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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
monsters 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. _Hollands Plutarchs Morals_.
The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balne, take up as much
in length as four acres or arpens of land. _Hollands 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. _Tookes Lucian_. _The True History_.
He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he
brought some to the king. * * * The best whales were catched in his own
country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said
that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days. _Other or
Octhers 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 monsters (whales) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in
great security, and there sleeps. MONTAIGNE. _Apology for Raimond
Sebond_.
Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.
_Rabelais_.
This whales liver was two cartloads. _Stowes Annals_.
The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.
_Lord Bacons Version of the Psalms_.
Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible
quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale. _Ibid_. _History
of Life and Death_.
The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.
_King Henry_.
Very like a whale. _Hamlet_.
Which to secure, no skill of leachs art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wounds worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro the maine.
_The Fairie Queen_.
Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
calm trouble the ocean till it boil. _Sir William Davenant. Preface
to Gondibert_.
What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, _Nescio quid
sit_. _Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide
his V. E._
Like Spencers Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
...
Their fixed javlins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.
_Wallers 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 Hobbess Leviathan_.
Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat
in the mouth of a whale. _Pilgrims Progress_.
That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. _Paradise Lost_.
There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea. _Ibid_.
The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil
swimming in them. _Fullers Profane and Holy State_.
So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.
_Drydens Annus Mirabilis_.
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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 Edges 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. Herberts 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. _Schoutens Sixth Circumnavigation_.
We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * *
Some say the whale cant open his mouth, but that is a fable. * * *
They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale,
for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * *
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of
herrings in his belly. * * *
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in
Spitzbergen that was white all over. _A Voyage to Greenland, A.D._
1671. _Harris Coll_.
Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.
_Sibbalds 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
Straffords Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D._ 1668.
Whales in the sea
Gods 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 Cowleys 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.
_Ulloas South America_.
To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.
_Rape of the Lock_.
If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that
take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation. _Goldsmith, Nat. Hist_.
If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
speak like great whales. _Goldsmith to Johnson_.
In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then
towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the
whale, in order to avoid being seen by us. _Cooks 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 Troils Letters
on Bankss and Solanders 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 Jeffersons Whale Memorial to the French minister in_ 1778.
And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? _Edmund Burkes
reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery_.
Spaina great whale stranded on the shores of Europe. _Edmund
Burke_. (_somewhere_.)
A tenth branch of the kings ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on
the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates
and robbers, is the right to _royal_ fish, which are whale and
sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the
coast, are the property of the king. _Blackstone_.
Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring oer his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.
_Falconers Shipwreck_.
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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 Queens Visit to London_.
Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a
stroke, with immense velocity. _John Hunters account of the
dissection of a whale_. (_A small sized one_.)
The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
gushing from the whales heart. _Paleys Theology_.
The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet. _Baron Cuvier_.
In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any
till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.
_Colnetts 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:
Gatherd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, armd in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.
_Montgomerys World before the Flood_.
Io! Pan! Io! sing.
To the finny peoples king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.
_Charles Lambs Triumph of the Whale_.
In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales
spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
therepointing to the seais a green pasture where our childrens
grand-children will go for bread. _Obed Macys History of Nantucket_.
I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form
of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whales jaw bones. _Hawthornes
Twice Told Tales_.
She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed
by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.
_Ibid_.
No, Sir, tis a Right Whale, answered Tom; I saw his spout; he threw
up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at.
Hes a raal oil-butt, that fellow! _Coopers Pilot_.
The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that
whales had been introduced on the stage there. _Eckermanns
Conversations with Goethe_.
My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter? I answered, we have been
stove by a whale. _Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship
Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large
Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean_. _By Owen Chace of Nantucket, first
mate of said vessel. New York_, 1821.
A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea.
_Elizabeth Oakes Smith_.
The quantity of line withdrawn from the 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, so
important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely
neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the
numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years must
have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities
of witnessing their habitudes. _Thomas Beales History of the Sperm
Whale_, 1839.
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The Cachalot (Sperm Whale) is not only better armed than the True
Whale (Greenland or Right Whale) in possessing a formidable weapon at
either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once
so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as
the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale
tribe. _Frederick Debell Bennetts Whaling Voyage Round the Globe_,
1840.
October 13. There she blows, was sung out from the mast-head.
Where away? demanded the captain.
Three points off the lee bow, sir.
Raise up your wheel. Steady!
Steady, sir.
Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?
Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she
breaches!
Sing out! sing out every time!
Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! therethere_thar_ she
blowsbowesbo-o-os!
How far off?
Two miles and a half.
Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands.
_J. Ross Brownes Etchings of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.
The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
Nantucket. _Narrative of the Globe Mutiny_, _by Lay and Hussey
survivors. A.D._ 1828.
Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the
assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length
rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by
leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.
_Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett_.
Nantucket itself, said Mr. Webster, is a very striking and peculiar
portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or
nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year
to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.
_Report of Daniel Websters 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 Whalemans Adventures and
the Whales Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore
Preble_. _By Rev. Henry T. Cheever_.
If you make the least damn bit of noise, replied Samuel, I will send
you to hell. _Life of Samuel Comstock_ (_the mutineer_), _by his
brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship Globe
narrative_.
The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order,
if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they
failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale.
_McCullochs Commercial Dictionary_.
These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward
again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen
seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic
North-West Passage. _From_ _Something_ _unpublished_.
It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being
struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with
look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around
them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regular
voyage. _Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex_.
Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form
arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps
have been told that these were the ribs of whales. _Tales of a Whale
Voyager to the Arctic Ocean_.
It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages
enrolled among the crew. _Newspaper Account of the Taking and
Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack_.
It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they
departed. _Cruise in a Whale Boat_.
Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale. _Miriam Coffin or the
Whale Fisherman_.
The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied
to the root of his tail. _A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks_.
On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and
female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a
stones throw of the shore (Terra Del Fuego), over which the beech
tree extended its branches. _Darwins Voyage of a Naturalist_.
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Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin
to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my
lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers
get sea-sickgrow quarrelsomedont sleep of nightsdo not enjoy
themselves much, as a general thing;no, I never go as a passenger;
nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,
without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
And as for going as cook,though I confess there is considerable glory
in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-boardyet, somehow, I
never fancied broiling fowls;though once broiled, judiciously
buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
thing is unpleasant enough. It touches ones sense of honor,
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
order me abouthowever they may thump and punch me about, I have the
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
one way or other served in much the same wayeither in a physical or
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each others shoulder-blades,
and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and
being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
paid_,what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the 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 commonalty lead their leaders in many
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But
wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in
some unaccountable wayhe can better answer than any one else. And,
doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
something like this:
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CHAPTER II. THE CARPET-BAG
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my
arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city
of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday
night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the
little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of
reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday.
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well
be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though
in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
was her great originalthe Tyre of this Carthage;the place where the
first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes
to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did
that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with
imported cobble-stonesso goes the storyto throw at the whales, in
order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the
bowsprit?
Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me
in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a
matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold
and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had
sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,So,
wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of
a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the
north with the darkness towards the southwherever in your wisdom you
may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to
inquire the price, and dont be too particular.
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of The
Crossed Harpoonsbut it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
on, from the bright red windows of the Sword-Fish Inn, there came
such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and
ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay
ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,rather weary for me,
when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from
hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most
miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one
moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of
the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; dont
you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are
stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets
that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not
the cheeriest inns.
Such dreary streets! Blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,
and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At
this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of
the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light
proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood
invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the
uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble
over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying
particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city,
Gomorrah? But The Crossed Harpoons, and The Sword-Fish?this, then,
must needs be the sign of The Trap. However, I picked myself up and
hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior
door.
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black
faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of
Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the
preachers 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!
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Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the
docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a
swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly
representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words
underneathThe Spouter-Inn:Peter Coffin.
Coffin?Spouter?Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought
I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this
Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated
little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here
from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a
poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very
spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
It was a queer sort of placea 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 Pauls 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 writerof whose works I possess the
only copy extantit 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
mindold black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are
windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didnt
stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint
here and there. But its too late to make any improvements now. The
universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted
off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth
against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with
his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a
corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the
tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken
wrapper(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty
night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their
oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the
privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in
order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a
Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a
temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there
is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted
feet, and see what sort of a place this Spouter may be.
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CHAPTER III. THE SPOUTER-INN
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent
study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of
the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however
wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,
portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the
picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a
nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive
a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,
half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to
it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what
that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas,
deceptive idea would dart you through.Its the Black Sea in a midnight
gale.Its the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.Its a
blasted heath.Its a Hyperborean winter scene.Its the breaking-up of
the ice-bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to
that one portentous something in the pictures midst. _That_ once found
out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint
resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?
In fact, the artists design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with
whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner
in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its
three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale,
purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of
impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots
of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping
round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed
mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal
and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,
horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances
and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With
this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan
Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that
harpoonso like a corkscrew nowwas flung in Javan seas, and run away
with by a whale, years afterward 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 waycut
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fire-places all roundyou 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 crafts
cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored
old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like
table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities
gathered from this wide worlds remotest nooks. Projecting from the
further angle of the room stands a dark-looking denthe bara rude
attempt at a right whales head. Be that how it may, there stands the
vast arched bone of the whales jaw, so wide, a coach might almost
drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old
decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction,
like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him),
bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells
the sailors deliriums and death.
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Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true
cylinders withoutwithin, the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians
rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads goblets. Fill to
_this_ mark, and your charge is but a penny; to _this_ a penny more;
and so on to the full glassthe Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp
down for a shilling.
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about
a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of _skrimshander_. I
sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with
a room, received for answer that his house was fullnot a bed
unoccupied. But avast, he added, tapping his forehead, you haint no
objections to sharing a harpooneers blanket, have ye? I spose you are
goin a whalin, so youd better get used to that sort of thing.
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that
if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with
the half of any decent mans 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 didnt 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 Icelandno fire at allthe landlord said
he couldnt 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 kindnot only meat and potatoes, but
dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a
green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful
manner.
My boy, said the landlord, youll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty.
Landlord, I whispered, that aint the harpooneer, is it?
Oh, no, said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, the
harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he
donthe eats nothing but steaks, and likes em rare.
The devil he does, says I. Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?
Hell 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, Thats the Grampuss crew. I seed her reported in the offing
this morning; a three years voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now
well have the latest news from the Feegees.
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung
open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their
shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,
all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they
seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from
their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then,
that they made a straight wake for the whales mouththe barwhen the
wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out
brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon
which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he
swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never
mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador,
or on the weather side of an ice-island.
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The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even
with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began
capering about most obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though
he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his
own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much
noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the
sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though
but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I
will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six
feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I
have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and
burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the
deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem
to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a
Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of
those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian 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 favorite with them, they raised
a cry of Bulkington! Bulkington! wheres Bulkington? and darted out
of the house in pursuit of him.
It was now about nine oclock, 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 dont know how it is, but
people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to
sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town,
and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely
multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should
sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep
two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all
sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and
cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the
thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of
the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home
and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at
midnighthow could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?
Landlord! Ive changed my mind about that harpooneer.I shant sleep
with him. Ill try the bench here.
Just as you please; Im sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress, and its a plaguy rough board herefeeling of the knots and
notches. But wait a bit, Skrimshander; Ive got a carpenters plane
there in the barwait, I say, and Ill 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 heavens sake to quitthe
bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing
in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the
shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in
the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a
brown study.
I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too
narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher
than the planed oneso there was no yoking them. I then placed the
first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall,
leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I
soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from
under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all,
especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from
the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in
the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the
night.
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The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldnt I steal
a march on himbolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be
wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon
second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next
morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be
standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!
Still, looking around me again, and seeing no possible chance of
spending a sufferable night unless in some other persons bed, I began
to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices
against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, Ill wait awhile; he must be
dropping in before long. Ill have a good look at him then, and perhaps
we may become jolly good bedfellows after alltheres no telling.
But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes,
and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
Landlord! said I, what sort of a chap is hedoes he always keep such
late hours? It was now hard upon twelve oclock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be
mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. No, he
answered, generally hes an early birdairley to bed and airley to
riseyes, hes the bird what catches the worm.But to-night he went out
a peddling, you see, and I dont see what on airth keeps him so late,
unless, may be, he cant sell his head.
Cant sell his head?What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are
telling me? getting into a towering rage. Do you pretend to say,
landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed
Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around
this town?
Thats precisely it, said the landlord, and I told him he couldnt
sell it here, the markets overstocked.
With what? shouted I.
With heads to be sure; aint there too many heads in the world?
I tell you what it is, landlord, said I, quite calmly, youd better
stop spinning that yarn to meIm not green.
May be not, taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, but I
rayther guess youll be done _brown_ if that ere harpooneer hears you a
slanderin his head.
Ill break it for him, said I, now flying into a passion again at
this unaccountable farrago of the landlords.
Its broke aready, said he.
Broke, said I_broke_, do you mean?
Sartain, and thats the very reason he cant sell it, I guess.
Landlord, said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow
storm,landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have
not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellowa sort of connexion,
landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest
degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the
night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay
that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good
evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and Ive 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, thats a purty long
sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be
easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin you of has just arrived
from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of balmed New Zealand
heads (great curios, you know), and hes sold all on em but one, and
that one hes trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrows 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.
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This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed
that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling mebut at the
same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out a Saturday
night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business
as selling the heads of dead idolators?
Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.
He pays reglar, was the rejoinder. But come, its getting dreadful
late, you had better be turning flukesits a nice bed: Sal and me
slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. Theres plenty room
for two to kick about in that bed; its an almighty big bed that. Why,
afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the
foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and
somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.
After that, Sal said it wouldnt do. Come along here, Ill give ye a
glim in a jiffy; and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards
me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a
clock in the corner, he exclaimed I vum its Sundayyou wont see that
harpooneer to-night; hes come to anchor somewherecome along then;
_do_ come; _wont_ ye come?
I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was
ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,
with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four
harpooneers to sleep abreast.
There, said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest
that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; there, make
yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye. I turned round from
eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.
Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of
the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then
glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table,
could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf,
the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a
whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a
hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a
large seamans bag, containing the harpooneers wardrobe, no doubt in
lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone
fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon
standing at the head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the
light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to
arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it
to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little
tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an
Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as
you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible
that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the
streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to
try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy
and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious
harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit
of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my
life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink
in the neck.
I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on
the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in
the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a
little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now,
half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about
the harpooneers not coming home at all that night, it being so very
late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots,
and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself
to the care of heaven.
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Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,
there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not
sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had
pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard
a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into
the room from under the door.
Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word
till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New
Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without
looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on
the floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted
cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was
all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time
while employed in unlacing the bags mouth. This accomplished, however,
he turned roundwhen, 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, its just as I thought, hes a terrible
bedfellow; hes been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is,
just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face
so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be
sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were
stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this;
but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story
of a white mana whaleman toowho, falling among the cannibals, had
been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course
of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And
what is it, thought I, after all! Its 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
suns tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had
never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these
extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were
passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at
all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced
fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a
seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in
the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand heada ghastly
thing enoughand crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his
hata new beaver hatwhen I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise.
There was no hair on his headnone to speak of at leastnothing but a
small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now
looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger
stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker
than ever I bolted a dinner.
Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but
it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this
head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of
him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at
the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game
enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer
concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.
Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed
his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were
checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all
over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years
War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still
more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs
were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that
he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman
in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to
think of it. A peddler of heads tooperhaps the heads of his own
brothers. He might take a fancy to mineheavens! look at that tomahawk!
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But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me
that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall,
or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in
the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image
with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days old
Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought
that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar
manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened
a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing
but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage
goes up to the empty fireplace, and removing the papered fire-board,
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 fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine
or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but
ill at ease meantimeto see what was next to follow. First he takes
about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places
them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on
top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into
a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the
fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed
to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the
biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite
offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to
fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these
strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from
the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing
some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in
the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the
idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket
as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing
him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time,
now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell into
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 saidyou no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e.
And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the
dark.
Landlord, for Gods sake, Peter Coffin! shouted I. Landlord! Watch!
Coffin! Angels! save me!
Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e! again growled the
cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.
But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light
in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
Dont be afraid now, said he, grinning again. Queequeg here wouldnt
harm a hair of your head.
Stop your grinning, shouted I, and why didnt you tell me that that
infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?
I thought ye knowd it;didnt I tell ye, he was peddlin heads around
town?but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look hereyou
sabbee me, I sabbee youthis man sleepe youyou sabbee?
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He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall
one, by the by, and thenstill minus his trowsershe hunted up his
boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his
next movement was to crush himselfboots in hand, and hat onunder the
bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he
was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I
ever heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his
boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition
stateneither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized
to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner. His
education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not
been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled
himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage,
he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At
last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over
his eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not
being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide
onesprobably not made to order eitherrather pinched and tormented him
at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;
I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and
particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He
complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the
morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my
amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a
piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre-table, dipped it into water
and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept
his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed
corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it
a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the
wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.
Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogerss 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 marshals baton.
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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 mores the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper
person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be
backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in
that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about
him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the
night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were
nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates,
and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and
harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky
beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning
gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This
young fellows healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and
would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days
landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades
lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the
complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly
bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who
could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints,
seemed like the Andes western slope, to show forth in one array,
contrasting climates, zone by zone.
Grub, ho! now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we
went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease
in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though:
Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch
one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But
perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as
Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in
the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungos
performancesthis kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode
of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort
of thing is to be had anywhere.
These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that
after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some
good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man
maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the
slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seasentire
strangers to themand duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here
they sat at a social breakfast tableall of the same calling, all of
kindred tasteslooking 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 Queequegwhy, Queequeg sat there among themat the head of
the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I
cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have
cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him,
and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it,
to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks
towards him. But _that_ was certainly very coolly done by him, and
every one knows that in most peoples estimation, to do anything coolly
is to do it genteelly.
We will not speak of all Queequegs peculiarities here; how he eschewed
coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to
beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew
like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was
sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat
on, when I sallied out for a stroll.
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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 nondescripts from foreign
parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners
will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent street is not
unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live
Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water
street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only
sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street
corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy
flesh. It makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatabooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,
and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft
which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still
more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town
scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain
and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames;
fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and
snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence
they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old.
Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat
and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife.
Here comes another with a sou-wester and a bombazine cloak.
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred oneI mean a
downright bumpkin dandya fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his
two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a
country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished
reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the
comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his
sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his
canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those
straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps,
buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals,
and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a
queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would
this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of
Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten
one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to
live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough; but not
like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run
with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs.
Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more
patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New
Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of
a country?
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave
houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian
oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the
bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?
In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.
You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,
they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly
burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine mapleslong
avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful
and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by
their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is
art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright
terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at
creations 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.
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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 regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it
was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he
was a very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his
youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry.
At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a
healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second
flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there
shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloomthe spring
verdure peeping forth even beneath Februarys snow. No one having
previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father
Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain
engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that
adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that
he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for
his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot
cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of
the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one
by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner;
when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the
floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the
architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and
finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side
ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife
of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of
red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely
headed, and stained with a mahogany color, 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 sailorlike but still
reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if
ascending the main-top of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case
with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of
wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of
the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,
these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not
prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn
round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder
step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him
impregnable in his little Quebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and
sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any
mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober
reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen.
Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies
his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties
and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the
word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a
self-containing strongholda lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial
well of water within the walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplains former sea-farings. Between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back
was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy
breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there
floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angels
face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
ships tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into
the Victorys 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
offserenest azure is at hand.
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This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from
Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God
has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than
to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe
to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would
not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him
who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is
himself a castaway!
He drooped 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 hima far, far upward, and inward
delightwho against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever
stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong
arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has
gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the
truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out
from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,top-gallant
delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his
God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the
waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake
from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness
will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final
breathO Father!chiefly known to me by Thy rodmortal or immortal,
here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this worlds,
or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is
man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with
his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,
and he was left alone in the place.
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We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to
him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures
that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we
went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to
be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and,
producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And
then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it
regularly passing between us.
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagans
breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and
left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and
unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his
forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that
henceforth we were married; meaning, in his countrys phrase, that we
were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a
countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too
premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage
those old rules would not apply.
After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his
enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some
thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and
mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them
towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he
silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers pockets. I let them stay.
He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed
the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed
anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I
deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or
otherwise.
I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you
suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and
earthpagans and all includedcan possibly be jealous of an
insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?to do
the will of God_that_ is worship. And what is the will of God?to do
to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me_that_ is
the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish
that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular
Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him
in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped
prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with
Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that
done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences
and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the
very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often
lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our
hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queequega cosy, loving pair.
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CHAPTER XI. NIGHTGOWN
We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs
over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free
and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what
little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like
getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position
began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves
sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the
head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two
noses bending over them, as if our knee-pans were warming-pans. We felt
very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors;
indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the
room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some
small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world
that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If
you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been
so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But
if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown
of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general
consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For
this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire,
which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height
of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket
between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there
you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at
once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether
by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always
keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of
being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright
except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper
element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey
part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and
self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the
unilluminated twelve-oclock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable
revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that
perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide
awake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs
from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong
repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how
elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.
For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me,
even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy
then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlords policy of
insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential
comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.
With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the
Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue
hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to
far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;
and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He
gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of
his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar
with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story
such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.
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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 Queequegs 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 veinsroyal
stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he
nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his fathers 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 fathers influence
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a
low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into
the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with
its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and
when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her
side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe;
climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the
deck, grappled a ringbolt there, and swore not to let it go, though
hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a
cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his
wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and
told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savagethis
sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captains cabin. They put him down
among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter
content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained
no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of
enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottomso he told mehe
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 fathers
heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the
sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they
spent their wages in _that_ place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for
lost. Thought he, its a wicked world in all meridians; Ill die a
pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer
ways about him, though now some time from home.
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having
a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he
being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not
yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians,
had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty
pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,as
soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he
proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They
had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a
sceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon
this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my
intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port
for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to
accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the
same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my
every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of
both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection
I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such,
could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was
wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted
with the sea, as known to merchant seamen.
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CHAPTER XIII. WHEELBARROW
Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber,
for a block, I settled my own and comrades bill; using, however, my
comrades money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed
amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between
me and Queequegespecially as Peter Coffins cock and bull stories
about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person
whom I now companied with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own
poor carpet-bag, and Queequegs canvas sack and hammock, away we went
down to the Moss, the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the
wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so
muchfor they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their
streets,but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we
heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg
now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I
asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and
whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in
substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet
he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of
assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate
with the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers and
mowers, who go into the farmers meadows armed with their own
scythesthough in no wise obliged to furnished themeven so, Queequeg,
for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about
the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The
owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his
heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the
thingthough in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in
which to manage the barrowQueequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it
fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. Why,
said I, Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would
think. Didnt 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 commanderfrom all accounts, a very
stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captainthis
commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequegs sister, a
pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding
guests were assembled at the brides bamboo cottage, this Captain
marches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placed himself over
against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the
King, Queequegs father. Grace being said,for those people have their
grace as well as wethough 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 feastsGrace, I
say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial
ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and
consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage
circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the
ceremony, and thinking himselfbeing Captain of a shipas having plain
precedence over a mere island King, especially in the Kings own
housethe Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch
bowl;taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. Now, said
Queequeg, what you tink now,Didnt our people laugh?
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the
schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one
side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees
all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of
casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the
world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while
from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises
of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises
were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only
begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on,
for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness
of all earthly effort.
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Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little
Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his
snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!how I spurned that turnpike
earth!that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish
heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea
which will permit no records.
At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me.
His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed
teeth. On, on we flew, and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to
the blast; ducked and dived her brows as a slave before the Sultan.
Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a
wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes.
So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging
bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of
the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow
beings should be so companionable; as though a white man were anything
more dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies
and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come
from the heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these
young saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkins
hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught
him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength,
sent him high up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping his stern
in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet,
while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe
and passed it to me for a puff.
Capting! Capting! yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer;
Capting, Capting, heres 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? Dont you know
you might have killed that chap?
What him say? said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
He say, said I, that you came near kill-e that man there, pointing
to the still shivering greenhorn.
Kill-e, cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain, ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e
so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!
Look you, roared the Captain, Ill kill-e _you_, you cannibal, if
you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.
But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to
mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted
the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to
side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor
fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all
hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it,
seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in
one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of
snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable
of being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing
the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the
midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and
crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured
one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso,
caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next
jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was
run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern
boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long
living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming
like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by
turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I
looked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved.
The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the
water, Queequeg now took an instants 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.
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CHAPTER XIV. NANTUCKET
Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a
fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of
the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely
than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at ita 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
dont grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have
to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that
pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true
cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses,
to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an
oasis, three blades in a days 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 England coast, and carried off an infant
Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child
borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the
same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage
they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory
casket,the poor little Indians skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should
take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs
in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more
experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last,
launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world;
put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at
Behrings Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared
everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea
Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that
his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and
malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from
their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like
so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific,
and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America
add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English
overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun;
two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketers. For the sea
is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a
right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges;
armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though
following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships,
other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw
their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone
resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to
it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.
_There_ is his home; _there_ lies his business, which a Noahs flood
would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China.
He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among
the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years
he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells
like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.
With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to
sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight
of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his
very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.
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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 short, he
plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck
at the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a
yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to
the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a
corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first
man we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very
much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg
insisted that the yellow warehouseour first point of departuremust be
left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say
it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in
the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to
inquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no
mistaking.
Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses ears,
swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an
old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other
side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows.
Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I
could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort
of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes,
_two_ of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. Its ominous, thinks
I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port;
tombstones staring at me in the whalemens chapel; and here a gallows!
and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out
oblique hints touching Tophet?
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman
with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn,
under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured
eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen
shirt.
Get along with ye, said she to the man, or Ill be combing ye!
Come on, Queequeg, said I, all right. Theres 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 saidClam or Cod?
Whats that about Cods, maam? 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 thats a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter
time, aint it, Mrs Hussey?
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing
but the word clam, Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading
to the kitchen, and bawling out clam for two, disappeared.
Queequeg, said I, do you think that we can make out a supper for us
both on one clam?
However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder
came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends!
hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than
hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up
into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully
seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the
frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favorite 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. Husseys clam and cod announcement, I thought I
would try a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered
the word cod with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few
moments the savory steam came forth again, but with a different flavor,
and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.
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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? Whats
that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? But look,
Queequeg, aint that a live eel in your bowl? Wheres your harpoon?
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its
name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for
breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you
began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area
before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a
polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account
books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the
milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning
happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermens
boats, I saw Hoseas brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and
marching along the sand with each foot in a cods decapitated head,
looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey
concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to
precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded
his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. Why not? said I;
every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoonbut why not? Because
its dangerous, says she. Ever since young Stiggs coming from that
unfortnt vyge 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 lets have a couple of smoked herring by way of
variety.
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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 a top-knot on some old Pottowotamie Sachems head. A
triangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the
insider commanded a complete view forward.
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by
his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the
ships 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 are no Nantucketerever been in a
stove boat?
No, Sir, I never have.
Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare sayeh?
Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. Ive been
several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that
Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that
leg?Ill 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, dont it, eh?Hast not been a pirate, hast
thou?Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?Dost not think of
murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?
I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of
these half humorous inuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated
Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather
distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the
Vineyard.
But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of
shipping ye.
Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.
Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?
Who is Captain Ahab, sir?
Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship.
I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself.
Thou art speaking to Captain Pelegthats who ye are speaking to,
young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted
out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We
are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest
to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way
of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap
eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one
leg.
What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?
Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed
up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a
boat!ah, ah!
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It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
fortuneand so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those
that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the
world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this
grim sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the
275th lay would be about the fair thing, but would not have been
surprised had I been offered the 200th, considering I was of a
broad-shouldered make.
But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard
something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad;
how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore
the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the
whole management of the ships affairs to these two. And I did not know
but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about
shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod,
quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his
own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his
jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he
was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded
us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, _Lay_ not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
Well, Captain Bildad, interrupted Peleg, what dye say, what lay
shall we give this young man?
Thou knowest best, was the sepulchral reply, the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh wouldnt be too much, would it?where moth and rust do
corrupt, but _lay_
_Lay_, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one,
shall not _lay_ up many _lays_ here below, where moth and rust do
corrupt. It was an exceedingly _long lay_ that, indeed; and though from
the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet
the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and
seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a
_teenth_ of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.
Why, blast your eyes, Bildad, cried Peleg, thou dost not want to
swindle this young man! he must have more than that.
Seven hundred and seventy-seventh, again said Bildad, without lifting
his eyes; and then went on mumblingfor where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also.
I am going to put him down for the three hundredth, said Peleg, do
ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say.
Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the
duty thou owest to the other owners of this shipwidows and orphans,
many of themand that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this
young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those
orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.
Thou Bildad! roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the
cabin. Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these
matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be
heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape
Horn.
Captain Peleg, said Bildad steadily, thy conscience may be drawing
ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I cant 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. Its an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that
hes bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me,
and start my soul-bolts, but IllIllyes, Ill swallow a live goat
with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting,
drab-colored son of a wooden guna straight wake with ye!
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a
marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.
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CHAPTER XVII. THE RAMADAN
As Queequegs Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all
day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I
cherish the greatest respect towards everybodys religious obligations,
never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other
creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of
footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the
torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the
inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.
I say, we good Presbyterian christians should be charitable in these
things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,
pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these
subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most
absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;but what of that? Queequeg
thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content;
and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let
him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us allPresbyterians and Pagans
alikefor we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and
sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door;
but no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside.
Queequeg, said I softly through the key-hole:all silent. I say,
Queequeg! why dont you speak? Its IIshmael. But all remained still
as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant
time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through
the key-hole; but the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the
key-hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see
part of the foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing
more. I was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden
shaft of Queequegs harpoon, which the landlady the evening previous
had taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber. Thats strange,
thought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he
seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside
here, and no possible mistake.
Queequeg!Queequeg!all still. Something must have happened.
Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted.
Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person
I metthe chambermaid. La! La! she cried, I thought something must
be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door was
locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and its been just so silent ever
since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and locked your
baggage in for safe keeping. La! La, maam!Mistress! murder! Mrs.
Hussey! apoplexy!and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I
following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation
of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy
meantime.
Wood-house! cried I, which way to it? Run for Gods sake, and fetch
something to pry open the doorthe axe!the axe! hes had a stroke;
depend upon it!and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs
again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and
vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.
Whats the matter with you, young man?
Get the axe! For Gods 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. Whats the
matter with you? Whats 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 exclaimedNo! I havent
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
Queequegs harpoon was missing. Hes killed himself, she cried. Its
unfortnate stiggs done over againthere goes another counterpanegod
pity his poor mother!it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad
a sister? Wheres that girl?there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter,
and tell him to paint me a sign, withno suicides permitted here, and
no smoking in the parlor;might as well kill both birds at once. Kill?
The Lord be merciful to his ghost! Whats that noise there? You, young
man, avast there!
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And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force
open the door.
I wont allow it; I wont have my premises spoiled. Go for the
locksmith, theres one about a mile from here. But avast! putting her
hand in her side-pocket, heres a key thatll fit, I guess; lets
see. And with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequegs
supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.
Have to burst it open, said I, and was running down the entry a
little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing
I should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a
sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.
With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming
against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good
heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right
in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on
top of his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat
like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.
Queequeg, said I, going up to him, Queequeg, whats the matter with
you?
He haint been a sittin so all day, has he? said the landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt
like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost
intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained;
especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of
eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.
Mrs. Hussey, said I, hes _alive_ at all events; so leave us, if you
please, and I will see to this strange affair myself.
Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon
Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could
dofor all my polite arts and blandishmentshe would not move a peg,
nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in
any the slightest way.
I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do
they fast on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so;
yes, its part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; hell
get up sooner or later, no doubt. It cant last for ever, thank God,
and his Ramadan only comes once a year; and I dont believe its very
punctual then.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long
stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage,
as they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or
brig, confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only);
after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven oclock, I
went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg
must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there
he was just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began
to grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to
be sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room,
holding a piece of wood on his head.
For heavens sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and
have some supper. Youll starve; youll 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 Queequegnot four feet offsitting 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.
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Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any persons religion,
be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any
other person, because that other person dont believe it also. But when
a mans religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment
to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to
lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and
argue the point with him.
And just so I now did with Queequeg. Queequeg, said I, get into bed
now, and lie and listen to me. I then went on, beginning with the rise
and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various
religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show
Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings
in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health;
useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene
and common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such
an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly
pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous
Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in;
hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must
necessarily be half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic
religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In
one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first
born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated
through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it
in. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great
feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle
wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two oclock 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 victors compliments to all his friends, just
as though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys.
After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow
seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered
from his own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more
than one third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and,
finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true
religion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending
concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such
a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan
piety.
At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty
breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not
make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the
Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.
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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 furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that
craft, unless they previously produced their papers.
What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg? said I, now jumping on the
bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.
I mean, he replied, he must show his papers.
Yea, said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from
behind Pelegs, out of the wigwam. He must show that hes converted.
Son of darkness, he added, turning to Queequeg, art thou at present
in communion with any christian church?
Why, said I, hes a member of the first Congregational Church. Here
be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at
last come to be converted into the churches.
First Congregational Church, cried Bildad, what! that worships in
Deacon Deuteronomy Colemans meeting-house? and so saying, taking out
his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the
wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at
Queequeg.
How long hath he been a member? he then said, turning to me; not
very long, I rather guess, young man.
No, said Peleg, and he hasnt been baptized right either, or it
would have washed some of that devils blue off his face.
Do tell, now, cried Bildad, is this Philistine a regular member of
Deacon Deuteronomys meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass
it every Lords day.
I dont know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting, said
I, all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is.
Young man, said Bildad sternly, thou art skylarking with meexplain
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 mothers 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 meanst _splice_ hands, cried Peleg, drawing nearer.
Young man, youd better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast
hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomywhy Father
Mapple himself couldnt beat it, and hes reckoned something. Come
aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog
therewhats that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great
anchor, what a harpoon hes got there! looks like good stuff that; and
he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did
you ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a
fish?
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon
the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats
hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his
harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:
Capain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well,
spose him one whale eye, well, den! and taking sharp aim at it, he
darted the iron right over old Bildads broad brim, clean across the
ships 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 ships papers. We must
have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye,
Quohog, well give ye the ninetieth lay, and thats more than ever was
given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.
So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon
enrolled among the same ships company to which I myself belonged.
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for
signing, he turned to me and said, I guess Quohog there dont know how
to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or
make thy mark?
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But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken
part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the
offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact
counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so
that through Captain Pelegs obstinate mistake touching his
appellative, it stood something like this:
Quohog.
his 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
Queequegs hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his,
looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, Son of darkness, I must do
my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for
the souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways,
which I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial
bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the
wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer
clear of the fiery pit!
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildads language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,
cried Peleg. Pious harpooneers never make good voyagersit takes the
shark out of em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty
sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out
of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never
came to good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he
shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps in case
he got stove and went to Davy Jones.
Peleg! Peleg! said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, thou thyself,
as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what
it is to have the fear of death; how, then, canst thou prate in this
ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this
same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on
Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, didst
thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?
Hear him, hear him now, cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,hear him, all of ye.
Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death
and the judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an
everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over
us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to
think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking
of; and how to save all handshow to rig jury-mastshow 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 tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted.
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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 occupied with his own thoughts, when the
above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,
levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but
shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a
black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all
directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated
ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.
Have ye shipped in her? he repeated.
You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose, said I, trying to gain a little
more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
Aye, the Pequodthat 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 havnt got any, he said quickly. No matter though,
I know many chaps that havnt got any,good luck to em; and they are
all the better off for it. A souls a sort of a fifth wheel to a
wagon.
What are you jabbering about, shipmate? said I.
_Hes_ 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, lets go; this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere; hes talking about something and somebody we dont know.
Stop! cried the stranger. Ye said trueye havnt seen Old Thunder
yet, have ye?
Whos Old Thunder? said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness
of his manner.
Captain Ahab.
What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?
Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye
havnt seen him yet, have ye?
No, we havnt. Hes 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 didnt tell much of anything about him; only Ive heard that hes
a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.
Thats true, thats trueyes, both true enough. But you must jump when
he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and gothats the word with
Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off
Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights;
nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar
in Santa?heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver
calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last
voyage, according to the prophecy. Didnt ye hear a word about them
matters and something more, eh? No, I dont think ye did; how could ye?
Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But howsever, mayhap, yeve
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 amostI mean they
know hes only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off.
My friend, said I, what all this gibberish of yours is about, I
dont know, and I dont 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, ehsure you do?all?
Pretty sure.
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a
little, turned and said:Yeve shipped, have ye? Names down on the
papers? Well, well, whats signed, is signed; and whats to be, will
be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, its all
fixed and arranged aready; 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; Im sorry I stopped
ye.
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Look here, friend, said I, if you have anything important to tell
us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are
mistaken in your game; thats all I have to say.
And its said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
you are just the man for himthe likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates,
morning! Oh, when ye get there, tell em Ive concluded not to make one
of em.
Ah, my dear fellow, you cant fool us that wayyou cant 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, lets leave this crazy
man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?
Elijah.
Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each
others fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was
nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone
perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and
looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my
comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us,
but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This
circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing,
shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments
and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain
Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver
calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship
the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the
voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy
things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg,
and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on,
without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and
finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.
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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 ships preparations were hurrying to a close.
Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam
keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing
and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on
the rigging were working till long after night-fall.
On the day following Queequegs signing the articles, word was given at
all the inns where the ships company were stopping, that their chests
must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the
vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps,
resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they
always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail
for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and
there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod
was fully equipped.
Every one knows what a multitude of thingsbeds, sauce-pans, knives and
forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are
indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling,
which necessitates a three-years housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far
from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And
though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means
to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of
the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution
of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote
harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships,
whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and
especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which
the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare
spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but
a spare captain and duplicate ship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the
Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water,
fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time
there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and
ends of things, both large and small.
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain
Bildads sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable
spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if _she_
could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after
once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a
jar of pickles for the stewards pantry; another time with a bunch of
quills for the chief mates desk, where he kept his log; a third time
with a roll of flannel for the small of some ones rheumatic back.
Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was CharityAunt
Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this
charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn
her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort,
and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother
Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of
well-saved dollars.
But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on
board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and
a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor
Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him
a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down
went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once and a
while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men
down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and
then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.
During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the
craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and
when he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they
would answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected
aboard every day; meantime, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, could
attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I
had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly
in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so
long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the
absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open
sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he
be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up
his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I
said nothing, and tried to think nothing.
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CHAPTER XXI. GOING ABOARD
It was nearly six oclock, 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 cant be shadows; shes 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!
Aint going aboard, then?
Yes, we are, said I, but what business is that of yours? Do you
know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?
No, no, no; I wasnt aware of that, said Elijah, slowly and
wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable
glances.
Elijah, said I, you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We
are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be
detained.
Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?
Hes 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, saidDid 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 againstbut never mind, never mindits all one,
all in the family too;sharp frost this morning, aint it? Good bye to
ye. Shant see ye again very soon, I guess; unless its before the
Grand Jury. And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving
me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.
At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound
quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the
hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward
to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a
light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a
tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his
face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber
slept upon him.
Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to? said I,
looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the
wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I
would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that
matter, were it not for Elijahs otherwise inexplicable question. But I
beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to
Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to
establish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleepers rear,
as though feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado,
sat quietly down there.
Gracious! Queequeg, dont sit there, said I.
Oh! perry dood seat, said Queequeg, my country way; wont hurt him
face.
Face! said I, call that his face? very benevolent countenance then;
but how hard he breathes, hes heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you
are heavy, its grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look,
hell twitch you off soon. I wonder he dont wake.
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and
lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing
over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning
him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his
land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king,
chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening
some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house
comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy
fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was
very convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs
which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief
calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself
under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place.
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CHAPTER XXII. MERRY CHRISTMAS
At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ships
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 gifta night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law,
and a spare bible for the stewardafter 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 readyjust spoke to himnothing more to be got from shore, eh?
Well, call all hands, then. Muster em aft hereblast em!
No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg, said
Bildad, but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.
How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain
Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the
quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as
well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign
of him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But
then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in
getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed,
as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilots; and as he
was not yet completely recoveredso they saidtherefore, 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 merrymaking with their shore friends,
before they quit the ship for good with the pilot.
But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain
Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and
commanding, and not Bildad.
Aft here, ye sons of bachelors, he cried, as the sailors lingered at
the main-mast. Mr. Starbuck, drive em aft.
Strike the tent there!was the next order. As I hinted before, this
whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the
Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known
to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.
Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!jump!was the next command, and
the crew sprang for the handspikes.
Now, in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the
pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with
Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other offices, was one of the
licensed pilots of the porthe 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 craftBildad, 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 seamans berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped
and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he
would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I
paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of
the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for
a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in
pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred
and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear,
and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in
the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my
first kick.
Is that the way they heave in the marchant service? he roared.
Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! why dont ye
spring, I say, all of yespring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red
whiskers; spring there, Scotchcap; 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.
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It
was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into
night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose
freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of
teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white
ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from
the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as
the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering
frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his
steady notes were heard,
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.
Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They
were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in
the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there
was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and
meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the
spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no
longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
alongside.
It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected
at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet;
very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a
voyagebeyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his
hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate
sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to
encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to
a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,poor old Bildad
lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the
cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and
looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only
bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the
land, looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere and
nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin,
convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern,
for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say,
Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all
his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern
came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to decknow
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 Bildadcome, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard
there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful,
careful!come, Bildad, boysay your last. Luck to ye, Starbuckluck to
ye, Mr. Stubbluck to ye, Mr. Flaskgood-bye, and good luck to ye
alland this day three years Ill 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 yell have fine weather now, so
that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among yea pleasant sun is all he
needs, and yell have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be
careful in the hunt, ye mates. Dont stave the boats needlessly, ye
harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent.
within the year. Dont forget your prayers, either. Mr Starbuck, mind
that cooper dont waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in
the green locker! Dont whale it too much a Lords days, men; but
dont miss a fair chance either, thats rejecting Heavens 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! Dont keep that cheese too long down in the hold,
Mr. Starbuck; itll spoil. Be careful with the buttertwenty cents the
pound it was, and mind ye, if
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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 winters night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her
helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon
the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years dangerous
voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another
tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest
things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs;
this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only
say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that
miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give
succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort,
hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all thats kind to our
mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ships
direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,
though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and
through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,
fights gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks
all the lashed seas landlessness again; for refuges sake forlornly
rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the
wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the
treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as Godso, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,
than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For
worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the
terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O
Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy
ocean-perishingstraight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
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Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,
scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe
and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific
coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy
of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted,
it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated
the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain,
and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was
given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first
blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned
those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched
there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.
Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the
emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent
biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do
commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the
missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive
missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land,
Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom
the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
sthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to
shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet
every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you
will say.
_The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?_ Who
wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who
composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a
prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down
the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And
who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no
good blood in their veins.
_No good blood in their veins?_ They have something better than royal
blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;
afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of
Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
harpooneersall kith and kin to noble Benjaminthis day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable.
_Whaling not respectable?_ Whaling is imperial! By old English
statutory law, the whale is declared a royal fish.*
Oh, thats 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 worlds
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. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of
antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute
in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably
ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a
man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death,
my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in
my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory
to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
*
See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
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CHAPTER XXVI. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an
icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being
hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood
would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time
of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which
his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those
summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his
thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties
and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was
merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking;
quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and
closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength,
like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for
long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow
or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was
warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed
to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he
had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life
for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame
chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there
were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some
cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly
conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence,
the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline
him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some
organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than
from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And
if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more
did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child,
tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature,
and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some
honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often
evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. I
will have no man in my boat, said Starbuck, who is not afraid of a
whale. By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and
useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the
encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more
dangerous comrade than a coward.
Aye, aye, said Stubb, the second mate, Starbuck, there, is as
careful a man as youll find anywhere in this fishery. But we shall
ere long see what that word careful precisely means when used by a
man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon
all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in
this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits
of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly
wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after
sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted
in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical
ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for
theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew.
What doom was his own fathers? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could
he find the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature
that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in
him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its
confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it
was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which,
while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or
whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet
cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged
and mighty man.
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But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any instance, the complete
abasement of poor Starbucks fortitude, scarce might I have the heart
to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose
the fall of valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint
stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;
men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble
and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any
ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their
costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so
far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character
seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a
valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,
completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But
this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes,
but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt
see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that
democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God;
Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all
democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic
graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among
them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall
touch that workmans arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a
rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics
bear me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one
royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou
great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict,
Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly
hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old
Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who
didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a
throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest
Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O
God!
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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-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his
whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his
crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable
arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about
the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very
death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and
off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his
old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated
monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death
into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no
telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question;
but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a
comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a
sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there,
about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and
not sooner.
What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easygoing,
unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave peddlers, all bowed to the ground with their packs;
what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that
thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black
little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would
almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his
nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready
loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever
he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from
the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in
readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his
legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his
peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless
miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in
time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated
handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal
tribulations, Stubbs tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of
disinfecting agent.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Marthas Vineyard. A
short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,
who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally
and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of
honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost
was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic
bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of
any possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion,
the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least
water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small
application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This
ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in
the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a
three years voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted
that length of time. As a carpenters 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 in it, served to brace the ship against the icy concussions of
those battering seas.
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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 Elijahs diabolical incoherences uninvitedly
recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived
of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was
almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish
prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
uneasinessto call it sowhich I felt, yet whenever I came to look
about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such
emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew,
were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the
tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me
acquainted with, still I ascribed thisand rightly ascribed itto the
fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation
in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the
aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was
most forcibly calculated to allay these colorless misgivings, and
induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage.
Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own
different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of
them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being
Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had
biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the
southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed,
gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable
weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey
and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the
ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping
and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of
the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the
taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension;
Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the
recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when
the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them,
or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His
whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an
unalterable mould, like Cellinis cast Perseus. Threading its way out
from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his
tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you
saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that
perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a
great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and
without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from
top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still
greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or
whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could
certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or
no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once
Tashtegos senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew,
superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did
Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the
fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this
wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman
insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out
of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless,
the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested
this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no
white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever
Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid outwhich might hardly come to
pass, so he mutteredthen, whoever should do that last office for the
dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.
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So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the
livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly
noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the
barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come
to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished
bone of the sperm whales jaw. Aye, he was dismasted off Japan, said
the old Gay-Head Indian once; but like his dismasted craft, he shipped
another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of em.
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of
the Pequods quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there
was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His
bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a
shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the
ships ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude,
a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless,
forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his
officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and
expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful,
consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that,
but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his
face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.
Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin.
But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either
standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or
heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to
grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if,
when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry
bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it
came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet,
for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he
seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only
making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling
preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so
that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite
Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that
layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose
the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him
from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and
May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest,
ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some
few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did,
in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish
air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look,
which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
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