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running
ris over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious
Etter blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendi
Per cular flukes .
hale. Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one
ture Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, en
ne in titled " A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas,
etter. for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fish
lates eries." In this book is an outline purporting to be a
It has " Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by
mouth scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793,
or the and hoisted on deck." I doubt not the captain had this
to the veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines . To
Scotch mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an
of old eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale, to
said of a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that
avine. whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant
amped captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that
Ksboth eye !
252 MOBY DICK.

Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural

History for the benefit of the young and tender, free from
the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that popular
work " Goldsmith's Animated Nature." In the abridged
London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged
"whale " and a " narwhal." I do not wish to seem inele
gant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated
sow; and, as for the narwhal, one glimpse at it is enough
to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippo
griff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent
public of schoolboys .
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain , Count de Lacé
pède, a great naturalist, published a scientific systemised
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 experi
enced 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 pic
ture 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 hang
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 253

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
ed whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan ; yet, even in
nt the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a
ct, ship's deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered,
hat varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil
himself could not catch.
ri
Lave But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of
the stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touch
ing his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more
ring curious things about this leviathan, that his skeleton gives
vier,
very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Ben
ed a
calls tham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library
of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly
pic
browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other
your
erick leading personal characteristics ; yet nothing of this kind .
could be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones.
quash.
In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the
oyage whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and
that
padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that
entific
so roundingly envelops it. This peculiarity is strikingly
of his
evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be
- And
incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in
se are, the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to
the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This
hang fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring,
them? and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in
medary their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial
or four
: their covering. " However recklessly the whale may sometimes
serve us," said humorous Stubb one day, " he can never be
nt. truly said to handle us without mittens."
ale are
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it,
ofthe
you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that
ed fish ;
one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to
wrecked
254 MOBY DICK.

the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer
than another, but none can hit it with any very considera
ble degree of exactness . So there is no earthly way of find
ing 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 Levia
than.

CHAPTER LVI.

OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES, AND THE TRUE

PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES .

In connection with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am

strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more mon
strous 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, Fredrick 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 scep
ticism of some parlour 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 RightWhale, the best outline pictures are in Scores-
by ; but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desir
able 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 .
 MOBY DICK. 255

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
Garney. 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
t
the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing
a. 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 stand
ing 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
TRUE whitened sea ; 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 ;
Iam while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down
mon upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the
books, anatomical details of this whale, but let that pass ; since
rehas, for the life of me, I could not draw so good a one.
er by. In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing
Sperm alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right
Beale's. Whale that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea like some
e been mossy rockslide from the Patagonian cliffs . His jets are
but, by erect, full, and black like soot ; so that from so abounding
ings of a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a
in the brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls
Ding his are peeking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea
Sperm candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes
vil scep carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick
life-like lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons
Trawings of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the
but they slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh
ough . the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the fore
In Scores ground is all raging commotion ; but behind, in admirable
y a desir artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the
ng scenes , drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the
pictures inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the
anything flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted
en byhis into his spout-hole.
Who Garney the painter is, or was, I know not. But my
256 MOBY DICK.
of thepalms in
life for it he was either practically conversant with his thebreezeless &
subject or else marvellously tutored by some experienced withreference
whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. one of theirf
Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and where graving is a
will you find such a gallery of living and breathing com the opense
motion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles ; with a Rig
where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the cutting-in
consecutive great battles of France ; where every sword boat,hu
armed kings seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the aboutg
successive and emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned andla
centaurs ? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, them
are these sea battle-pieces of Garney. little
The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the pictur hors
esqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what bo
paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. SI
With not one tenth-of England's experience in the fishery, es
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
narwhals 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 sub
mits 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 honour 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 Garney, 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, never
theless 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
 MOBY DICK. 257

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 en
graving is quite a different affair : the ship hove-to upon
the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic life,
with a 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
at boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a village of
es. smithies ; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with
Ty, earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity
nev of the excited seamen.
only
Dirit
and
with
- the
eness CHAPTER LVII.
the
owned OF WHALES IN PAINT ; IN TEETH ; IN WOOD ; IN SHEET-IRON ;
ofthe IN STONE ; IN MOUNTAINS ; IN STARS .
ures of
assical On Tower Hill, as you go down to the London docks, you
pnels; may have seen a crippled beggar (or kedger, as the sailors
ck sub say) holding a painted board before him, representing the
ix-fac i tragic scene in which he lost his leg . There are three whales
Lean no and three boats ; and one of the boats (presumed to contain
mfor a the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched
inly an by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten
a sworn years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and
ace. exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the
ey , there time of his justification has now come. His three whales
bysome are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, at
of them, any rate ; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as
Se, never any you will find in the western clearings. But, though
s aquiet for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump- speech does
ch whaler the poor whaleman make ; but, with downcast eyes, stands
water on ruefully contemplating his own amputation.
ng leaves 17
258 MOBY DICK.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New

Bedford, and Sag Harbour, you will come across lively
sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the
fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies'
busks wrought out of the 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 civilisation 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, own
ing 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 work
manlike, 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 roadside
door. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale
would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom
 MOBY DICK. 259

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 be
sides 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 trav
eller 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 whale
man, 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 standpoint, else so chance-like are such observations of
the hills, that your precise, previous standpoint would re
quire a laborious rediscovery ; like the Soloma Islands,
which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Men
danna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.
Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you
fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and
boats in pursuit of them ; as when long filled with thoughts
of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle
among the clouds . Thus at the North have I chased Levi
athan 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 !
'260 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER LVIII.

BRIT.

Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in

with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance,
upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues
and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to
be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden
wheat.
On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were
seen, who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler
like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through
the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that
wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that
manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip.
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and
seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet
grass of marshy meads ; even so these monsters swam,
making a strange, grassy, cutting sound ; and leaving
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea .*
But it was only the sound they made as they parted
the brit which at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from
the mast-heads especially when they paused and were
stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more
like lifeless masses of rock than anything else . And as
in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a
distance will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent
elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them
for bare, blackened elevations of the soil ; even so, often,
with him, who for the first time beholds this species of
the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at
last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really
to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can

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.
 MOBY DICK. 261

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 speciali
ties, 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 inhabi
tants 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 thou
sands 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 pulverise the
stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make ; nevertheless, by
the continual repetition of these very impressions, man
has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which
aboriginally belongs to it.
The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with
Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole world without
leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rolls now ;
that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last year.
Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided ; two
thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon
one is not a miracle upon the other ? Preternatural terrors
rested upon the 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
262 MOBY DICK.

to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring ; worse than

the Persian host who murdered his own guests ; sparing not
the creatures which itself hath spawned . Like a savage
tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so
the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks,
and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of
ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Pant
ing 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 embel
lished shape of many species of sharks . Consider, once
more, the universal cannibalism of the sea ; all whose crea
tures 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 LIX.

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 sur
rounding 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 unat
 MOBY DICK. 263

tended 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 tothe boughs. Bareheaded in
the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand
pushed far behind in readiness to wave his orders to the
helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction indicated
aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary
jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now
prepared to connect the ideas of mildness and repose with
the first sight of the particular whale he pursued ; however
this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed him ; which
ever 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, ofa glancing cream- colour, lay floating on the water,
innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curl
ing 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
264 MOBY DICK.

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
had 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 par
ticulars 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 rumours 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.
 MOBY DICK. 265

CHAPTER LX.

THE LINE.

With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be de

scribed, as well as for the better understanding of all sim
ilar 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 vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it,
as in the case of ordinary ropes ; for while tar, as ordinarily
used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and
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 coil
ing 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 æsthetic in all things), is much more handsome and be
coming 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 sus
pend 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 some
thing 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 con
centric spiralisations, without any hollow but the " heart,"
or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese.
266 MOBY DICK.

As the least tangle or kink in the ceiling 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 harpooners will consume almost an entire morning
in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reev
ing 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 criti
cal 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 wed
ding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed ; the lower end terminat
ing in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom
against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge com
pletely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of
the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order
to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a
neighbouring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound
so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally
attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of
course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one
boat to the other ; though the first boat always hovers at
hand to assist its consort. Second : This arrangement is
indispensable for common safety's sake ; for were the lower
end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were
the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a
single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not
stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged
down after him into the profundity of the sea ; and in that
case no town- crier would ever find her again.
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of
the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the
loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length
of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of
 MOBY DICK. 267

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 slip
ping 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 gun
wale 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 connection, the short
warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to
detail.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its compli
cated 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 intrica
cies, 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 hang
man'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 ac
count 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
268 MOBY DICK.

the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one
way and the other, without the slightest warning, and only
by certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness
of volition and action , can you escape being made a Mazeppa
of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself
could never pierce you out.
Again as the profound calm which only apparently pre
cedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful
than the storm itself ; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrap
per and envelope of the storm ; and contains it in itself, as
the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and
the ball, and the explosion ; so the graceful repose of the
line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before
being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries
more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous
affair. But why say more ? All men live enveloped in
whale-lines . All are born with halters round their necks ;
but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death,
that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of
life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the
whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of
terror than though seated before your evening fire with a
poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

CHAPTER LXI.

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
 MOBY DICK. 269

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 pendu
lum will, long after the power which first moved it is with
drawn.
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 invis
ible, gracious agency preserved me ; with a shock I came
•
back to life. And lo ! close under our lee, not forty fathoms
off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like
the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an
Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror.
But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and
anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the 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 accus
tomed 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 helms
man could handle the spokes .
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed
the whale ; and ere the boats were down, majestically turn
ing, 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
270 MOBY DICK.

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 im
mediately followed by Stubb's producing his match and
igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted . After the
full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose
again, and being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and
much nearer to it than to any of the others , Stubb counted
upon the honour of the capture. It was obvious now, that
the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All
silence or cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.
Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play.
And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to
the assault.
Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive
to his jeopardy, he was going " head out ; " that part
obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed. *
" 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

* 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 for
mation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he there
by may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot
into a sharp-pointed New York pilot-boat.
 MOBY DICK. 271

wild. "Kee-hee ! Kee-hee ! " yelled Daggoo, straining for

wards 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 oars
men backed water ; the same moment something went hot
and hissing along every one of their wrists . It was the
magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught
two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence,
by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue
smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes
from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the
loggerhead ; so also, just before reaching that point, it
blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's
hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted
canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally
dropped. It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged
sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to
wrest it out of your clutch.
"Wet the line ! wet the line ! " cried Stubb to the tub
oarsman (him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat,
dashed the sea-water into it.* More turns were taken, so
that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew
through the boiling water like a shark all fins . Stubb and
Tashtego here changed places—stem for stern—a stagger
ing business truly in that rocking commotion .
From the vibrating line extending the entire length of
the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more
tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft
had two keels —one cleaving the water, the other the air
as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at
once. A continual cascade played at the bows ; a ceaseless
whirling eddy in her wake ; and, at the slightest motion
from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, crack

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.
272 MOBY DICK.

ing craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea.
Thus they rushed : each man with might and main cling
ing 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 agonis
ingly 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 reach
ing 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
f the day .
 MOBY DICK. 273

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled
out into view ; surging from side to side ; spasmodically dilat
ing and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, ago
nised 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 LXII.

THE DART.

A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the
whaleboat pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or
whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the harpooner or
whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar the one known as
the harpooner-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 harpooner is expected to
pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost ; indeed , he is ex
pected 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 harpooner 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
274 MOBY DICK.

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 harpooners
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 harpooner
that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his
body how can you expect to find it there when most wanted !
Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second
critical instant, that is, when the whale starts to run, the
boat-header and harpooner 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 harpooner that has
caused them.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpoon
ers of this world must start to their feet from out of idle
ness, and not from out of toil.
 MOBY DICK. 275

CHAPTER LXIII.

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 inde
pendent 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 custom
ary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respect
ively 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 in
stantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon
receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the har
pooner, 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 curveting about both boat
and whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them, and mak
276 MOBY DICK.

ing a prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, in gen

eral, 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 en
terprise, 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 par
ticulars are faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to
elucidate several most important, however intricate pass
ages, in scenes hereafter to be painted.

CHAPTER LXIV.

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, ex
cept at long intervals ; good evidence was hereby furnished
of the enormousness of the mass we moved. For, upon
the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they call it, in
China, four or five labourers on the 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 .
 MOBY DICK. 277

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 *
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 flavourish
thing to his palate.
" A steak, a steak, ere I sleep ! You, Daggoo ! over
board you go, and cut me one from his small ! "
Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do

* A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored along
side, 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 flexibil
ity 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.
278 MOBY DICK.

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 realising the proceeds of the voyage),
yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers who
have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm
Whale designated by Stubb ; comprising the tapering ex
tremity 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 ban
queter on whale's flesh that night. Mingling their mum .
blings 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 sur
face, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouth
fuls, 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 countersink
ing 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 life 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 up
side 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 out
riders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systemati
cally trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to
be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried ;
 MOBY DICK. 279

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 whale- ship at sea. If you have never
seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the pro
priety of devil- worship, and the expediency of conciliating
the devil.
But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings ofthe 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 un
seasonable 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 shuf
fling 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 obedi
ence 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
280 MOBY DICK.

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 smakin'
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 preach
ing. That's no way to convert sinners, cook ! "
"Who dat ? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turn
ing to go.
"No, cook ; go on, go on."
"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters : 99_____
" 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 wicket natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin ;
but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel ;
for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.
Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a help
ing yourselves from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber
out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood
right as toder to dat whale ? And, by Gor, none on you has
de right to dat whale ; dat whale belong to someone 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 ob de mout is not to swaller wid, but to
 MOBY DICK. 281

bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get
into de scrouge to help demselves."
"Well done, old Fleece ! " cried Stubb, " that's Christi
anity ; go on."
" No use goin' on ; de dam willains will keep a scourgin'
and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb ; dey don't hear one
word ; no use a-preachin' to such dam g'uttons as you call
'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless ;
and when dey do get em full, dey won't hear you den ; for
den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can't
hear not'ing at all, no more, for eber and eber."
" Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion ; so give
the 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 have you lived in this world hard upon one hundred
years, cook, and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak ?"
rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last word, so that
that morsel seemed a continuation of the question . "Where
were you born, cook ? "
" Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roa
noke."
" 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.
282 MOBY DICK.

"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 sul
lenly.
"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 dread
ful 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 black man dies," said the negro, slowly,
changing his whole air and demeanour, " 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.
"Yousaid up there, didn't you ? and nowlook yourself, and
see where your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you ex
pect 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 busi
ness, 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."
 MOBY DICK. 283

" 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 pos
sible ; 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 over
doing. 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 his
self," muttered the old man, limping away : with which
sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.

CHAPTER LXV.

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 hand
some reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten
with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a
284 MOBY DICK.

species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day con

sidered 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 be
fore a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away
your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like
Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales ; but the Esqui
maux are not so fastidious . We all know how they live
upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train
oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors , recom
mends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly
juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain
Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Green
land by a whaling vessel—that these men actually lived
for several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which
had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among 99
the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called " fritters ;
which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and
crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam house
wives' doughnuts or oly-cooks, when fresh . They have
such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger
can hardly keep his hands off.
But what further depreciates the whale as a civilised
dish, is his exceeding richness . He is the great prize ox
of the sea, too fat to be delicately good . Look at his hump
which would be as fine eating as the buffalo's (which is es
teemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of
But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that
is ; like the transparent, half-jellied white meat of a cocoa
nut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to
supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whale
men have a method of absorbing it into some other sub
stance, 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 ac
counted a fine dish . The casket of the skull is broken into
with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being with
 MOBY DICK. 285

drawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are

then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable
mess, in flavour somewhat resembling calves ' head, which is
quite a dish among some epicures ; and every one knows
that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually
dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little
brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head
from their own heads ; which, indeed, requires uncommon
discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck
with an intelligent looking calf s head before him, is some
how one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks
a sort of reproachfully at him, with an " Et tu Brute ! "
expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so exces
sively 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 Sat
urday 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 de
vouring that fat goose ? With a feather of the same fowl.
And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for
the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his
circulars ? It is only within the last month or two that
that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but
steel pens.
286 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER LXVI.

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 com
mon 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 cou
ple, 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 mag
gots in it.
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor- watch after
his supper was concluded ; and when, accordingly, Quee
queg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excite
ment was created among the sharks ; for immediately sus
pending 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 whal
 MOBY DICK. 287

ing-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 al
ways hit their mark ; and this brought about new revela
tions 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 en
trails 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 Pan
theistic 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 murder
ous jaw.
"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the
savage, agonisingly lifting his hand up and down ; " wedder
Fejee god or Nantuket god ; but de god wat made shark
must be one dam Ingin."

CHAPTER LXVII.

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
* 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_cor
responds 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.
288 MOBY DICK.

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 strik
ing 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 tri
umphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the dis
engaged 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 spiralising
it . For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass
continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the
water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off
along the line called the " scarf," simultaneously cut by
the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates ; and just as
fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very 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 harpooners now advances with a
long, keen weapon called a boarding- sword, and watching
 MOBY DICK. 289

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 swords
man, warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a
scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, des
perate, 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 parlour called the blub
ber-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 simulta
neously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers
singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates
scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occa
sionally, by way of assuaging the general friction.

CHAPTER LXVIII .

THE BLANKET.

I have given no small attention to that not unvexed sub

ject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies about
it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned natural
ists 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
19
290 MOBY DICK.

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, trans
parent 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 in
variably 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
 MOBY DICK. 291

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 pro
per word to use in the present connection. By my reten
tive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale
in particular, I was much struck with a plate represent
ing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hier
oglyphic 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 phe
nomena 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 appear
ance, 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 float
ing 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 re
marked 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 pon
cho 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 weath
ers, 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,
lung 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
292 MOBY DICK.

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 over
board, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, per
pendicularly 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 tem
perature 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 LXIX.

THE FUNERAL.

" Haul in the chains ! Let the carcase go astern ! 99

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 rapa
cious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so
many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white.
headless phantom floats farther and farther 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
 MOBY DICK. 293

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 punc
tiliously 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 venge
ful 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 ; straight
way 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 LXX.

THE SPHINX.

It should not have been omitted that previous to com

pletely stripping the body of the leviathan, be 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.
294 MOBY DICK.

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 subter
raneous 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 de
liberately 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 sus
pend such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles
of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weigh
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 295

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 Sphinx's in
the desert. " Speak thou vast and venerable head," mut
tered 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 neighbouring 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."
296 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER LXXI.

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 en
abled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at con
siderable 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, sh 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 cap
tain , the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's
sternin 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 in
fecting 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 communication.
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
 MOBY DICK. 297

forged through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh) ,
with her main-top-sail 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 like interruptions now and then, a conversation was
sustained between the two parties ; but at intervals not with
out still another interruption of a very different sort.
Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a sin
gular appearance, even in that wild whaling life where in
dividual 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 en
veloped 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 scara
mouch the Town-Ho's company told us of! " Stubb here
alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a cer
tain 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 de
scended 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 gunpow
der, 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 crazi
ness, 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 up
on 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
298 MOBY DICK.

all Oceanica . The unflinching earnestness with which he

declared these things ;—the dark, daring play of his sleep
less, 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 un
conditional 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 Gab
riel 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 be
fore him ; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes ren
dering 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 bul
warks, to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern ;
66 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.
 7

A Burnham Shute

" Next instant, the luckless mate was smitten bodily into the air
-Page 299.
 1

Į
 MOBY DICK. 299

" Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoves and sunk ! Be

ware 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 apprehensive
ness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant.
When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began
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 gibber
ing insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a
being than the Shaker God incarnated ; the Shakers receiv
ing 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 toss
ing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth proph
ecies 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, fan
ning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the
bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so
full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and
making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the
300 MOBY DICK.

distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was

harmed, nor a hair of any oarsmen'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 in
stances 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 proph
ecy, 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 for
bear inquiring whether he intended to hunt the White
Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which Ahab an
swered—" Aye." Straightway, then, Gabriel once more
started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehe
mently 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, " Cap
tain, 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,
 MOBY DICK. 301

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 May
hew, stand by now to receive it ; " and taking the fatal mis
sive 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 LXXII.

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
302 MOBY DICK.

one place ; for at one and the same time everything has to
be done everywhere . It is much the same with him who
endeavours the description of the scene. We must now re
trace 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, cir
cumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the
whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is con
cluded . The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely sub
merged, 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 be
neath 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 humourously 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 wed
ded ; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then
both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting
the cord, it should drag me down in his wake . So, then, an
elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my
own inseparable twin brother ; nor could I any way get rid
of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed .
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my
 MOBY DICK. 303

situation then, that while earnestly watchings 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 un
merited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here
was a sort of interregnum in Providence ; for its even
handed equity never could have sanctioned so gross an in
justice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked
him now and then from between the whale and the 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 connection 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 multitudi
nous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's mon
key-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so,
that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I pos
sibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the manage
ment of one end of it. *
I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg
from between the whale and the ship—where he would oc
casionally 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 carcase the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees
in a beehive.
And right in among those sharks was Queequeg ; who
often pushed them aside with his floundering feet. A thing
altogether incredible were it not that, attracted by such
prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carniv
orous shark will seldom touch a man.
Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have

The monkey- rope is found in all whalers ; but it was only in the Pe
quod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This im
provement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than
Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest pos
sible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey - rope
holder.
304 MOBY DICK.

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 protec
tion. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tash
tego 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 cir
cumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half
hidden by the blood-mudded water, those indiscreet spades
of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail.
But poor Queequeg, 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, Quee
queg. For now, as with blue lips and bloodshot 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 ?—fire-wood ?
—lucifer matches ?—tinder ?—gun-powder ?—what the devil
 MOBY DICK. 305

is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Quee
queg 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 ? 27
"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 pro
ceeds, 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,"
99 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 want
est 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.
20
306 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

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 cap
ture 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 mælstrom,
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
 MOBY DICK. 307

the whale not sounding very rapidly, they paid out abund
ance of rope, and at the sametime 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 tremour 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 drip
pings, 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 fount
ains 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 star
board 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'
308 MOBY DICK.

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 bul
warks, 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 dis
guise. 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 rig
ging."
" 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."
 MOBY DICK. 309

"I think I remember some such story as you were tell

ing," 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 forever ; who ever heard that the devil was
dead ? Did you ever see any person 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 port
hole ? Tell me that, Mr. Flask."
"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb ? "
"Do you see that mainmast there ? " pointing to the ship ;
"well, that's the figure one ; now take all the hoops in the
Pequod's hold, and string ' em along in a row with that
mast, for oughts, do you see ; well, that wouldn't begin to
be Fedallah's age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn't
show hoops enough to make oughts enough."
" But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just
now, that you meant to give Fedallah a 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 forever, 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."
(6
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 speaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask ;
do you suppose I'm afraid of the devil ? Who's afraid of
him, except the old governor who 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,
310 MOBY DICK.

that all the people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him.
There's the 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 lar
board 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 parma
cetti'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 forever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye
foolish ! throw all these thunderheads overboard, and then
you will float light and right.
In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought
alongside the ship, the same preliminary proceedings com
monly 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 at
tached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothing like
 MOBY DICK. 311

this, in the present case, had been done. The carcases of

both whales had dropped astern ; and the headladen ship
not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair of overburden
ing 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, con
cerning all these passing things.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

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 con
science ; 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 ad
vanced age and large experience. In short, he is what the
fishermen technically call a " grey-headed whale ."
312 MOBY DICK.

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 least see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a
young colt's eye ; so out of all proportion is it to the mag
nitude 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.
 MOBY DICK. 313

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 indiscrimin
ating 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 it is as
marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultane
ously 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 dis
played 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 ob
served 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
314 MOBY DICK.

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 ?
Subtilise 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 sum
mit, 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.
Ifyou 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 sup
ply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen
fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, um
brella-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
 MOBY DICK. 315

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 LXXV.

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 shoe
maker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old
woman ofthe 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 enorm
ous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its sound
ing-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
316 MOBY DICK.

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 intri
cacies he retains the small fish, when open-mouthed he goes
through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central
blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there
are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, where
by 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 savour
of analogical probability . At any rate, if we yield to it,
we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at
first glance will seem reasonable.
In old times, there seems to have prevailed the most
curious fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in
Purchas calls them the wondrous " whiskers " inside of
the whale's mouth ; * another, " hogs' bristles ; " a third

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.
 MOBY DICK. 317

old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant lan

guage : " There are about two hundred and fifty fins grow
ing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue
on each side of his mouth."
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, un
recorded, 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
318 MOBY DICK.

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 LXXVI.

THE BATTERING-RA M.

Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I

would have you, as a sensible physiologist, simply— par
ticularly remark its front aspect, in all its compacted col
lectedness . I would have you investigate it now with the
sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intel
ligent 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 forever
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 re
ceives 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
 MOBY DICK. 319

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 com
prise the most delicate oil ; yet, you are now to be apprised
of the nature of the substance which so impregnably in
vests 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 enve
lope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, ines
timable by any man who has not handled it. The severest
pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strong
est 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 unin
jured takes the jam which would have snapped all their
oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself this suffi
ciently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But supple
mentary 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 provi
sion in him ; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable
manner in which he now depresses his head altogether be
neath 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 mys
tical lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some
hitherto unknown and unsuspected connection with the
outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distention
and contraction . If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of
that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive
of all elements contributes.
320 MOBY DICK.

Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregna.

ble, 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 specialties and
concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this ex
pansive monster ; when I shall show you some of his more
inconsiderable braining feats ; I trust you will have re
nounced 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 eyebrow.
For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for
salamander giants only to encounter ; how small the chances
for the provincials then ? What befell the weakling youth
lifting the dread goddess's veil at Lais ?

CHAPTER LXXVII.

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.
 MOBY DICK. 321

The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is

immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and re
crossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic
white fibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part ,
known as the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidel
burgh 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, consider
able 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 Heidel
burgh 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 subse
quently forced into the spermaceti magazine ; he has there
fore 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,
21
322 MOBY DICK.

also, which is at last elevated out ofthe 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 LXXVIII.

CISTERN AND BUCKETS.

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft ; and without

altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the over
hanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly pro
jects 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 sea
men at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling
 MOBY DICK. 323

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 re-mounting 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 fra
grant 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 treacher
ous and oozy ; or whether the Evil One himself would have
it to fall out so, without stating his particular reason ; how
it was exactly, there is no telling now ; 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 Tash
tego 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 enor
mous 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 ;
324 MOBY DICK.

an event still more likely from the violent motions of the

head.
"Come down, come down ! " yelled the seamen to Dag
goo, but with one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so
that if the head should drop, be would still remain sus
pended ; 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 burst
ing 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 vapour cleared away, when a naked figure with
a boarding-sword in its hand, was for one swift moment
seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash
announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue.
One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted
every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of
either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands
now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off
from the ship.
"Ha! ha !" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet,
swinging perch overhead ; and looking 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.
 MOBY DICK. 325

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 our poor Tash by the head. He averred, that
upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented ; but
well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might
occasion great trouble ; —he had thrust back the leg, and
by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon
the Indian ; so that with the next trial, he came forth in
the good old way—head foremost. As for the great head
itself, that was doing as well as could be expected .
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics
of 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, rid
ing 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 run
ning delivery, so it was.
326 MOBY DICK.

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 LXXIX.

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 scru
tinised the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar, or for Gall
to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome ofthe
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 dis
cernible 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 endeavour.
I try all things ; I achieve what I can.
Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an
anomalous creature . He has no proper nose. And since the
nose is the central and most conspicuous of the features ;
and since it perhaps most 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 with
out the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the
 MOBY DICK. 327

nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remain

der ! Nevertheless , Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude,
all his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency
which in the sculptured Jove was hideous, in him is no
blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to
the whale would have been impertinent. As on your phy
siognomical 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 physiog
nomical 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 Shak
speare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low,
that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless moun
tain 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 be
holding 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, semicrescentic 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
328 MOBY DICK.

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 hierogly
phics. 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 LXXX.

THE NUT.

If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphynx, 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 view 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
 MOBY DICK. 329 .

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 fore
head 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 pal
pable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of his
sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds , courses, and con
volutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping
with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic
part of him as the seat of his intelligence.
It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this
Leviathan, in the creature's living intact state, is an entire
delusion. As for his true brain, you can then see no indi
cations of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that
are mighty, wears a false bow 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. In
deed, place this reversed skull (scale down to the human
magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would
involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the
depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological
phrase you would say—This man had no self- esteem , and
no veneration. And by those negations, considered along
with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power,
you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the
most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted
potency is .
But 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 atten
tively 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 resem
blance 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
330 MOBY DICK.

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 char
acter 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 emerg
ing 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 small
ness 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 in
domitable, you will yet have reason to know.
 MOBY DICK. 331

CHAPTER LXXXI.

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 im
pelled towards us, impatiently standing in the bows in
stead 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 lampfeeder 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 ignor
ance of the White Whale ; immediately turning the con
versation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some re
marks 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 frying-fish yet captured to
supply the deficiency ; concluding by hinting that his ship
332 MOBY DICK.

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 sim
ultaneously raised from the mast-heads of both vessels ;
and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without paus
ing 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 considera
bly 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 compara
tively 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 ex
tremity, 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
 MOBY DICK. 333

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 vil
lainous 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 over
board—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 quohogs
for supper, you know, my lads— baked clams and muf
fins—oh, do, do, spring— he's a hundred barreller—don't
334 MOBY DICK.

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 rival's way, and at
the same time economically accelerating his own by the
momentary impetus of the backward toss.
" The unmannerly Dutch dogger ! " cried Stubb. " Pull
now, men, like fifty thousand line-of-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 honour
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, occa
sionally 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 oars
man. 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 slant
ingly ranged up on the German's quarter. An instant more,
and all four boats were diagonally in the whale's imme
diate 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
 MOBY DICK. 335

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 pirat
ical 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 forever escape.
But no sooner did his harpooner stand up for the stroke,
than all three tigers —Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo— instinc
tively sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row,
simultaneously pointed their barbs ; and darted over the
head of the German harpooner, their three Nantucket irons
entered the whale. Blinding vapours of foam and white
fire ! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's head
long rush, bumped the German's aside with such force, that
both Derick and his baffled harpooner 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 sun
beam ! 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 go
ing 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
harpooners that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust
336 MOBY DICK.

the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught
repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on ; till at
last—owing to the perpendicular strain from the head- 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 pre
sume, 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 im
mense. 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 atmos
pheres. 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 wrench
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 337

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 moun
tains 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 direc
tions. 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 ex
traordinary 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
22
338 MOBY DICK.

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 sol
emn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by
all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially dis
closed 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,
 MOBY DICK. 339

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 artifi
cially 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 fre
quently 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 un
precedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea, owing to
the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink. How
ever, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs , hungon to it
to the last ; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at
length the ship would have been capsized, if still persist
ing in locking arms with the body ; then, when the com
mand was given to break clear from it, such was the im
movable 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 walk
ing 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 timber-heads ; and so low had the whale now set
tled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached,
while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed
340 MOBY DICK.

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 ex
ceeding 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 un
common 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 lia
ble to this accident than any other species. Where one of
that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do. This differ
ence 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 rises again,
more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvi
ous. Gases are generated in him ; he swells to a prodigi
ous 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
 MOBY DICK. 341

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 incred
ible power of swimming. Nevertheless , the Fin- Back's
spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskil
ful 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 LXXXII.

THE HONOR AND GLORY OF WHALING.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderli

ness 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 honourableness 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 whale
man ; and to the eternal honour 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 succour the dis
tressed, 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
342 MOBY DICK.

of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, in

trepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered
and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit,
rarely achieved by the best harpooners 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 as
serted 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 singu
lar and suggestively important in this story, is this : it was
from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda—in
deed, 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 to
gether, 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 ver
sions 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 whale
man 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 drafts of the scene, to
hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Levia
than himself. In fact, placed before the strict and pierc
ing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and
fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name ; who being
 MOBY DICK. 343

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 harpooners of Nantucket
should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George.
And therefore, let not the knights of that honourable com
pany (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 no
where appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, un
less, 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 versa ; certainly they are very similar. If
I claim the demi-god then, why not the prophet ?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone com
prise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still
to be named ; for like royal kings of old times , we find the
head waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great
gods themselves . That wondrous oriental story is now to
be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread
Vishnu, one of the three persons in the godhead of the
Hindoos ; gives us this divine Vishnu himself for our Lord ;
—Vishnu, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations,
has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When
Brahm, or the God of gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to
recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions ,
he gave birth to Vishnu, to preside over the work ; but the
Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have
been indispensable to Vishnu before beginning the creation,
and which therefore must have contained something in the
344 MOBY DICK.

shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas

were lying at the bottom of the water ; so Vishnu became
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the ut
termost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this
Vishnu a whaleman, then ? even as a man who rides a horse
is called a horseman ?
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah and Vishnu ! there's
a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can
head off like that ?

CHAPTER LXXXIII .

JONAH HISTORICALLY REGARDED.

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and

the whale in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantuck
eters 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- Harbour whaleman's chief reason for ques
tioning the Hebrew story was this :—He had one of those
quaint old fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, un
scientific 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 fish
ermen 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- Harbour (he went by that name)
 MOBY DICK. 345

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
supposed 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 men
tioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver
—an inflated bag of wind—which the endangered prophet
swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag
Harbour, therefore, seems worsted all around. But he had
still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I
remember right : 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 in
volve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three
days, not to speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nin
eveh, 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 honour of the discovery of
that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed
discoverer, and so make modern history a liar.
But all these foolish arguments of old Sag- Harbour only
evinced his foolish pride of reason--a thing still more repre
hensible in him, seeing that he had but little learning ex
cept what he had picked up from the sun and the sea. I
Say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable,
346 MOBY DICK.

devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a

Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going
to Nineveh viâ 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 honour of Jonah, in
which mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt without
any oil.

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

PITCHPOLING.

To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of car

riages 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 pre
cipitancy ; a disordered flight , as of Cleopatra's barges from
Actium .
Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's was fore
most. 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
 MOBY DICK. 347

him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was im

possible, he swam so fast and furious . What then re
mained ?
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 ma
nœuvre 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 dis
tance 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, de
liberate 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, cover
ing 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
348 MOBY DICK.

whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red

blood.
"That drove the spigot out of him ! " cries Stubb. " 'Tis
July's immortal Fourth ; all fountains must run wine to
day ! 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 Jive 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 agonised whale goes
into his flurry ; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpoler
dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the
monster die.

CHAPTER LXXXV.

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 mystify
ing the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or
mystifying pots ; and that for some centuries back, thou
sands 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 vapour—this is surely a noteworthy thing.
Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some inter
esting items contingent. Every one knows that by the pe
culiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes in general
breathe the air which at all times is combined with the
element in which they swim ; hence, a herring or a cod
might live a century, and never once raise his head above
the surface. But owing to his marked internal structure
which gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the
 MOBY DICK. 349

whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the

open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodi
cal 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 be
neath the surface ; and what is still more, his windpipe has
no connection with his mouth . No, he breathes through his
spiracle alone ; and this is on the top of his head.
If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function
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 vivify
ing principle, I do not think I shall err ; though I may pos
sibly 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, re
member, he has no gills. How is this ? Between his ribs
and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remark
able 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 fu
ture use in its four supplementary stomachs . The anatom
ical 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 in
explicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spout
ings 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 uni
form 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
350 MOBY DICK.

good his regular allowance of air. And not till those sev
enty breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay out his
full term below. Remark, however, that in different indi
viduals these rates are different ; but in any one they are
alike. 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 thou
sand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill,
then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the vic
tory 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 vapour—no absolute
certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is,
nevertheless that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfac
tories. But what does he want of them ? No roses, nor
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 exclu
sion 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
 MOBY DICK. 351

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 vapour of the exhaled breath,
or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken
in at the mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It
is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates with the
spouting canal ; but it 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 vapour ; or how
do you know that they are not those identical drops super
ficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is counter
sunk into the summit of the whale's head ? For even when
tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a
calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's
in the desert ; even then, the whale always carries a small
basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will
sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain.
Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to 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
352 MOBY DICK.

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, vapoury shreds of the jet,
which will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart,
from the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I
know one, who coming into still closer contact with the
spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or other
wise, 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 un
dulation 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 sup
position.
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty
monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm
tropical sea ; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of
vapour, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations,
and that vapour—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 vapour. 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
 MOBY DICK. 353

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 LXXXVI.

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 ,
23
354 MOBY DICK.

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 con
trary, 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 beauti
ful, 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 her
maphroditical 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 endu
rance, 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, what
ever be the mood it be in, its flexions are invariably marked
by exceeding grace. Therein no fairy's arm can tran
scend 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
speaking 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
 MOBY DICK. 355

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 saluta
tions 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 wound
ed 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
356 MOBY DICK.

wreath of vapour from the spiracle at his other extremity,

you would think that that was the smoke from the touch.
hole.
Fifth : As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan
the flukes lie considerably below the level of his back, they
are then 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—some
where 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 ; ifin 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 em
bodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in
Persia, the home ofthe fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philo
pater 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 ponder
ous 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
 MOBY DICK. 357

The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I de

plore 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 re
markable, 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 ex
perienced 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 LXXXVII.

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, ves
sels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China
seas.

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.
358 MOBY DICK.

Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java ;

and standing midway in that vast rampart of islands , but
tressed 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 con
sidering 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 pro
vision 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. Un
like the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequi
ous 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, lurk
ing 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 bythe repeated bloody chastisements they have re
cived 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 whal
ing season there. By these means, the circumnavigating
Pequod would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale
cruising grounds of the world, previous to descending upon
the Line in the Pacific ; where Ahab, though everywhere
else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle
to Moby Dick, in the sea he was most known to frequent ;
 MOBY DICK. 359

and at a season when he might most reasonably be pre

sumed to be haunting it.
But how now ? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no
land ? does his crew drink air ? Surely, he will stop for
water. 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-wan
dering 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 on the
western coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of
Sunda ; indeed, as most of the ground, roundabout, was gener
ally recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for cruis
ing ; therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more upon
Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admon
ished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs
of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with de
lighted 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 cheer
ing 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 invaria
bly 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
360 MOBY DICK.

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 some
times 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 vapoury spouts, individu
ally curling up into the air, and beheld through a blending
atmosphere of bluish haze, showed like the thousand cheer
ful 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 ex
pand in comparative security upon the plain ; even so did
this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through
the straits ; gradually contracting the wings of their semi
circle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic
centre.
Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them ; the
harpooners 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 cor
onation 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.
 MOBY DICK. 361

Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld an

other in our rear. It seemed formed of detached white
vapours, 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 be
thought him that through that gate lay the route to his
vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate
he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly
end ; and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild
pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were internally
cheering them on with their curses ;—when all these con
ceits 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 harpooners 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
362 MOBY DICK.

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 dis
posed to renounce the chase, when a general pausing com
motion among the whales gave animating token that they
were now at last under the influence of that strange per
plexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen
perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied . The com
pact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly
and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measure
less rout ; and like King Porus' elephants in the Indian
battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with con
sternation. In all directions expanding in vast irregular
circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their
short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distrac
tion of panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those
of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were, help
lessly 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 sol
itary 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 bythe 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 re
mained 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.
 MOBY DICK. 363

Though such a movement on the part of the whale struck

under such circumstances, is in nowise 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, bythe 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 oars
men 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 cool
ing himself with his own fan- like extremity.
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances , origin
ally 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 possi
bly 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
364 MOBY DICK.

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-har
poons, 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 enchant
ed calm which they say lurks at the heart of every com
motion. 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 overarched 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.
 MOBY DICK. 365

Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between

the revolving outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces be
tween the various pods in any one of those circles, the
entire area at this juncture, embraced by the whole multi
tude, 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, unso
phisticated, 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 al
most seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated
them. Queequeg patted their foreheads ; Starbuck scratch
ed their backs with his lance ; but fearful of the conse
quences, 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 be
come mothers . The lake, as I have hinted, was to a con
siderable 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 Gulf
weed 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 irk
some position it had so lately occupied in the maternal
366 MOBY DICK.

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 gun
wale ; " him fast ! him fast !—Wholine 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, be
comes 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.*
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 de
light. 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 re
volve 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 sud
den frantic spectacles in the distance evinced the activity
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 discolor 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.
 MOBY DICK. 367

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 agonising as was the wound of this whale, and an
appalling spectacle enough, any way ; yet the peculiar hor
ror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd,
was owing to a cause which at first the intervening dis
tance 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 har
poon-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,
368 MOBY DICK.

the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner

centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common moun
tain. 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 endeavour 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 aug
mented 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 Flash 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 up
right 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.
 MOBY DICK. 369

CHAPTER LXXXVIII.

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 inthe
rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth, this
gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about overthe
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 around
the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the
whole they are hereditarily entitled to embonpoint.
It is a 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 spend
ing the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating sum
mer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth . By the time
they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equa
tor awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation
24
370 MOBY DICK.

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 unwarrant
ably 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, scalloped fins ; and in some
instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths .
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake
himself away at the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it
very diverting to watch that lord. Gently he insinuates
his vast bulk among them again and revels there awhile,
still in tantalising vicinity to young Lothario, like pious
Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concu
bines. 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 nurs
ery, 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 oflife, for
swears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary,
 MOBY DICK. 371

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, school
master, 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 school
master 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 char
acteristically 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 en
counter ; 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
372 MOBY DICK.

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 LXXXIX.

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 regula
tions of the whale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed
the grand symbol and badge .
It frequently happens that when several ships are cruis
ing 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 re
taken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it
alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the most vexa
tious and violent disputes would often arise between the
fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, uni
versal, undisputed law applicable to all cases.
Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorised by leg
islative 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.
 MOBY DICK. 373

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 waiting 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 honourable whale
men 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 as
suredthemthat 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 Ellen
borough 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
374 MOBY DICK.

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 gentle
man had originally harpooned the lady, and had once had
her fast, and only by reason of the great stress of her plung
ing 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, be
cause 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, be
cause 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 plaintiffs afterwards took the
fish ; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs .
Acommon 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 ap
plied 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 Tem
ple 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 Repub
lican 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
 MOBY DICK. 375

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 star
vation ; 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 thou
sands of broken-backed labourers (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
harpooner, 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 Posses
sion the whole of the law ?
But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally ap
plicable, the kindred doctrine of Loose- Fish is still more
widely so. That is internationally and universally appli
cable.
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 opin
ions 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 ?
376 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER XC.

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 cap
tured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as
Honorary Grand Harpooner, 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 sep
arate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of roy
alty. In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the
above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed to lay be
fore you a circumstance that happened within the last two
years.
It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sand
wich, 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.
 MOBY DICK. 377

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 bedridden mother by part of
my share of this whale. "
"It is his. "
"Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half ? "
"It is his. "
In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace
the Duke of Wellington received the money. Thinking
that viewed in some 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
378 MOBY DICK.

the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend

gentleman) would decline medding 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 treaties on " Queen-Gold," or Queen-pinmoney, an
old King's Bench author, one William Prynne, thus dis
courseth : "Ye tail is ye Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe
may be supplied with ye whalebone." Now this was writ
ten 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 infer
ence 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 re
garded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some
presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in
all things, even in law.
 MOBY DICK. 378

CHAPTER XCI.

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 re

counted, and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy,
vapoury, 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 some
where hereabouts are some of those drugged whales we
tickled the other day. I thought they would keel up before
long."
Presently, the vapours in advance slid aside ; and there in
the distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that
some sort of whale must be alongside. As we glided nearer,
the stranger showed 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 unsavoury 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
380 MOBY DICK.

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 cattle 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
in for it ; " and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
By this time the faint air had become a complete calm ;
so that whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped
in the smell, with no hope of escaping except by its breez
ing 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 color. Upon her head boards,
 MOBY DICK. 381

in large gilt letters, he read " Bouton de Rose," —Rose-but

ton, 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 star
board 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."
" ery good , then ; good- bye now, and I'll call again in

Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and see

ing 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 ?"
382 MOBY DICK.

"What in the devil's name do you want here ? " roared

the Guernsey-man, flying into a sudden passion.
"Oh ! " keep cool— cool ? yes, that's the word ; why don't
you pack those whales in ice while you're working at ' em ?
But joking aside, though ; do you know, 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 car
case."
"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 may
hap 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 tas
selled 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
humour. All their noses upwardly projected from their
faces like so manyjib-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 anathe
mas proceeding from the Captain's round-house abaft ; and
looking in that direction saw a fiery face thrust from be
hind the door, which was held ajar from within. This
was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrat
ing against the proceedings of the day had betaken him
self to the Captain's round-house (cabinet he called it) to
avoid the pest ; but still, could not help yelling out his en
treaties and indignations at times.
Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and
turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him,
during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation
of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought
them all into so unsavoury and unprofitable a pickle . Sound
ing him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guern
sey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the
ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, but
 MOBY DICK. 383

otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him so that,

the two quickly concocted a little plan for both circumvent
ing and satirising 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 com
ing 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 look
ing man for a sea-captain, with large whiskers and mous
tache, 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 con
fining the whales to the ship.
" What now ? " said the Guernsey-man, when the captain
had returned to them.
384 MOBY DICK
66
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 grate
ful 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 prin
ciples 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 hav
ing 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 benevo
lently 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 in
creased 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, especi
 MOBY DICK. 385

ally 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 sav
oury 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 XCII.

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 sub
stances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times
found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland
soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the
sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odourless
substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and
ornaments ; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fra
grant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in
pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum.
25
386 MOBY DICK.

The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca,

for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St.
Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains
into claret, to flavour it.
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentle
men 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 run
ning out of harm's way, as labourers do in blasting rocks.
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this am
bergris, 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 amber
gris should be found in the heart of such decay ; is this
nothing ? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corin
thians, about corruption and incorruption ; how that we
are sown in dishonour, 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- savour, Cologne-water, in its rudi
mental manufacturing stages, is the worst.
I should like to conclude the chapter with the above ap
peal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge
often made against whalemen, and which, in the estima
tion of some already biassed 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
 MOBY DICK. 387

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 un
loading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock,
a savour 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 savour. But all this is
quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler ; which in
a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her
hold with oil, does not, 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 odour ; nor can whalemen be recognised, as
the people ofthe 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 en
joys 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 parlour. 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 honour to Alexander the Great ?
388 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER XCIII.

THE CASTAWAY.

It was but some few days after encountering the French

man, that a most significant event befell the most insignifi
cant 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 fewhands are reserved called ship-keepers,
whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are
pursuingthe 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 tim
orous 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 nickname, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip ! ye
have heard 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 unac
 MOBY DICK. 389

countably 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 en
livened many a fiddler's frolic on the green ; and at melo
dious eventide, with his gay ha-ha ! had turned the round
horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the
clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the
pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow ; yet, when
the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its
most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground,
and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnat
ural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infer
nally 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 con
tact 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, remorse
lessly 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
390 MOBY DICK.

knife from his sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the
line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively,
" Cut ?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked face plainly looked,
Do, for God's sake ! All passed in a flash. In less than
half a minute, this entire thing happened.
" Damn him, cut ! " roared Stubb ; and so the whale was
lost and Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was
assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly
permitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb
then in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous man
ner, 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 in
definite, 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 be
hind 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
 MOBY DICK. 391

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 heart
less 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 jeopardised through their own timidity, is not al
ways manifested by the hunters in all similar instances ;
and such instances not unfrequently occur ; almost invaria
bly 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 in
sanity 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
392 MOBY DICK.

common in that fishery ; and in the sequel of the narrative,

it will then be seen what like abandonment befell my
self.

CHAPTER XCIV.

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 Heidelberg 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 crystallised to such a degree, that when,
with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's
bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here
and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was our busi
ness 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 tran
quil 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
 MOBY DICK. 393

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 allay
ing the heat of anger ; while bathing in that bath, I felt
divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any
sort whatever.
Squeeze ! squeeze ! squeeze ! all the morning long ; I
squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it ; I
squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came
over me ; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co
labourers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle
globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
feeling did this avocation beget ; that at last I was continu
ally 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-humour 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 forever !
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 plac
ing 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 fragmen
tary parts of the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to
394 MOBY DICK.

the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a consid

erable 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
the venison season, and that particular venison season con
temporary 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 whale
men 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 be
comes so. A whaleman's nipper is a short firm strip of ten
dinous 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
 MOBY DICK. 395

scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night . On one

side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for
the workmen. They generally go in pairs, —a pike-and
gaff-man and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a
frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is
something like a 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. Mean
while, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpen
dicularly 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 irre
sistibly 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 XCV .

THE CASSOCK.

Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain junc

ture of this post-mortemising of the whale ; and had you
strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that
you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very
strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen
there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers . 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 grand
issimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders,
396 MOBY DICK.

staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a

dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the fore
castle 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 length
wise 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 ! *

CHAPTER XCVI.

THE TRY-WORKS.

Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is out

wardly 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

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.
 MOBY DICK. 397

weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, some

ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The founda
tion 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. Remov
ing 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 ex
ample, 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 communicat
ing itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir ex
tending under the entire enclosed surface of the works .
By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept re
plenished 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
tryworks 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 car
penter 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
398 MOBY DICK.

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 pletho
ric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once
ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his
own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke ! for
his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and
not only that, but you must live in it for the time . It has
an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odour about it, such as may
lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres . 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 com
missioned to some vengeful deed . So the pith and sulphur
freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris , issuing from
their midnight harbours, with broad sheets of flame for sails,
bore down upon the Turkish 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 harpooners ,
always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged
poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scald
ing 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 . Oppo
site 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 em
ployed, 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 emblazon
ings of the works . As they narrated to each other their
unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of
 MOBY DICK. 399

mirth ; as their uncivilised 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 be
ginning 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 illumining
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, some
how, 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
400 MOBY DICK.

up into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How

glad and how grateful the relief from this unnatural hallu
cination 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—nor 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 grave
yards, 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 Rabe
lais 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 black
est gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible
in the sunny spaces . And even if he forever 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.
 MOBY DICK. 401

CHAPTER XCVII .

THE LAMP.

Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the

Pequod's forecastle, where the off-duty watch were sleep
ing, for one single moment you would have almost thought
you were standing in some illumined shrine of canonised
kings and counsellors . There they lay in their 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, un
vitiated 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 XCVIII.

SLOWING 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
26
402 MOBY DICK.

great padded surtout becomes the property of his execu.

tioner ; 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 re
mains 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 strik
ing 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 pitch
ing 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 a great leviathan him
self; 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 cling
 MOBY DICK. 403

ing 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 imple
ments 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 indus
try of almost the entire ship's company, the whole of this
conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew them
selves 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 parlours, sofas, carpets,
and fine cambrics ; propose to mat the deck ; think of hav
ing hangings to the top ; object not to taking tea by moon
light 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
labours, which know no night ; continuing straight through
for ninety-six hours ; when from the boat, where they have
swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line, —they
only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the
heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very
sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined
fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works ;
when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred
themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy
room of it ; many is the time the poor fellows, just button
ing 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
404 MOBY DICK.

then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its de

filements, 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 XCIX .

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 firm
ness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hope
fulness .
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed
to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscrip
tions stamped on it, as though now for the first time be
ginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way
whatever significance might lurk in them. And some cer
tain 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
 MOBY DICK. 405

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-strik
ing 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 crime 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 equi
noctial 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
406 MOBY DICK.

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 bul
warks. "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," soliloquised Stubb by the
try-works, " he's been twigging it ; and there goes Starbuck
from the same, and both with faces which I should say
might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And ail
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 doub
loons 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 killingly 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
 MOBY DICK. 407

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 him
self, or the Twins . Well ; the sun he wheels among ' em.
Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold be
tween 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 naviga
tor, 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, Alma
nac! 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—happi
ness weighed and found wanting ; and while we are very
sad about that, Lord ! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio,
or the Scorpion, stings us in rear ; we are curing the wound,
when whang 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, Doub
loon ! But stop ; here comes little King-Post ; dodge round
the try-works , now, and let's hear what he'll have to say.
408 MOBY DICK.

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.
 MOBY DICK. 409

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 ark. 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 !"
410 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER C.

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 any
body—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
 MOBY DICK. 411

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
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 along
side 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, in putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the
ivory arm (like two sword-fishblades) cried out in his
walrus way, " Aye, aye, hearty ! let us shake bones to
gether !—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 arueful sight along
t, 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 English
man's shoulder, as he did so.
412 MOBY DICK.

" Aye, he was the cause of it, at least ; and that leg too ? "
66 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 bounc
ing 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
humouredly. " Well, this old great-grandfather, with the
white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and
goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line."
" Aye, I see !—wanted to part it ; free the fast-fish—an
old trick—I know him."
"How it was exactly," continued the one-armed com
mander, " 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 be
deadened with black foam—the whale's tail looming
 MOBY DICK. 413

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 flail
ings, 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 shoul
der) ; "yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down
to Hell's flames, I was thinking ; when, when, all of a sud
den, 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 be
tween 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 the
superior's introduction of him to Ahab, he politely bowed,
and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding.
"It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-sur
geon ; " 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
414 MOBY DICK.

with me every night, till he couldn't see to put on the ban

dages ; 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. (Bun
ger, 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 in
terruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavours,
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 ship
ping that ivory arm there ; that thing is against all rule "
—pointing at it with the marlingspike—" that is the cap
tain'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 Bun
ger ! 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,
 MOBY DICK. 415

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 after
wards, 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
416 MOBY DICK.

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 Fed
allah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the
bulwarks to take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swing
ing 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 CI.

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 ex
istence, 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
 MOBY DICK. 417

large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North

and South Atlantic : not elsewhere. Be it distinctly re
corded here, that the Nantucketers were the first among
mankind to harpoon with civilised steel the great Sperm
Whale ; and that for half a century they were the only
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him.
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia , fitted out for the express
purpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys,
boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the
nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South
Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one ; and return
ing 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 ons— 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 honour to the Enderbys, therefore, whose house, I
think, exists to the present day ; though doubtless the
original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for
the great South Sea of the other world .
The ship named after him was worthy of the honour, being
a very fast 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
27
 MOBY DICK.
418
of it. Flip ? Did I say we had flip ? Yes, and we flipped
it at the rate of ten gallons the hour ; and when the squall
came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands
visitors and all —were called to reef topsails, we were so
top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bow
ines ; 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 scram
bled 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, con
sidering 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 de
rived 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
 MOBY DICK. 419

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, giv
ing 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 whale
men ; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I
transcribed the following :
400,000 lbs. of beef.
60,000 lbs . Friesland pork.
150,000 lbs . of stock fish.
550,000 lbs . of biscuit.
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 inthe 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 digest
ing of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many
profound thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, cap
420 MOBY DICK.

able 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 harpooner 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 pursu
ing 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
harpooners, 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 harpooner 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.
 MOBY DICK. 421

CHAPTER CII.

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 compre
hension 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 examina
tion, 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 break
ing the seal and reading all the contents of that young
cub ?
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the levia
than in their gigantic, full-grown development, for that
rare knowledge I amindebted to my late royal friend Tran
422 MOBY DICK.

quo, 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
vertù, 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 has 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 oflordly 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 vapoury
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 !
—butone single word with thee ! Nay—the shuttle flies—the
figures float from forth the loom ; the freshet-rushing carpet
 MOBY DICK. 423

forever 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 inaudi
ble among the flying spindles ; those same words are plainly
heard without the walls, bursting from the opened case
ments. 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 Arsaci
dean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay loung
ing 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 vertù .
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
424 MOBY DICK.

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 ac
curacy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in
Hull, England, one ofthe 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 Right 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 pro
prietors 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 cav
ities— 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 con.
genial admeasurement of the whale.
 MOBY DICK. 425

CHAPTER CIII.

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 size Greenland whale of sixty
feet in length ; according to my careful calculation, I say, a
Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty- five
and ninety 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, other
wise 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. Ofthis seventy-two feet,
his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet ; leaving
 426 MOBY DICK.

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 th hul 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 foot
path bridges over small streams.
In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck
anew with the circumstance, so variously repeated in this
book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no means the
mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque
ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the
ish 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 cor
responding 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.
 MOBY DICK. 427

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 some
thing 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 CIV.

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 in
volutions 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 re
mains to magnify him in an archæological, fossiliferous,
and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other crea
ture than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea— such portly
terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent.
428 MOBY DICK.

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 dis
sertations, 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
mefaint 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, pres
ent, 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 miscel
laneous 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 geolo
gical 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 con
necting, or at any rate intercepted links, between the anti
chronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are
said to have entered the Ark ; all the Fossils 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.
 MOBY DICK. 429

Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, frag

ments 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 Dau
phiné in Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon
the palace of the Tuileries ; and bones disinterred in exca
vating 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 be
stowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus . But some speci
men 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 skel
etons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebræ, all character
ised 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 Levia
thans, their incalculable seniors ; I am, by a flood, borne
back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to
have begun ; for time 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 inhab
itable hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole
world was the whale's ; and, king of creation, he left his
430 MOBY DICK.

wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Him.
malayas. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan ? Ahab's
harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methu
selah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands
with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, un
sourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale,
which, having been before all time, must need 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 His
torians 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 ."
 MOBY DICK. 431

In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader,

and if you be an Nantucketer, and a Whaleman, you will
silently worship there.

CHAPTER CV.

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 (em
bracing 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 nat
uralists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales that em
braced 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, Cook's naturalists, we find a Danish member
of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland
432 MOBY DICK.

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 his
tory 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 pub
lished 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 Smithfleld , not only equal, but far exceed in mag
nitude 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 Strait, and
into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world ;
and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all con
tinental 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
 MOBY DICK. 433

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 for
bids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan . Forty men in
one ship hunting the Sperm Whale for forty-eight months
think they have done extremely well, and thank God, if at
last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas , in the
days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers
of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset suns still
rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of
moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted
on horses instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not
forty, 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 ex
ample, that in former years (the latter part of the last cen
tury, say) these Leviathans, in small pods, were encoun
tered 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 whalers no longer haunt many grounds in
former years abounding with them, hence that species also
is declining. For they are only being driven from promon
tory 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 spec
tacle.
Furthermore concerning these last mentioned Levia
thans, 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
28
434 MOBY DICK.

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 har
pooned for one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecas
tle 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 succes
sive 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 com
bined .
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 imag
ining 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 individ
uality. 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
 MOBY DICK. 435

eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the top
most crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance
to the skies.

CHAPTER CVI.

AHAB'S LEG .

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had

quitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had not been un
attended with some small violence to his own person. He
had alighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat
that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock.
And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot
hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an ur
gent 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 insensi
ble ; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unim
aginable 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 agonising 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 poster
ity of Joy. For, not to hint of this : that it is an inference
from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural
436 MOBY DICK.

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 them
selves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond
the grave ; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an in
equality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought
Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a
certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but at bot
tom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some
men, an archangelic grandeur ; so do their diligent trac
ings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the gen
ealogies 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 cym
balling, 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 per
haps 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 ap
peared 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 recluse
ness . 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 .
 MOBY DICK. 437

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 CVII.

THE CARPENTER.

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn,

and take high abstracted man alone ; and he seems a won
der, 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 heredi
tary. But most humble though he was, and far from fur
nishing 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 ap
plication to him of the generic remark above, this carpen
ter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand
438 MOBY DICK.

nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring in

a large ship, upon a three or four years' voyage, in uncivi
lized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readi
ness 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 ponder
ous 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 vermilion stars to be painted upon the blade of his
every oar ; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the
carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. A
sailor takes a fancy to wear 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 un
manageably 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 them
selves 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 ; imper
 MOBY DICK. 439

sonal, I say ; for it so shaded off into the surrounding in

finite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity
discernible in the whole visible world ; which while pause
lessly 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, in all-ramifying heartless
ness ; yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old,
crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not un
streaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness ;
such as might have served to pass the time during the mid
night 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 ; uncom
promised 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 inter
mixture 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 use
ful 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
440 MOBY DICK.

it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in

him ; this it was, that kept him a great part of the time
soliloquising ; but only like an unreasoning wheel, which
also hummingly soliloquises ; or rather, his body was a
sentry-box and this soliloquiser on guard there, and talking
all the time to keep himself awake.

CHAPTER CVIII.

AHAB AND THE CARPENTER.

THE DECK—FIRST NIGHT WATCH.

(Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and bythe light of

two lanterns busily filing the ivoryjoist 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,
 MOBY DICK. 441

1 guess . Ha ! that's the heel ; we are in luck ; here he

comes, or it's somebody else, that's certain .

Ahab (advancing).

(During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing

at times.)
Well, man-maker !
Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark
the length . Let me measure, sir.
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 proper
ly 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).
442 MOBY DICK.

'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 hum
bly 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 uninterpenetrat
ingly 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 forever, and without a body?
Hah !
Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calcu
 MOBY DICK. 443

late 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 jawbone for a wife ! And this is his leg ;
he'll stand on this. What was that now about one leg
standing in three places, and all three places standing in one
hell—how was that ? Oh ! I don't wonder he looked so scorn
ful at me! I am a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes, they
say; but that's only hap-hazard-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
444 MOBY DICK.

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 CIX.

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.*
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, Mastmai, and Sikoke. With his
snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of
his table, and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in
his hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to the gang
way door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old
courses again.
"Who's there ? " hearing the footstep at the door, but not
turning round to it. " On deck ! Begone ! "
"Captain Ahab mistakes ; it is I. The oil in the hold is
leaking, sir. We must up Burtons and break out."
"Up Burton and break out ? 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

* 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.
 MOBY DICK. 445

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 . Be
gone ! 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 he 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
29
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, master
ing his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the
cabin, paused for an instant and said : " Thou hast out
raged, not insulted me, sir ; but for that I ask thee not to
446 MOBY DICK.

beware of Starbuck ; thou wouldst but laugh 99 ; 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 some
thing 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 CX.

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 Cap
tain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warn
ing 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 dinner 缅
 MOBY DICK. 447

less 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 else
where 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, reso
lutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their
stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooners
are the holders , so called.
Poor Queequeg ! when the ship was about half disem
bowelled, 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 bot
tom 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 im
mortal 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
448 MOBY DICK.

So that let us say it again— no dying Chaldee or Greek

had higher and holier thoughts than those whose myste
rious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Quee
queg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the
rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and
the ocean's invisible 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 break
ing, 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 un
like 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 whale
man, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were with
out 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 heath
enish, 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 char
acter, proceeded into the forecastle and took Queequeg's
measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg's
person as he shifted the rule.
 MOBY DICK. 449

"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 extrem
ities. 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 for
ward 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
29
450 MOBY DICK.

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 be
hind ;—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 ! So,
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 ; Quee
queg 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 themhe 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, Quee
queg 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 leav
ing undone ; and therefore had changed his mind about
dying he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him,
 451
MOBY DICK.
then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sover
eign 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, unintelli
t w trore yer that sort .
genNodes , the isof this noteworthy difference between savage
and civi lise d ; tha while a sick , civilised man may be six
t
months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is
almost half well again in a day. So, in good time my Quee
queg gained strength ; and at length after sitting on the
windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigor
ous 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
And this thought it must have been
uns
whicolvh ed
sugtoges ted
the t . Ahab that wild exclamation of his,
lasto
when one morning turning away from surveying poor
99
Queequeg—" Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods !
452 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER CXI.

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 Abra
ham ; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and
low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impen
etrable 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, bow
ing your head to Pan.
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain , as stand
ing like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the
mizzen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed
the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet
 MOBY DICK. 453

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 CXII.

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 con
tributory 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 harpooners, and
bowsmen to do some little job for them ; altering, or repair
ing, or new shaping their various weapons and boat furni
ture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all
waiting to be served ; holding boat- spades, pike-heads, har
poons, 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 pain
ful 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 fin
ally 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,
454 MOBY DICK.

on the road running between two country towns, the black.

smith 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 uncatastro
phied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama.
He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had
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 ; em
braced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three
blithe, ruddy children ; every Sunday went to a cheerful-look
ing church, planted in a grove. But one night, under cover
of darkness , and further concealed in a most cunning dis
guisement, 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 in
to his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror ! Upon the
opening of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivel
led up his home. Now, for prudent, most wise, and econo
mic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the basement of
his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it ; so that al
ways 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 in
fants were rocked to slumber.
Oh, woe on woe ! Oh, Death, why canst thou not some
times 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 ven
erable, 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 ham
mer 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
 MOBY DICK. 455

mto the weeping faces of her children ; the bellows fell ;

the forge choked up with cinders ; the house was sold ; the
mother dived down into the long churchyard grass ; her
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 possi
bilities 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 compunc
tions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all
receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain
of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life
adventures ; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifies, the
thousand mermaids sing to them—" Come hither, broken
hearted ; here is another life without the guilt of interme
diate 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 sun
rise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded,
Aye, I come ! And so Perth went a-whaling.

CHAPTER CXIII.

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
456 MOBY DICK.

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," an
swered 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 woful 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 smooth almost any seams
and dents ; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith ? "
" Aye, sir, I think I can ; all seams and dents but one."
" Look ye here, then," cried Ahab, passionately advanc
ing, and leaning with both hands on Perth's shoulders ;
" look ye here— here—can ye smooth out a seam like this,
blacksmith," sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow;
" if thou 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 smooth this seam ? "
" Oh ! that is the one, sir ! Said I not all seams and
dents but one ?"
" Aye, blacksmith, it is the one ; aye, man, it is un
smoothable ; 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."
 MOBY DICK. 457

" Horse-shoe stubbs, sir ? Why, Captain Ahab, thou

hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we black
smiths 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 strans 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 wielding 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 glow
ing 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.
"Wouldst thou brand me, Perth ? " wincing for a
moment with the pain ; " have I been but forging my own
branding-iron, then ? "
" Pray God, not that ; yet I fear something, Captain
Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale ?"
" For the white fiend ! But now for the barbs ; thou
must make them thyself, man. Here are my razors — the
best of steel ; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle
22
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
 MOBY DICK.
458
Per th to the sh an k , 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
r
pla
to " ce no—
No, no er
the wat terskfor
wa-ca tha. t ; I want it of the true death
nea
temp . Ahoy, there ! Tashtego , Queequeg, Daggoo !
er
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

te"mpEg . n baptizo te in nomine patris , sed in nomine

eroedno
diaboli ! " deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron
scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood .
Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and select
ing one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab
fitted the end to the socket of the iron . A coil of new tow
line was then unwound , and some fathoms of it taken to
the windlass , and stretched to a great tension . Pressing
his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harpstring, then
eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings , Ahab
exclaimed " Good ! and now for the seizings ."
At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the
separate spread yarns were all braided and woven round
the socket of the harpoon ; the pole was then driven hard
up into the socket ; from the lower end the rope was traced
half- way along the pole's length, and firmly secured so,
with intertwistings of twine . This done, pole, iron, and
rope —like the Three Fates —remained inseparable, and
Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon ; the sound
of his ivory leg and the sound of the hickory pole, both
hollowly ringing along every plank . But ere he entered
his cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most
piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip ! thy wretched laugh ,
thy idle but unresting eye ; all thy strange mummeries not
unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the mel
ancholy ship , and mocked it!
 MOBY DICK. 459

CHAPTER CXIV.

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, fif
teen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, they were
engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing or pad
dling 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 hearthstone cats they purr against
the gunwale ; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when
beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's
skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it ; and
would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but
conceals a remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover
softly feels a certain filial, confident, land- like feeling toward
the sea ; that he 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.
460 MOBY DICK.

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 harbour, whence we un
moor no more ? In what rapt ether sails the world, of
which the weariest will never weary ? Where is the found
ling'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 mur
mured :
" 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 CXV.
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 burst
ing hatches ; and now, in glad holiday apparel was joy.
 MOBY DICK. 461

ously, 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. Side
ways 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 ves
sels 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 harpooners 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 re
served to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testi
mony 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 harpooners 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
462 MOBY DICK.

between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island

negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were
presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the
ship's company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of
the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed .
You would have almost thought they were pulling down
the cursed Bastile, such wild cries they raised, as the now
useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the sea.
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood
erect on the 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-humouredly. " 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 ong. 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 rev
elry 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 to
gether, for that vial was filled with Nantucket soundings.
 MOBY DICK. 463

CHAPTER CXVI.

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 spear
ings 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, wan
tonly 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, some
how 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 faith
ful, 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 un
spoken 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
464 MOBY DICK.

heart of these unverdured seas ; thou art an infidel, thou

queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide- slaughter
ing 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 im
minglings float beneath me here ; I am buoyed by breaths
of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.
"Then hail, forever 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 CXVII.
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 along
side 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 Par
see ; 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 moan
ing 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.
 MOBY DICK. 465

"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
pallbearers . 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 ;—" Im
mortal 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 CXVIII .

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
30
466 MOBY DICK.

the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his

wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his lati
tude.
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 immeasur
able burning-glass . The sky looks lacquered ; clouds there
are none ; the horizon floats ; and this nakedness of unre
lieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God's
throne. Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with
colored 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 eye
ing 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 reverie, 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 behold
ing 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
 MOBY DICK. 467

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 Par
see'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-head Starbuck watched the
Pequod's tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went
lurching along the deck.
" I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all
aglow, full of its tormented flaming life ; and I have seen
it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust . Old man of
oceans ! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length
remain but one little heap of ashes ! "
" Aye," cried Stubb, " but sea-coal ashes—mind ye that,
Mr. 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 act
est right ; live in the game, and die in it ! "
468 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER CXIX.

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 flutter
ing 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 in
tricate hamper there ; while Stubb and flask were directing
the menin 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 tetering 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, regard
ing the wreck, " but the sea will have its way. Stub, 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!
 MOBY DICK. 469

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, ohl
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 any
body 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 sternsheets, man ; where he is wont
to stand— his stand-point is stove, man ! Now jump over
board, 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
wayto Nantucket," soliloquised Starbuck suddenly, heedless
of Stubb's question . " The gale that now hammers at us
to stave us, we can turn it into a fair wind that will drive
us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all is blackness
of doom ; but to leeward, homeward— I see it lightens up
there ; but not with the lightning."
At that moment in one of the intervals of profound dark
ness, 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
470 MOBY DICK.

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, sud
denly 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 Himmalayas 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-ams 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 pass
ing 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 teter over to a seething sea ; but in all my voyag
ings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God's burn.
 MOBY DICK. 471

ing 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, Quee
queg'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 up
wards, 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, ar
rested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pen
472 MOBY DICK.

dulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, or

chard twig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the stand
ing, or stepping, or running skeletons in Herculaneum,
others remained rooted to the decks ; but all their eyes up
cast.
"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 main-mast 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
tripointed 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, un
integral 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 con
sume ; but I can then be ashes. Make the homage of these
 MOBY DICK. 473

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 blind
fold, 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 magnani
mous ! 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 call
est thyself unbegotten ; certainly knowest not thy begin
ning, 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 creative
ness 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 homeward, 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 har
poon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them ; swearing to
474 MOBY DICK.

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 flythe
neighbourhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose 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 CXX .
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 in
board ? "
" 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 maintop-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 ! "
 MOBY DICK. 475

CHAPTER CXXI.
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 what
ever 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, sup
posing 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 pit
chers 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 opin
ion, 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 light
ning-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 sen
Bible."
476 MOBY DICK.

"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 any
where ; 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. 1 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 CXXII.
MIDNIGHT ALOFT. THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.
The main-top-sail yard.- Tashtego parsing 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 CXXIII .
THE MUSKET.
During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man
at the Pequod's jawbone tiller had several times been reel
 MOBY DICK. 477

ingly 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 indispen
sable.
In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed
shuttle-cock 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 any one can behold without some sort of
unwonted emotion.
Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much,
that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb
—one 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-he-yo, 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 comman
der to report immediately, and at every one of the twenty
four hours, any decided change in the affairs of the deck,
Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to the breeze
however reluctantly and gloomily,—than he 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
478 MOBY DICK.

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 ac
cursed 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 quad
rant ? 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 mur
derer of thirty men and more, if this ship comes to any
deadly harm ; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears
this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this
instant— put aside, that crime would not be his . Ha ! is he
muttering in his sleep ? Yes, just there,—in there, he's
sleeping. Sleeping ? aye, but still alive, and soon awake
again. I can't withstand thee, then, old man. Not reason
ing ; not remonstrance ; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to ;
all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat com
mands, 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
 MOBY DICK. 479

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 con
tinent 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 CXXIV.
THE NEEDLE.
Next morning the not-yet- subsided sea rolled in long slow
billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurg
ling track, pushed her on like giants ' palms outspread . The
480 MOBY DICK.

strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and all

seemed vast outbellying sails ; the whole world boomed
before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the in
visible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his
place ; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks . Em
blazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens,
reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of mol
ten 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 pro
duced 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 undeviat
ing 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 . " Head
ing East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern ?"
Upon this every soul was confounded ; for the phenome
non just then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped
every one else ; but its very blinding palpableness must have
been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab
caught one glimpse of the compass ; his uplifted arm slowly
fell ; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standing
behind him Starbuck looked, and lo ! the two compasses
pointed East, and the Pequod was as 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,
 MOBY DICK. 481

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. In 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 annihi
lated, 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 accord
ingly. 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, Star
buck 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 harpooners remained
almost wholly unimpressed ; or if impressed, it was only
with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts
from inflexible Ahab's .
Fora 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 ! yes
terday I wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would
feign have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over
the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without a
pole ; 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
31
482 MOBY DICK.

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 re
peatedly 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 magnetising
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 .
 MOBY DICK. 483

CHAPTER CXXV.

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 deter
mining 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 up
on 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 an
gular 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 down
wards , 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 eye
ing 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."
484 MOBY DICK.

""Twill hold, old gentleman . Long heat and wet, have

they spoiled thee ? Thou seem'st to hold. Or, truer per
haps, 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 straight
ened out in a long dragging line astern, and then, instantly,
the reel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and low
ered by the rolling billows , the towering 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, fishermen. 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 . 66"Away from the quarter-deck ! "
 MOBY DICK. 485

"The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab,

advancing. " Hands off from that holiness ! Where sayest
thou Pip was, boy ?"
" Astern there, sir, astern ! Lo, lo ! "
"And who art thou, boy ? I see not my reflection in the
vacant pupils of thy eyes. Oh God ! that man should be a
thing for immortal souls to sieve through ! Who art thou,
boy ?"
"Bell-boy, sir ; ship's-crier ; ding, dong, ding ! Pip ! Pip !
Pip ! One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip ; five feet
high— looks cowardly—quickest known by that! Ding,
dong, ding ! Who's seen Pip the coward ? "
"There can be no hearts above the snowline. Oh, ye
frozen heavens ! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless
child, and have abandoned him , ye creative libertines .
Here, boy ; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth ,
while Ahab lives . Thou 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
"9
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 Manx
man. " One daft with strength, the other daft with weak
ness. 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."
486 MOBY DICK.

CHAPTER CXXVI.

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 mur
dered 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 unap
palled. Yet the grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of all
—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard,
were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.
Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey
dawn, when he came to the deck ; it was then recounted to
him by Flask not unaccompanied with hinted dark mean
ings . He hollowly laughed, and thus explained the
wonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort
of great numbers of seals, and ome 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
 MOBY DICK. 487

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 sunrise 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 the parched wood also filled at its every pore ;
and the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the
bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth but
a hard one.
And thus the first man 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 foreshad
owing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil
already presaged . They declared that now they knewthe
reason of those wild shrieks they had heard the night be
fore. 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 innuendoes Quee
queg hinted a hint concerning his coffin.
"A life-buoy of a coffin ! " cried Starbuck, starting.
" Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.
488 MOBY DICK.

"It will make a good enough one," said Flask, " the car.
penter 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.
66
' 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 ; its 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 con
clusion ; 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 Vine
yard ; 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
 MOBY DICK. 489

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 con
founded 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 marl
ing-spike ! Let's to it."

CHAPTER CXXVII.

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 humour 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 some
thing else."
"Then tell me ; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping,
 490 MOBY DICK.

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 ? "
66
'Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like
that's all sir."
Um, um ; go on."
99
" 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 ! Dispatch! 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.)
1 "There's a sight ! There's
a sound ! The grey-headed
woodpecker tapping a 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
 MOBY DICK. 491

fellow. Rat-tat ! So man's seconds tick ! Oh ! how im

material are all materials ! What things real are there,
but imponderable thoughts ? Here now's the very dreaded
CA
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
In 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
XE 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 CXXVIII .
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE RACHEL.
Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing
directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clus
tering 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
rd fled from the smitten hull.
"Bad news , she brings bad news," muttered the old Manx
man. 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 unex
pected 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 boathook 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.
t
" Where was he ?—not killed ! —not killed ! " cried Ahab,
closely advancing. " How was it ? "
at
492 MOBY DICK.

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 blue water, not very far
to leeward ; whereupon, the fourth rigged boat—a reserved
one—had been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen
sail before the wind, this fourth boat—the swiftest keeled
of all—seemed to have succeeded in fastening—at least, as
well as the man at the masthead 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 mid
night, 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 cruis
ing after one missing whale-boat in the height of the whale
ing season? See, Flask, only see how pale he looks — pale
 MOBY DICK. 493

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 num
ber 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 jeopardised but divided boats, always to pick up
the majority first . But the captain, for some unknown con
stitutional 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 un
frequently 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.
494 MOBY DICK.

" 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 my
self, 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 un
conditional 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, woful 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 CXXIX .
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
 MOBY DICK. 495

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."
66
' 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."
‫عمان‬ "Oh ! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in
17 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 old feeling, now, when
a black boy's host to white men with gold lace upon their
496 MOBY DICK.

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 CXXX.
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 humour, 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 .
 MOBY DICK. 497

But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confi
dential 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 af
fected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to in
vest the thin Fedallah now ; such ceaseless shudderings
shook him ; that the men looked dubious at him ; half un
certain, 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 al
ways 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 watch
men 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
mizzen ; or else they saw him standing in the cabin- scuttle,
—his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step ; his
hat slouched heavily over his eyes ; so that however motion
less he stood, however the days and nights were added on,
that he had not swung in his hammock ; yet hidden be
neath 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
32
498 MOBY DICK.

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 aban
doned 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 to
gether, 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 harpooners ;
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
tothe other ; pausinghis 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
 MOBY DICK. 499

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 differ
ent 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, unpro
vided 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 spiralised
downwards, and went eddying again round his head.
But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant hori
zon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird ; nor, indeed,
would any one else have marked it much, it being no un
common circumstance ; only now almost the least heedful
eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost
every sight.
500 MOBY DICK.

"Your hat, your hat, sir ! " suddenly cried the Siciliav
seaman, who being posted at the mizzen-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 disap
peared ; while from the point of that disappearance, a
minute black spot was dimly discerned , falling from that
vast height into the sea.

CHAPTER CXXXI.

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 will ever do that,"
answered the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock
on the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors
were busy in sewing together.
"Not forged! " and snatching Perth's levelled iron from
 MOBY DICK. 501

the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming—" Look ye, Nan

tucketer ; 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 with22 uplifted hands—" may the re
surrection 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 Ahabnow glided from the dejected Delight, the strange
life-buoy hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicu
ous 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 CXXXII.

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,
502 MOBY DICK.

and sharks ; and these were the strong, troubled, murder

ous 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 ! In
visible 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 round
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 howhis 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 affec
tionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joy
ously 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.
 MOBY DICK. 503

" Starbuck ! "

" Sir."
" Oh, Starbuck ! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild look
ing sky. On such a day—very much such a sweetness as
this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooner of eigh
teen ! 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 desola
tion 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, weari
ness ! 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 nour
ishment of my soil ! —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 mar
riage pillow— wife ? wife ?—rather a widow with her hus
band alive ! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married
her, Starbuck ; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boil
ing blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thou
sand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased
his prey—more a demon than a man ?—aye, aye ! what a
forty years' fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been ! Why
this strife of the chase ? why weary, and palsy the arms
at the oar, and the iron, and the lance ? how the richer or
better is Ahab now ? Behold. Oh, Starbuck ! is it not
hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should
have been snatched from under me ? Here, brush this old
hair aside ; it blinds me, that I seem to weep . Locks so
grey did never grow but from out some ashes ! But do I
look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck ? I feel deadly
faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, stag
gering 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
504 MOBY DICK.

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 ! "
66
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 sum
mer 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
 MOBY DICK. 505

can this one small heart beat ; this one small brain think
thoughts ; unless God does that beating, does that thinking,
d 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
that 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
CHER

Τ
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 years 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 CXXXIII.

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
odour, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living
sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch ; nor was any
mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and
then the dog- vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing
of the odour as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the
ship's course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be
shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movement was sufficiently
vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the
506 MOBY DICK.

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 betweenthe 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 ofye
could have raised the White Whale first. There she blows !
 MOBY DICK. 507

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, re
BEAN

member, 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 swift
ness, 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 grows 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 en
It tire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the
sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolv
ing ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast
FL 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 fore
head, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade ;
and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over
into the moving valley of his steady wake ; and on either
hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But
these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of
gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fit
ful 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
508 MOBY DICK.

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 trans
ported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to
assail it ; but had fatally found that quietude but the ves
ture 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 be
juggled and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical
sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended
by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withhold
ing from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, en
tirely 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
& ITRN

MOBY DICK. 509

EA

within a few yards began fluttering over the water there,

P

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 up
rising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then
there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white,
13-142

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 plated 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 feel
ingly 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.
510 MOBY DICK.

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, bythe 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 con
fluent waves, dazzling broke against it ; vindictively toss
ing 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.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick
swam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew ; side
ways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lash
ing 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

* This action is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designa

tion (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and
down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, pre
viously described. By this motion the whale must best and most com
prehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.
 A.Burnham Shut

Both jaws , like enormous shears, bit the craft completely in

twain."
-Page 510.
 MOBY DICK. 511

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 ; help
less Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the
least chance shock might burst. From the boat's fragmen
tary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed him ; the
clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not succour
him ; more than enough was it for them to look to them
selves . 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 destruc
tion of the jeopardised castaways, Ahab and all ; nor in
that case could they themselves hope to escape. With
straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge of
the 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
512 MOBY DICK.

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 cen
tres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences
of inferior souls .
" The harpoon," said Ahab, half-way rising, and drag
gingly leaning on one bended arm—" is it safe ? "
" Aye, sir, for it was not darted ; this is it," said Stubb,
showing it.
66
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 doub
 MOBY DICK. 513

loon now ? D'ye see him ? " and if the reply was, No, sir !
straightway he commanded them to lift him to his perch.
Á

In this way the day wore on ; Ahab, now aloft and motion
8-

less ; 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 shat
tered stern. At last he paused before it ; and as in an
already over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will some
times sail across, so over the old man's face there now stole
some such added gloom as this.
23 Stubb saw him pause ; and perhaps intending, not vainly,
he 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 honourably 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 neigh
bours ! 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 roy
als and top-gallant stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not
" 33
514 MOBY DICK.

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 morn
ing." 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 CXXXIV.

THE CHASE- SECOND DAY.

At daybreak, 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 par
ticular 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 com
manders ; that from the simple observation of a whale
when last descried, they will, under certain given circum
stances, 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
 MOBY DICK. 515

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 humour 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 col
lateral 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 ploughshare and
turns up the level field.
"By salt and hemp ! " cried Stubb, " but this swift mo
tion of the deck creeps up one's legs and tingles at the
heart. This ship and I are two brave fellows !—Ha l 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 him
self is after ye ! blow your trump—blister your lungs !
516 MOBY DICK.

Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his water,
gate upon the stream ! "
And Stubb did but speak out for well-nigh all that crew.
The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them
bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale
fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before ;
these were not only now kept out of sight through the grow
ing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides
routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bound
ing 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, reck
less 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 contrast
ing 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 individu
alities of the crew, this man's valour, that man's fear ; guilt
and guiltiness, all varieties were wedded 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 ;
 MOBY DICK. 517

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 won
drous 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 dis
tance 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
518 MOBY DICK.

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 skil
fully manoeuvred, 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 fore
shortened, 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 tre
mendous 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 inter
cepted 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, irre
sistibly 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, reach.
ing out after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other float
ing furniture, while aslope little Flask bobbed up and
 MOBY DICK. 519

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 : inextric
able 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 be
fore, 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
520 MOBY DICK.

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 Star
buck 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 muster
ing 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 Jitter 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 —harpooners ! the irons, the irons !—hoist
 MOBY DICK. 521

the royals higher—a pull on all the sheets !—helm there !

steady, steady for your life ! I'll ten times girdle the un
measured globe ; yea and dive straight through it, but I'll
slay him yet ! "
" Great God ! but for one single instant show thyself,"
66
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 warn
ings : what more wouldst thou have ?—Shall we keep chas
ing 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—to
morrow will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,
but only to spout his last ! D'ye feel brave men, brave ? "
" As fearless fire," cried Stubb.
"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab. Then as the men
went forward, he muttered on :-"The things called omens !
And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concern
ing 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 be
522 MOBY DICK.

fore -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 lee
ward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed
nearly as on the previous night ; only, the sound of ham
mers, 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 CXXXV.
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.
66
' 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 morn
ing 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 turn to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair
is growing now ; this moment growing, and heat must breed
 MOBY DICK. 523

It ; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow
anywhere, between the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in
Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it ; they whip
it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed
ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown
ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of
hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing
hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it !—it's tainted.
Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miser
able 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 Mississippi 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.
66
Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,”
524 MOBY DICK.

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 bit
terer 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
 MOBY DICK. 525

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 voy
age, Starbuck ."
66 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 the
526 MOBY DICK.

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 some
times 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 ex
pectant, 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?
sees't 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 utter
most heads drive them in ! ye but strike a thing without 18
lid ; and no coffin and no hearse can be mine :—and hemp
only can kill me ! Ha ! hat "
 MOBY DICK. 527

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 trail
ing 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 in
stant 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 com
binedly 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 lank as 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,
528 MOBY DICK.

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 es
caping with the corpse he bore, and as if the particular
place of the last encounter had been but a stage in his lee
ward 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 up
wards, 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
 MOBY DICK. 529

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 for
ward to the bows of the still flying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran rang
ing 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 ofungrad
uated, 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 treach
erous line felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the
empty air !
34
530 MOBY DICK.

"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 mattress that is all
 MOBY DICK. 531

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 voy
age 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 strange
ly 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 star
board bow, till men and timbers reeled . Some fell flat upon
their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the har
pooners 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
532 MOBY DICK.

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 for
ward ; with igniting velocity the line ran through the
groove ;—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 eyesplice in the rope's final end
flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oars
man, 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 side
long fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana ;
only the uppermost masts out of water ; while fixed by in
fatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches,
the pagan harpooners still maintained their sinking look
outs 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 them
selves 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 un
dulated, 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 flutter
ing wing between the hammer and the wood ; and simul
taneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage
 MOBY DICK. 533

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.
66 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 the rocky boat, was dropped
astern So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full
sight of it, when the half-spent 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 B 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 dirge-like main. The un
harming 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.
 ETYMOLOGY.

(supplied by a late consumptive usher to a gram

mar school . )

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain ; I see

He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars , with a
him
queernow.
handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all
the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars ;
it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality .
 ETYMOLOGY.

" While youtake 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.

‫תר‬ Hebrew.
κητος , Greek.
CETUS , Latin.
WHEEL, Anglo- Saxon.
HVALT, Danish.
WAL, Dutch.
HWAL, Swedish.
WHALE, Icelandic.
WHALE, English.
BALEINE, French.
BALLENA, Spanish.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fejee.
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
 538 EXTRACTS.

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 ntly,
with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sad
ness—Give it up, Sub-Subs ! For by how much the more pains ye take
to please the world, by so much the more shall ye forever go thankless !
Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye!
But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your
hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven
storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel,
Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered
hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses !

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 nirlpooles called Balæne, take up as
much in length as four acres or a pens 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.
66 The True History."
" He visited this country also with a view of catching horsewhales,
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

1
 EXTRACTS. 539

country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He

said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days. "
Other or Octher's verbal narrative taken down
from his mouth by King Alfred. A. D. 890.
" And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel , that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are im
mediately 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 de
scribed by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job. "
Rabelais.
" This whale's liver was two cart-loads."
Stowe's Annals.
" The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling
pan. 27
" Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms.
66 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 Fairy 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.
540 EXTRACTS.

" 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 hugh Leviathans to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way."
Dryden's Annus Mirabilis.
"While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his
head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come ; but it
will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water."
Thomas Edge's Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen in Purchass.
" 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 Spitz
bergen that was white all over. "
A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671.
Harris Coll.
" Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife). Anno 1652,
one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind 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.
 EXTRACTS. 541

"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 ofthe Lock.
66" 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 con
temptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal
in creation." Goldsmith, Nat. His.
“
" 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 Troll'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 Memorialto 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.
542 EXTRACTS.

" 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 gush
ing 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 than covered with them.
Colnett's Voyage for the purpose of
Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery.
" In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, 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 insincts 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! Pæan ! 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 theWhale.
" 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.
 EXTRACTS. 543

" 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." Haw
thorne's Twice Told Tales.
" She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been 99
killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago."
Ibid.
" No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom ; " I saw his spout ;
he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at. He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow !" Cooper's Pilot.
" The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that
whales had been introduced on the stage there."
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 the99 wake of the whale
As it floundered in the sea.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
" The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged
in the capture of this one whale, amounted 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, of
so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so en
tirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the
numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years
must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient oppor
tunities of witnessing their habitudes ."
Thomas Beal'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 dis
plays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively, and in a man
ner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being re
544 EXTRACTS.

garded 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 ! "
66 Steady, sir."
"
66 Mast-head ahoy ! Do you see that whale now P "
Ay ay, sir ! A shoal of Sperm Whales ! There she blows ! There
she breaches !"
" Sing out ! sing out out every time ! "
" Ay ay, sir ! There she blows ! there-there-thar she blows
bowes— bo-o-o-s ! "
" How far off ? "
" Two miles and a half."
" Thunder and lightning ! so near ! Call all lands ! "
J. Ross Browne's Etchings
of a Whaling Cruise. 1846.
" The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the
horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
Nantucket." "Narrative of the Globe Mutiny, by
Lay and Hussey survivors. A. D. 1828.
" Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried
the assault for some time with a lance ; but the furious monster at length
rushed on the boat ; himself and comrades only being preserved by
leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable. "
Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett.
" Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, " is a very striking and pecul
iar 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 perservering indus
try, " 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 the Rev. Henry T. Cheever.
"Ifyou 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 Ver
sion ofthe 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.
 EXTRACTS. 545

" These things are reciprocal ; the ball rebounds, only to bound for
ward again ; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whale
men 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 a 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 en
rolled 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 per
pendicularly into the air. It was the whale."
Miriam Coffin, or the Whale Fisherman.
" The Whale is harpooned to be sure ; but bethink you, how you
would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a
rope tied to the root of his tail."
A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.
" 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), 66 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 ofthe boat,
threatening it with instant destruction ;-Stern all, for your lives ! ' "'
Wharton the Whale Miller.
" 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,
92
And King of the boundless sea."
Whale Song.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

THE FAMOUS SEA STORIES OF

HERMAN MELVILLE

MOBY DICK ; Or, The White Whale.

TYPEE. A Real Romance of the South Sea.
OMOO. A Narrative of Adventures in the
South Seas ; a sequel to TYPEE.
WHITE JACKET ; Or, The World on a Man
of-War.

Each one volume, cloth decorative,

12mo, illustrated $1.90

HE recent centenary of Herman Melville

THE created renewed interest in his famous
sea stories.
Melville's power of describing and investing
with romance, scenes and incidents witnessed
and participated in by himself was unequalled.
These stories, though written more than fifty
years ago, are more attractive than ever, and
are daily growing in popularity.
"Melville wove human element and natural
setting into recitals which aroused the enthu
siasm of critics and sent a thrill of delight
through the reading public when first pub
lished , and which both for form and matter
have ever since held rank as classics in the
literature of travel. "-Boston Herald.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

The Sands of Pleasure

By FILSON YOUNG
Author of"The Happy Motorist," "Venus and Cupid, an
Impression," etc.
Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.65
HE consciousness of doing something wrong would
Ta ke it ugly."
"Morality is only an underbred substitute for decency."
These two quotations from THE SANDS OF PLEA
SURE are indicative of this unusual story and the more
unusual point of view. "I had a story to tell," wrote the
author. "I have told it as well as I knew how- that
ought to be enough, and more than enough, for me to say
about this book. But some have decreed, with what
wisdom I do not pretend to measure, that this subject and
that, very urgent though they may be in the life of man,
shall not be written or read about in books designed
merely for the entertainment of his mind. I have disobeyed
this decree, and cast a great part of my tale in a region held
to be out of bounds -Bohemia."
It is a story of Bohemia, but written with the healthy
enthusiasm of youth for all there is in life. Much of the
greatest the world has produced in art and literature has
been born of the Montmarte and the Quartier Latin, but
little of worth has been written about them. Murger's
"La Vie de Boheme" was a great romance. Here is a fine,
realistic novel.-"Nè creator nè creatura mai -fu senza
amore."
"It is tense, strong, narrative, and descriptive writing
of a sort that is wholly admirable. "-London Graphic.
"Mr. Young blends the artistic with the realistic and
conjures up scenes which can never be forgotten by the
reader, and no greater praise than that could be given to
a writer."-Western Morning News, Plymouth, England.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

The Making of a Saint

By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Author of
"The Moon and Sixpence," "Of Human Bondage," etc.
Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.75

OMERSET MAUGHAM has attained literary fame

SOMER
and popularity with the reading public equalled by
few English writers . His plays are drawing audiences in
every city; his books are always among the best sellers ; so
that the St. Botolph Society shows excellent judgment
in selecting his THE MAKING OF A SAINT for the
first publication to carry the new imprint.
"THE MAKING OF A SAINT is a romance of medi
æval Italy. None can resent the frankness and apparent
brutality of the scenes through which the hero and his
companions of both sexes are made to pass, and many will
yield ungrudging praise to the author's vital handling of
the truth."- Boston Herald.
"An exceedingly strong story of original motive and
design.. .. The scenes are imbued with a spirit of
frankness . . . and in addition there is a strong dramatic
flavor."-Philadelphia Press.
"A sprightly tale abounding in adventures, and redolent
with the spirit of medieval Italy." -Brooklyn Times.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Edward Barry
A ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEAS
By LOUIS BECKE
Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.65.
HE rediscovery of Herman Melville, mariner and mys
THE
tic, together with the marked popularity of South Sea
Island travel and fiction at the present time, makes it
timely to call attention to another writer of sea tales, of
almost equal merit, Louis Becke.
George Louis Becke, born in New South Wales, was a
trader in the South Sea Islands from 1870 to 1893. When
he turned to writing his fame was instantaneous. He still
remains the brightest figure in Australian letters. His style
is that of Stevenson, and his narratives, many of which
have the intensity of autobiography, and the authoritative
ness of personal experience, are as vivid as Conrad's. His
books are born of the South Seas they represent.
EDWARD BARRY is the story of a young man, mate
of a small brig, engaged in the pearl fisheries. Strong and
even tragic, as is the novel in the main , the love and devo
tion of a woman is portrayed with delicate feeling. Nowhere
does drama and romance flourish as in the South Seas, and
Louis Becke is one of its most appealing writers.
"For a rousing, absorbing and withal a truthful tale
of the South Seas, commend me to Louis Becke.
EDWARD BARRY is one of the best, and the love
romance that runs through it will be appreciated by
every one."- Philadelphia North American.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

WORKS OF

Gabriele D'Annunzio
IGNOR D'ANNUNZIO is known throughout the
SIGN O
world as a poet and a dramatist, but above all as a
novelist, for it is in his novels that he is at his best. In
poetic thought and graceful expression he has few equals
among the writers of the day.
He is engaged on a most ambitious work ―――― nothing
less than the writing of nine novels which cover the whole
field of human sentiment. This work he has divided into
three trilogies, and five of phy ical books have been pub
lished. It is to be regretted that othe oogle ooks web s
ite. T e d gitization at the series.
"This book is realistic. Some say that it is brutally so.
But the realism is that of Flaubert, and not of Zola. There
is no plain speaking for the sake of plain speaking. Every
detail is justified in the fact that it illuminates either the
motives or the actions of the man and woman who here
stand revealed. It is deadly true. The author holds the
mirror up to nature, and the reader, as he sees his own
experiences duplicated in passage after passage, has some
thing of the same sensation as all of us know on the first
reading of George Meredith's 'Egoist.' Reading these
pages is like being out in the country on a dark night in a
storm. Suddenly a flash of lightning comes and every
detail of your surroundings is revealed. "--- Review of " The
Triumph of Death " in the New York Evening Sun.
The volumes published are as follows. Each 1 vol. ,
library 12mo, cloth, $1.75
THE ROMANCES OF THE ROSE
THE CHILD OF PLEASURE (IL PIACERE)
THE INTRUDER (L'INNOCENTE)
THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH (IL TRIONFO DELla Morte)
THE ROMANCES OF THE LILY
THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS (LE VERGINI DELLE ROCCE)
THE ROMANCES OF THE POMEGRANATE
THE FLAME OF LIFE (IL FUOCO)
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

TWO POWERFUL NOVELS BY

GUSTAV FRENSSEN

Each one volume, cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, per

volume, $1.75.

JÖRN UHL. Translated by F. S. Delmer.

66 UHL " is the most powerful story of modern
German life, and was the literary sensation of
Europe. Over two hundred thousand copies were sold
within eighteen months of issue. The story touches upon
many of the social and ethical problems of the day. This
novel stands as a book of real worth, a sincere criticism of
life, and a poet's interpretation of the life of man and the
wonder of the universe of God.
" This is Mr. Frenssen's best-known work, and one that
could not have too many readers in this country. The
simple and fine story of Jörn's efforts to save the family
acres has a measure of philosophy and poetic vision that
lift it quite above any other study in recent times."
New York Evening Post.

HOLYLAND. Translated by M. A. Hamilton.

HE exclusive authorized translation of " Holyland,"
THE pronounced by competent critics to be the greatest
novel of modern times. The scenes and characters are
drawn from among the humble sea-faring folk who live on
the borders of the German Ocean.
"A remarkable novel, judged by whatever standard,
one proving that a really great novel knows no one country
alone, but must approach the universal in appeal." - New
York Globe.
 PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

What Allah Wills

A ROMANCE OF MOROCCO
By IRWIN L. GORDON, F. R. G. S.
Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated by William Van Dresser,
$1.65.
STORY of love and adventure, full of the quivering
"A atmosphere of the Moorish East."- New York
World.
"The high purpose of 'What Allah Wills' lifts it out of
the realm of ordinary romance and stamps it as the most
important novel of the Moslem world since Robert
Hichens' 'Garden of Allah .' " - Philadelphia Public
Ledger.

At
Servitude

By IRENE OSGOOD
Cloth decorative 12mo, $1.65.
nd," HE author shows a great gift of originality and
" THE
dramatic insight. It is a story that will hold firmly
3 are the attention of even the veteran novel reader to the end."
Iveon - Brooklyn Eagle.
ndard, "The novel teems with romance. Few books unite such
country a pleasing style with so great a wealth of exciting romance
'-New
and interesting adventure." - Chicago Record-Herald .
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ST. BOTOLPH SOCIETY
53 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

The

Mysteries of Paris

By EUGENE SUE

Illustrated with thirty-two etchings, six

volumes, cloth, gilt top, per set $12.00

LTHOUGH many years have elapsed

A since the death of Eugene Sue, no fitting
edition of this great author's masterpiece has
ever been published ; and yet he stands today the
third member of the great triumvirate of French
authors who not only did much for the litera
ture of France, but did their share toward
revolutionizing many old ideas . If choice of
the three greatest French novels were made ,
the selection would undoubtedly consist of
"Les Miserables ," "The Three Musketeers, "
and "The Mysteries of Paris."
190
€