Moby Dick

Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville

First published in 1851

This edition published in 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any
similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended
by the author.

A Literature Classic Book

Moby Dick

Herman Melville

Literature * Classics
 Introduction

In the pantheon of American literature, few works have achieved the

enduring status and literary significance of Herman Melville's magnum
opus, "Moby-Dick." First published in 1851, this monumental novel stands
as a testament to the boundless depths of human obsession and the timeless
allure of the sea. Seamlessly weaving together elements of adventure,
philosophy, and allegory, Melville's literary voyage aboard the Pequod has
left an indelible mark on the literary landscape.
At its core, "Moby-Dick" is a tale of relentless pursuit, with Captain
Ahab's insatiable quest for the eponymous white whale, Moby Dick,
serving as a powerful metaphor for the inherent, and often destructive,
nature of human ambition. The novel's themes extend far beyond the
confines of the whaling ship, delving into profound explorations of the
human condition, the complexities of identity, and the inherent conflict
between the individual and the natural world.
Melville's narrative artistry is on full display throughout the book, as
he employs a rich tapestry of literary devices, including vivid descriptions,
allegorical motifs, and a multifaceted narrative structure. His prose, both
poetic and philosophical, invites readers to ponder existential questions
while embarking on an epic adventure.
In this introduction, we will delve into the thematic richness of
"Moby-Dick," exploring its enduring relevance and impact on subsequent
generations of readers and writers. From its iconic opening line, "Call
me Ishmael," to its enigmatic conclusion, "Moby-Dick" beckons readers
to embark on a voyage of self-discovery and contemplation, offering
profound insights into the human psyche and the inexorable forces that
drive us.
Join us as we set sail on the literary seas of "Moby-Dick," a novel that
continues to captivate and challenge readers, inviting them to grapple with
the profound questions it poses about the human soul and the relentless
pursuit of the unattainable.
—Eleanor Sterling

5
 CHAPTER 1.
Loomings.

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

having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest
me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part
of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating
the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the
rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such
an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent
me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato
throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing
surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some
time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with
me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown
is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by
breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the
crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from
Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward.
What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking
over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as
if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of
week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches,
clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do

7
Moby Dick

they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water,
and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but
the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as
they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and
avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me,
does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships
attract them thither?
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a
dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it.
Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—
stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead
you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst
in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen
to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows,
meditation and water are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the
Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each
with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here
sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage
goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way,
reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.
But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes
down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain,
unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him.
Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—
there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand,
would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet
of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate
whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in
a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy
boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go
to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel
such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now

8
 Loomings.

out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all
this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of
Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he
saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image,
we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable
phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my
lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.
For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but
a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—
grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves
much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am
something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain,
or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those
who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils,
trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I
can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs,
schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though I confess there
is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—
yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled,
judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one
who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl
than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon
broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those
creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True,
they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar,
like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing
is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if
you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers,
or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to
putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country
schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition
is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a
strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.
But even this wears off in time.

9
Moby Dick

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a

broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the
archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a
slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order
me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or
other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical
point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all
hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being
paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that
the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will
compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money
is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be
the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter
heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head
winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never
violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on
the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on
the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same
way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the
same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after
having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it
into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of
the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me,
and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than
any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed
part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time
ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something
like this:
“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.

10
 Loomings.

“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN

AFFGHANISTAN.”
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and
easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot
tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I
think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly
presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about
performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it
was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating
judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all
my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the
attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped
to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not
have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting
itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous
coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and
could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be
on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits
that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost
soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one
grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

11
 CHAPTER 2.
The Carpet-Bag.

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

and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old
Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in
December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for
Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would
offer, till the following Monday.
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop
at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as
well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though
in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the
first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes
to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did
that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in order to
discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before
me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became
a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and
cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded
my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you
go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street
shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the
darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude
to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and

12
 The Carpet-Bag.

don’t be too particular.

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The
Crossed Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came such
fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from
before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches
thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,—rather weary for me, when I struck
my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless
service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too
expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the
broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within.
But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t you hear? get away from before
the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by
instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless,
were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,
and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At
this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town
proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding
from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a
careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the
first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought
I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that
destroyed city, Gomorrah? But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-
Fish?”—this, then must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” However, I
picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a
second, interior door.
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred
black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel
of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the
preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and
wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out,
Wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The Trap!’
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks,
and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging
sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall
straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath—“The Spouter
Inn:—Peter Coffin.”
Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion,

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Moby Dick

thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose

this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little
wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from
the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-
stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap
lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied
as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where
that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it
did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty
pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly
toasting for bed. “In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,”
says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—“it
maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass
window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it
from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which
the wight Death is the only glazier.” True enough, thought I, as this passage
occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes
are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t
stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here
and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The universe is
finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years
ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his
pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up
both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would
not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives,
in his red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh!
What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them
talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me
the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding
them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in
Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along
the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order
to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before
the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like

14
 The Carpet-Bag.

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.

15
 CHAPTER 3.
The Spouter-Inn.

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

low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the
bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study
and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors,
that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such
unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost
thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England
hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much
and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially
by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at
last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be
altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,
portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture
over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.
A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man
distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable
sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an
oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever
and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—
It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the
four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter
scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last
all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s
midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it
not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan
himself?
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly
based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I

16
 The Spouter-Inn.

conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a

great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three
dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to
spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon
the three mast-heads.
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering
teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human
hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like
the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You
shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and
savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,
horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and
harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this
once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill
fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a
corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale,
years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered
nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man,
travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump.
Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still duskier place is
this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks
beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft’s cockpits,
especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark
rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered
with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide
world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room
stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s
head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s
jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby
shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws
of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they
called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly
sells the sailors deliriums and death.
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though
true cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians

17
Moby Dick

rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. Fill to this
mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to
the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a
shilling.
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered
about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander.
I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a
room, received for answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied.
“But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to
sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’,
so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever
do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he
(the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not
decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange
town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man’s
blanket.
“I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper?
Supper’ll be ready directly.”
I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the
Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his
jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between
his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn’t make
much headway, I thought.
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an
adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said
he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a
winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to
our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was
of the most substantial kind—not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings;
good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box
coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.
“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty.”
“Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer is it?”
“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer
is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don’t—he eats
nothing but steaks, and he likes ’em rare.”
“The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?”

18
 The Spouter-Inn.

“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark
complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so
turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed
before I did.
Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing
not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening
as a looker on.
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord
cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing this
morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we’ll
have the latest news from the Feegees.”
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung
open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their
shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,
all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed
an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat,
and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made
a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the bar—when the wrinkled little
old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round.
One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a
pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure
for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or
whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-
island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even
with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering
about most obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and
though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates
by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as
much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-
gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but
a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here
venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height,
with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen
such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his
white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his
eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much

19
Moby Dick

joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his
fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from
the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions
had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw
no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes,
however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some
reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of “Bulkington!
Bulkington! where’s Bulkington?” and darted out of the house in pursuit of
him.
It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon
a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the
seamen.
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people
like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping
with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that
stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor
was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed,
more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea,
than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one
apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your
own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated
the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the
tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it
was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going
bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight—how
could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?
“Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan’t
sleep with him. I’ll try the bench here.”
“Just as you please; I’m sorry I can’t spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress, and it’s a plaguy rough board here”—feeling of the knots
and notches. “But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I’ve got a carpenter’s plane
there in the bar—wait, I say, and I’ll make ye snug enough.” So saying
he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the
bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like
an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came

20
 The Spouter-Inn.

bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his
wrist, and I told him for heaven’s sake to quit—the bed was soft enough
to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make
eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin,
and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went
about his business, and left me in a brown study.
I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow,
and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the
planed one—so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench
lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leaving a little
interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I soon found that there
came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of the window,
that this plan would never do at all, especially as another current from the
rickety door met the one from the window, and both together formed a
series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had
thought to spend the night.
The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn’t I steal
a march on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be
wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but
upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next
morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be
standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!
Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of
spending a sufferable night unless in some other person’s bed, I began to
think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against
this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I’ll wait awhile; he must be dropping
in before long. I’ll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may
become jolly good bedfellows after all—there’s no telling.
But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and
threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
“Landlord!” said I, “what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep
such late hours?” It was now hard upon twelve o’clock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to
be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. “No,” he
answered, “generally he’s an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—
yes, he’s the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a
peddling, you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so late, unless,
may be, he can’t sell his head.”

21
Moby Dick

“Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you

are telling me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to say,
landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday
night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?”
“That’s precisely it,” said the landlord, “and I told him he couldn’t sell
it here, the market’s overstocked.”
“With what?” shouted I.
“With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the world?”
“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you’d better stop
spinning that yarn to me—I’m not green.”
“May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but
I rayther guess you’ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a
slanderin’ his head.”
“I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s.
“It’s broke a’ready,” said he.
“Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?”
“Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I guess.”
“Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-
storm—“landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another,
and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell
me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain
harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you
persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending
to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design
for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and
confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out
and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all
respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will
be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I
take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I’ve no idea
of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir,
by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself
liable to a criminal prosecution.”
“Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “that’s a purty long
sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy,
this here harpooneer I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the
south seas, where he bought up a lot of ’balmed New Zealand heads (great
curios, you know), and he’s sold all on ’em but one, and that one he’s

22
 The Spouter-Inn.

trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow’s Sunday, and it would not do to

be sellin’ human heads about the streets when folks is goin’ to churches.
He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out of
the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of
inions.”
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and
showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but
at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a
Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal
business as selling the heads of dead idolators?
“Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.”
“He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s getting dreadful
late, you had better be turning flukes—it’s a nice bed; Sal and me slept
in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There’s plenty of room for two
to kick about in that bed; it’s an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we
give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But
I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got
pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it
wouldn’t do. Come along here, I’ll give ye a glim in a jiffy;” and so saying
he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way. But
I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed “I
vum it’s Sunday—you won’t see that harpooneer to-night; he’s come to
anchor somewhere—come along then; do come; won’t ye come?”
I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I
was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,
with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers
to sleep abreast.
“There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea
chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; “there, make
yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.” I turned round from
eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.
Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none
of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced
round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no
other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls,
and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things
not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and
thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman’s bag, containing
the harpooneer’s wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise,

23
Moby Dick

there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-
place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the light,
and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some
satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a
large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something
like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was
a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South
American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer
would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town
in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a
hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp,
as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I
went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a
sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a
kink in the neck.
I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on
the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in
the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a
little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half
undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about the
harpooneer’s not coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I
made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then
blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care
of heaven.
Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,
there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a
long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a
good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the
passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the
door.
Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till
spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand
head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without looking
towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor
in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords of the
large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all eagerness to see

24
 The Spouter-Inn.

his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing
the bag’s mouth. This accomplished, however, he turned round—when,
good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow
colour, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares. Yes,
it’s just as I thought, he’s a terrible bedfellow; he’s been in a fight, got
dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment
he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they
could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks.
They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make
of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a
story of a white man—a whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals,
had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course
of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And
what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest
in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion,
that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of
the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat
of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun’s tanning a white man
into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas;
and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the
skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,
this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having
opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a
sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these
on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand
head—a ghastly thing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He
now took off his hat—a new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out
with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head—none to speak of at
least—nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald
purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not
the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it
quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window,
but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of
this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him
as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead
of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just

25
Moby Dick

then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what

seemed inexplicable in him.
Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last
showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were
checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over
the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and
just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs
were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks
of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable
savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so
landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads
too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to
mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk!
But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me
that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall,
or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in
the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with
a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days’ old Congo
baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this
black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But
seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like
polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol,
which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-
place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed
image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the
bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very
appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling
but ill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes
about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places
them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and
applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial
blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier
withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them
badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the
heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But
the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never
moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger

26
 The Spouter-Inn.

guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-

song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face
twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire,
he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego
pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now
or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so
long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an
instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he
puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was
extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang
into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden
grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be,
to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural
responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.
“Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I
kill-e.” And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in
the dark.
“Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord!
Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”
“Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!” again growled
the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But
thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in
hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
“Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here
wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.”
“Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that that
infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?”
“I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads
around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look
here—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?”
“Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and

27
Moby Dick

sitting up in bed.
“You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a
really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his
tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s
all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s
a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I
have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken
Christian.
“Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or
whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in
with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It’s
dangerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.”
This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say—
“I won’t touch a leg of ye.”
“Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”
I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

28
 CHAPTER 4.
The Counterpane.

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

thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had
almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork,
full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his
tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two
parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping
his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly
rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the
world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it
as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they
so blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight and
pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was
a child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell
me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The
circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I think
it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few
days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time
whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me
by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was
only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the
year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so up
stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly
as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small
of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining
in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the
sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and worse—at last I
got up, dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought out
my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as

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Moby Dick

a particular favour to give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour;

anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length
of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers,
and back I had to go to my room. For several hours I lay there broad
awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from
the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a
troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it—half steeped in
dreams—I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped
in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame;
nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural
hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and
the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand
belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages
piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to
drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single
inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness
at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly
remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost
myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very
hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those
which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm
thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events soberly recurred,
one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical
predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom
clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught
but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse him—“Queequeg!”—
but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it
were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside
the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side,
as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed
here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk!
“Queequeg!—in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length, by
dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the
unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort
of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back
his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the
water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing

30
 The Counterpane.

his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there,

though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed
slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having
no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious
a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made up touching the character
of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he
jumped out upon the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to
understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me
to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I,
Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but,
the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you
will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this particular
compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility and
consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the
bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for the time my curiosity getting
the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don’t
see every day, he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding.
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall
one, by the by, and then—still minus his trowsers—he hunted up his boots.
What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement
was to crush himself—boots in hand, and hat on—under the bed; when,
from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work
booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is
any man required to be private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg,
do you see, was a creature in the transition stage—neither caterpillar nor
butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in
the strangest possible manners. His education was not yet completed.
He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized, he
very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then,
if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting
under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat very much
dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and limping
about the room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots, his pair of
damp, wrinkled cowhide ones—probably not made to order either—rather
pinched and tormented him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;

31
Moby Dick

I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and

particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He complied,
and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the morning any
Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my amazement,
contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest, arms, and
hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap
on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and commenced
lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when
lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the
long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot,
and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous
scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is
using Rogers’s best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the
less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel the head of
a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are
always kept.
The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out
of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his
harpoon like a marshal’s baton.

32
 CHAPTER 5.
Breakfast.

I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the
grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,
though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
bedfellow.
However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce
a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper
person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward,
but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And
the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is
more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping
in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They
were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates,
and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers,
and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an
unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This
young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would
seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days landed
from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades lighter; you
might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the complexion of a third still
lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried
whole weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which,
barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show
forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.
“Grub, ho!” now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we
went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite
at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though:
Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch
one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But

33
Moby Dick

perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard

did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro
heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo’s performances—
this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a
high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had
anywhere.
These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance
that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear
some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every
man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the
slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire
strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here
they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred
tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never
been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious
sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!
But as for Queequeg—why, Queequeg sat there among them—at
the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure
I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have
cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and
using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the
imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards
him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows
that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here; how he
eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to
beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew
like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was
sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on,
when I sallied out for a stroll.

34
 CHAPTER 6.
The Street.

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

individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized
town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll
through the streets of New Bedford.
In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign
parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners
will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown
to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees
have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and
Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New
Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright;
many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger
stare.
But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans,
Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the
whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other
sights still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in
this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst
for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart
frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe
and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains
whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours
old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat
and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here
comes another with a sou’-wester and a bombazine cloak.
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one—I mean
a downright bumpkin dandy—a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow
his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when
a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished
reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical

35
 Moby Dick

things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he

orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor
Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale,
when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals,
and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer
place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day
perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is,
parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The
town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a
land of oil, true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine.
The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them
with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find
more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New
Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of
a country?
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses
and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One
and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the
sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?
In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You
must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they
have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their
lengths in spermaceti candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long
avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and
bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their
tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art;
which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces
of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation’s final day.
And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses.
But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks
is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom
of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls
breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore,
as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the
Puritanic sands.

36
 CHAPTER 7.
The Chapel.

In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and few are
the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who
fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving
sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called
bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a
small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ wives and widows. A
muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm.
Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if
each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not
yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly
eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I
do not pretend to quote:—
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age
of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
November 1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS
SISTER.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS
ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats’ crews OF THE SHIP
ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground
in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by
their surviving SHIPMATES.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL
HARDY, Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the
coast of Japan, August 3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory
BY HIS WIDOW.
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated
myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg

37
Moby Dick

near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering
gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only
person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the
only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid
inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose
names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but
so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did
several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some
unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those,
in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically
caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing
among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the
desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those
black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those
immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in
the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the
beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those
tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales,
though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that
to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so
significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but
embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life
Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what
eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique
Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse
to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling
in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead;
wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.
All these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light
of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone
before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew
merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion,

38
 The Chapel.

it seems—aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there

is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling
of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken
this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow
here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things
spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water,
and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but
the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it
is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat
and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.

39
 CHAPTER 8.
The Pulpit.

I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness
entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting
him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently
attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous
Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a very
great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for
many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now
write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that
sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for
among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a
newly developing bloom—the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath
February’s snow. No one having previously heard his history, could for
the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because
there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to
that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that
he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his
tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket
seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had
absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed,
and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a
decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since
a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it
seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit
without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used
in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had
provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for
this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany
colour, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was,
seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the

40
 The Pulpit.

ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-
ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-
like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if
ascending the main-top of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with
swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood,
so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it
had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the
present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father
Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over
the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was
deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity,
that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of
the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing;
furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by
that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the
time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished
with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit,
I see, is a self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a
perennial well of water within the walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplain’s former sea-farings. Between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was
adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a
terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high
above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of
sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel’s face; and this bright face
shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck, something like
that silver plate now inserted into the Victory’s plank where Nelson fell.
“Ah, noble ship,” the angel seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble
ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds
are rolling off—serenest azure is at hand.”
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had
achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness
of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of
scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak.
What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this

41
Moby Dick

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

42
 CHAPTER 9.
The Sermon.

Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered

the scattered people to condense. “Starboard gangway, there! side away to
larboard—larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!”
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and
a still slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, and all was quiet again, and
every eye on the preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his large
brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer
so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the
sea.
This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling
of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he
commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards
the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy—

“The ribs and terrors in the whale,

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

“I saw the opening maw of hell,

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

“In black distress, I called my God,

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

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Moby Dick

“With speed he flew to my relief,

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

“My song for ever shall record

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

Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the
howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned
over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the
proper page, said: “Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first
chapter of Jonah—‘And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up
Jonah.’”
“Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters—four yarns—
is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet
what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sealine sound! what a pregnant
lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish’s
belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging
over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed
and all the slime of the sea is about us! But what is this lesson that the
book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to
us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As
sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-
heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance,
prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners
among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of
the command of God—never mind now what that command was, or how
conveyed—which he found a hard command. But all the things that God
would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he
oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we
must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the
hardness of obeying God consists.
“With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God,
by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will carry
him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this
earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that’s bound

44
 The Sermon.

for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By

all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz.
That’s the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz
is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have
sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown
sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly
coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than
two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of
Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-
wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all
scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling
among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So
disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in
those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been
arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no baggage,
not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him to the
wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on
board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist
from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s evil eye. Jonah sees
this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his
wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can
be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to
the other—“Jack, he’s robbed a widow;” or, “Joe, do you mark him; he’s
a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old
Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.” Another
runs to read the bill that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which
the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension
of a parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and
looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now
crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah
trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much
the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is
strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him
not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into
the cabin.
“‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that harmless
question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But

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Moby Dick

he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?’
Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the man
now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice,
than he darts a scrutinizing glance. ‘We sail with the next coming tide,’
at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. ‘No sooner, sir?’—
‘Soon enough for any honest man that goes a passenger.’ Ha! Jonah, that’s
another stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll
sail with ye,’—he says,—‘the passage money how much is that?—I’ll pay
now.’ For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be
overlooked in this history, ‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere the craft did
sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
“Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this
world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a
passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah’s
Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah’s purse, ere he judge him
openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it’s assented to. Then
the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves
to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes
out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every
coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is
put down for his passage. ‘Point out my state-room, Sir,’ says Jonah now,
‘I’m travel-weary; I need sleep.’ ‘Thou lookest like it,’ says the Captain,
‘there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock
contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs
lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts’ cells
being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is,
Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling
almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in
that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship’s water-line, Jonah feels
the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold
him in the smallest of his bowels’ wards.
“Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf
with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though
in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to
the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious
the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens
Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and

46
 The Sermon.

this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But
that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the
ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he
groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all
in crookedness!’
“Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the
Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as
one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,
praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the
whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who
bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there’s naught to staunch
it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah’s prodigy of ponderous
misery drags him drowning down to sleep.
“And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and
from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening,
glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers!
the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked
burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when
the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are
clattering overboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling,
and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in
all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky
and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds
he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is
cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into
the sides of the ship—a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast
asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear,
‘What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!’ Startled from his lethargy by that
direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps
a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon
by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps
into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the
mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white
moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness
overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but
soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep.
“Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing
attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him;

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Moby Dick

more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to
test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall to
casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The
lot is Jonah’s; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their
questions. ‘What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country?
What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah.
The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they
not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer
to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from
Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
“‘I am a Hebrew,’ he cries—and then—‘I fear the Lord the God of
Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!’ Fear him, O Jonah?
Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway, he now goes
on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and
more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating
God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts,—
when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into
the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was upon them;
they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to save the ship.
But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised
invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
“And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into
the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and
the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless
commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into
the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth,
like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord
out of the fish’s belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson.
For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance.
He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance
to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs,
he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and
faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.
And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the
eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do
not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him
before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to
repent of it like Jonah.”

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 The Sermon.

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,

slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
when describing Jonah’s sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed
the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off
his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple
hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.
There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves
of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes,
for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.
But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head
lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these
words:
“Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press
upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that
Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for
I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down
from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen
as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful
lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being
an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the
Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh,
Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and
sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is
everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon
him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and
with swift slantings tore him along ‘into the midst of the seas,’ where the
eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘the weeds
were wrapped about his head,’ and all the watery world of woe bowled
over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet—‘out of the
belly of hell’—when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones,
even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried.
Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness
of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant
sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon
the dry land;’ when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah,
bruised and beaten—his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously
murmuring of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was
that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

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Moby Dick

“This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from
Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God
has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to
appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to
him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be
true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the
great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!”
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with
a heavenly enthusiasm,—“But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of
every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than
the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson
is low? Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who
against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his
own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him,
when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him.
Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and
destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators
and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no
law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight
is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous
mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight
and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with
his final breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal
or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this
world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what
is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face
with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,
and he was left alone in the place.

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 CHAPTER 10.
A Bosom Friend.

Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there

quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He
was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and
in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his;
peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its
nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.
But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going
to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began
counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as
I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving
utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then
begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each
time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such
a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the
multitude of pages was excited.
With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and
hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance
yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot
hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the
traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and
bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.
And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan,
which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a
man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was,
too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and
brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I
will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically
an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General
Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same
long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were
likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on

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Moby Dick

top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile
to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my
presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but
appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous
book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night
previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found
thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference
of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not
know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm
self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed
also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other
seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no
desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as
mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost
sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home,
by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get
there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the
planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost
serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.
Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never
heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers,
we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon
as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I
conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have “broken his
digester.”
As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that
mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only
glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round
the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm
booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange
feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened
hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had
redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which
there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a
very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn
towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others,
they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend,
thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew

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 A Bosom Friend.

my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best
to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but
presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to
ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I
thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.
We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain
to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures
that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went to
jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this
famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch
and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging
puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between
us.
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s
breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us
cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to
him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine,
clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married;
meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would
gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame
of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much
distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply.
After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our
room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his
enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some
thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically
dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards
me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced
me by pouring them into my trowsers’ pockets. I let them stay. He then
went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed the paper
fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious
for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a
moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.
I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you
suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—
pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of
black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—

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Moby Dick

that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man

what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God.
Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg
would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form
of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must
turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little
idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice
or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed,
at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to
sleep without some little chat.
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very
bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat
over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon,
lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.

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 CHAPTER 11.
Nightgown.

We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs
over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and
easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little
nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up
again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position
began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting
up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the head-board
with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses bending
over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and
snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-
clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say,
because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be
cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by
contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over
comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be
comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of
your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed,
in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably
warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with
a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height
of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you
and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the
one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all
at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether
by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always
keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness
of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright
except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element

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Moby Dick

of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Upon
opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created
darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated
twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor
did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to
strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a
strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that
though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the
night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once
comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg
smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene
household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s
policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential
comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our
shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk
from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of
smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away
to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;
and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly
complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his
words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with
his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as
it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.

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 CHAPTER 12.
Biographical.

Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands
in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire
to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two.
His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the
maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable
warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly
vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored
youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of
seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could
prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to
a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted
the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land,
covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his
canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat
down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by,
like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his
foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing
himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore
not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended
a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild
desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he
might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince
of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin. They put him down among the
sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to toil in

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the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy,

if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored
countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound
desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people
still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they
were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even
Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all
his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the
sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent
their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought
he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer ways
about him, though now some time from home.
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and
having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone,
he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet;
and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted
him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before
him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt himself
baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow
his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and
that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon
this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my
intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for an
adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany
me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the
same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with
both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this
I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he
was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great
usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of
whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen.
His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg
embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light,
we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were
sleeping.

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 CHAPTER 13.
Wheelbarrow.

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

for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my
comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed
amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between
me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about
him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom
I now companied with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my
own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we
went down to “the Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at
the wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so
much—for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—
but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded
them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now
and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him
why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all
whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he
replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular
affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried
in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.
In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’
meadows armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to
furnish them—even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred
his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story
about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The
owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy
chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing—though
in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage
the barrow—Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then
shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. “Why,” said I, “Queequeg,

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you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn’t the people
laugh?”
Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of
Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of
young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this
punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat
where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched
at Rokovoko, and its commander—from all accounts, a very stately
punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain—this commander was
invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess
just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at
the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned
the post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between
the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being
said,—for those people have their grace as well as we—though Queequeg
told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters,
they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great
Giver of all feasts—Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the
banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his
consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed
beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the
ceremony, and thinking himself—being Captain of a ship—as having plain
precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King’s own house—
the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;—taking
it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said Queequeg, “what you tink
now?—Didn’t our people laugh?”
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the
schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side,
New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering
in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were
piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale
ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound
of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt
the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most
perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended,
only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness,
yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little
Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings.

60
 Wheelbarrow.

How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike earth!—that

common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and
hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will
permit no records.
At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with
me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth.
On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast;
ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning,
we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts
buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene
were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did
not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly,
who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as
though a white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed
negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their
intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure.
Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind
his back. I thought the bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his
harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost
miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then
slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting
lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted
his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.
“Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer;
“Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.”
“Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up
to Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you know you
might have killed that chap?”
“What him say?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
“He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,” pointing to
the still shivering greenhorn.
“Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain, “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so
small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!”
“Look you,” roared the Captain, “I’ll kill-e you, you cannibal, if you
try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.”
But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to
mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted
the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to

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Moby Dick

side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor fellow
whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all hands
were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed
madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of
a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.
Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on
deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were
the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this consternation,
Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path of
the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and
then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept
over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all
was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were
clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from
the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was
seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him,
and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I
looked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The
greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the
water, Queequeg, now took an instant’s glance around him, and seeming
to see just how matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes
more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the other
dragging a lifeless form. The boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin
was restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged
his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till
poor Queequeg took his last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that
he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies.
He only asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe the brine off;
that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the
bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to
himself—“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals
must help these Christians.”

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 CHAPTER 14.
Nantucket.

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a
fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner
of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely
than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow
of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than
you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some
gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they
don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to
send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of
wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome;
that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the
shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades
in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like
Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way
inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their
very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to
the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket
is no Illinois.
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island
was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an
eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an
infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child
borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the
same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they
discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,—the
poor little Indian’s skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should
take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs
in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more
experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last,

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Moby Dick

launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world;
put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring’s
Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the
mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and
most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with
such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to
be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing
from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world
like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific,
and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add
Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm
all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this
terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as
Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through
it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts;
even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen
the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like
themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep
itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone,
in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his
own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a
Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in
China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among
the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years
he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like
another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.
With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep
between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls
his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of
walruses and whales.

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 CHAPTER 15.
Chowder.

It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to anchor,
and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no business that
day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of the Spouter-Inn
had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he
asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket,
and moreover he had assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him, was
famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we could not
possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try Pots. But the directions he
had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand
till we opened a white church to the larboard, and then keeping that
on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to the starboard,
and that done, then ask the first man we met where the place was: these
crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first, especially as, at
the outset, Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse—our first point
of departure—must be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood
Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating
about a little in the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable
inhabitant to inquire the way, we at last came to something which there
was no mistaking.
Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses’
ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an
old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side,
so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was
over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring
at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I
gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg,
and one for me. It’s ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing
in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s
chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are
these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman

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with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn, under
a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye, and
carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt.
“Get along with ye,” said she to the man, “or I’ll be combing ye!”
“Come on, Queequeg,” said I, “all right. There’s Mrs. Hussey.”
And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving
Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon making
known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further
scolding for the present, ushered us into a little room, and seating us at a
table spread with the relics of a recently concluded repast, turned round to
us and said—“Clam or Cod?”
“What’s that about Cods, ma’am?” said I, with much politeness.
“Clam or Cod?” she repeated.
“A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs.
Hussey?” says I, “but that’s a rather cold and clammy reception in the
winter time, ain’t it, Mrs. Hussey?”
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing but
the word “clam,” Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the
kitchen, and bawling out “clam for two,” disappeared.
“Queequeg,” said I, “do you think that we can make out a supper for
us both on one clam?”
However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder
came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends!
hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than
hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into
little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with
pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and
in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him,
and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with
great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of
Mrs. Hussey’s clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little
experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word “cod” with
great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury steam
came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-
chowder was placed before us.
We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl,
thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head?

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 Chowder.

What’s that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? “But look,

Queequeg, ain’t that a live eel in your bowl? Where’s your harpoon?”
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved
its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for
breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began
to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area before the
house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished necklace
of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in
superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which
I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll
along the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled
cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot
in a cod’s decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs.
Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to
precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded
his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. “Why not?” said I;
“every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon—but why not?” “Because
it’s dangerous,” says she. “Ever since young Stiggs coming from that
unfort’nt v’y’ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with only
three barrels of ile, was found dead in my first floor back, with his harpoon
in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to take sich dangerous
weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg” (for she had learned
his name), “I will just take this here iron, and keep it for you till morning.
But the chowder; clam or cod to-morrow for breakfast, men?”
“Both,” says I; “and let’s have a couple of smoked herring by way of
variety.”

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 CHAPTER 16.
The Ship.

In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and no
small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been
diligently consulting Yojo—the name of his black little god—and Yojo had
told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it everyway,
that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in harbor, and
in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined
that the selection of the ship should rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo
purposed befriending us; and, in order to do so, had already pitched upon
a vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael, should infallibly light upon,
for all the world as though it had turned out by chance; and in that vessel
I must immediately ship myself, for the present irrespective of Queequeg.
I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed
great confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s judgment and surprising
forecast of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather
good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in
all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.
Now, this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching the selection
of our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little relied upon
Queequeg’s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry us and
our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances produced no effect
upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and accordingly prepared
to set about this business with a determined rushing sort of energy and
vigor, that should quickly settle that trifling little affair. Next morning
early, leaving Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our little bedroom—for
it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day of fasting,
humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that day; how it was
I never could find out, for, though I applied myself to it several times, I
never could master his liturgies and XXXIX Articles—leaving Queequeg,
then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his
sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After much
prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that there were

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 The Ship.

three ships up for three-years’ voyages—The Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and

the Pequod. Devil-Dam, I do not know the origin of; Tit-bit is obvious;
Pequod, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated tribe
of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered
and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to the Tit-bit; and
finally, going on board the Pequod, looked around her for a moment, and
then decided that this was the very ship for us.
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I
know;—square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box
galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a rare
old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old school,
rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed look about her.
Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms of all four
oceans, her old hull’s complexion was darkened like a French grenadier’s,
who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable bows looked
bearded. Her masts—cut somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her
original ones were lost overboard in a gale—her masts stood stiffly up
like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were
worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury
Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were
added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for
more than half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years
her chief-mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and now
a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the Pequod,—this old
Peleg, during the term of his chief-mateship, had built upon her original
grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and
device, unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake’s carved buckler
or bedstead. She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his
neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies.
A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her
enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like
one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted
there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews
ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves
of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported
there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the
long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered
by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery
steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy!

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Moby Dick

All noble things are touched with that.

Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having
authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at
first I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or
rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It seemed only a
temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some ten feet
high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black bone taken from
the middle and highest part of the jaws of the right-whale. Planted with
their broad ends on the deck, a circle of these slabs laced together, mutually
sloped towards each other, and at the apex united in a tufted point, where
the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the top-knot on some old
Pottowottamie Sachem’s head. A triangular opening faced towards the
bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view forward.
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one
who by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and
the ship’s work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of
command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all
over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a stout
interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed.
There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance
of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen,
and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only
there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles
interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual
sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;—for this
causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such eye-
wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.
“Is this the Captain of the Pequod?” said I, advancing to the door of
the tent.
“Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of
him?” he demanded.
“I was thinking of shipping.”
“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer—ever been in a
stove boat?”
“No, Sir, I never have.”
“Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?
“Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been several
voyages in the merchant service, and I think that—”
“Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see

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 The Ship.

that leg?—I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the
marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now
ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships. But
flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?—it looks a little
suspicious, don’t it, eh?—Hast not been a pirate, hast thou?—Didst not
rob thy last Captain, didst thou?—Dost not think of murdering the officers
when thou gettest to sea?”
I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask
of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated
Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather
distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.
“But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of
shipping ye.”
“Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.”
“Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain
Ahab?”
“Who is Captain Ahab, sir?”
“Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship.”
“I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself.”
“Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg—that’s who ye are speaking to,
young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted
out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are
part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know
what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out
before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab,
young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg.”
“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?”
“Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured,
chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a
boat!—ah, ah!”
I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at the
hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I could,
“What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know there
was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I might
have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident.”
“Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d’ye see; thou
dost not talk shark a bit. Sure, ye’ve been to sea before now; sure of that?”
“Sir,” said I, “I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the
merchant—”

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Moby Dick

“Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant
service—don’t aggravate me—I won’t have it. But let us understand
each other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel
inclined for it?”
“I do, sir.”
“Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live
whale’s throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!”
“I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to be
got rid of, that is; which I don’t take to be the fact.”
“Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find
out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to see
the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just step
forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back to me
and tell me what ye see there.”
For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not
knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But
concentrating all his crow’s feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started me
on the errand.
Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that
the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely
pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but
exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I
could see.
“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came back; “what did ye
see?”
“Not much,” I replied—“nothing but water; considerable horizon
though, and there’s a squall coming up, I think.”
“Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish
to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can’t ye see the world
where you stand?”
I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the
Pequod was as good a ship as any—I thought the best—and all this I now
repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his willingness
to ship me.
“And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he added—“come
along with ye.” And so saying, he led the way below deck into the cabin.
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon
and surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with
Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares,

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 The Ship.

as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old

annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning
about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the
ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same
way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers,
was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and
to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the
peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by
things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers
are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting
Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with
Scripture names—a singularly common fashion on the island—and in
childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the
Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless adventure of
their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these unoutgrown peculiarities,
a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy a Scandinavian sea-
king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these things unite in a man of
greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponderous heart;
who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches
in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the
north, been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all
nature’s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary
and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from
accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that
man makes one in a whole nation’s census—a mighty pageant creature,
formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically
regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems a
half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For all men
tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this,
O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. But, as yet we have
not to do with such an one, but with quite another; and still a man, who,
if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the Quaker,
modified by individual circumstances.
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired
whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg—who cared not a rush for what are
called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things
the veriest of all trifles—Captain Bildad had not only been originally

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Moby Dick

educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all

his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island
creatures, round the Horn—all that had not moved this native born Quaker
one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for
all this immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency about
worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples,
to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded
the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed,
yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan
gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad
reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not
seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to
the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one thing, and
this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from
a little cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in
a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-
mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before,
had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life
at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet
receiving of his well-earned income.
Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard task-master.
They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a curious story, that
when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving home,
were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted and worn
out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-
hearted, to say the least. He never used to swear, though, at his men, they
said; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated
hard work out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-
coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous,
till you could clutch something—a hammer or a marling-spike, and go
to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and
idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of
his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh,
no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the
worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.
Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I
followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the decks
was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and

74
 The Ship.

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

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Moby Dick

the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay would be
about the fair thing, but would not have been surprised had I been offered
the 200th, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.
But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard
something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad;
how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore
the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the
whole management of the ship’s affairs to these two. And I did not know
but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about
shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite
at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside.
Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old
Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested
party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling
to himself out of his book, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth—”
“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye say, what lay
shall we give this young man?”
“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the seven hundred
and seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, would it?—‘where moth and
rust do corrupt, but lay—’”
Lay, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and seventy-
seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not
lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an
exceedingly long lay that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the
figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration
will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large
number, yet, when you come to make a teenth of it, you will then see, I
say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good
deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I
thought at the time.
“Why, blast your eyes, Bildad,” cried Peleg, “thou dost not want to
swindle this young man! he must have more than that.”
“Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,” again said Bildad, without
lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling—“for where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also.”
“I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,” said Peleg, “do
ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say.”

76
 The Ship.

Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
“Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the duty
thou owest to the other owners of this ship—widows and orphans, many
of them—and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young
man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans.
The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.”
“Thou Bildad!” roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the
cabin. “Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these
matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be
heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape
Horn.”
“Captain Peleg,” said Bildad steadily, “thy conscience may be drawing
ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can’t tell; but as thou art still an
impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a
leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit,
Captain Peleg.”
“Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye
insult me. It’s an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he’s
bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start
my soul-bolts, but I’ll—I’ll—yes, I’ll swallow a live goat with all his hair
and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden
gun—a straight wake with ye!”
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a
marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.
Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all idea
of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded,
I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad, who, I made no
doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened wrath of
Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down again on the transom very
quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest intention of withdrawing. He
seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways. As for Peleg, after
letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more left in him, and he,
too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a little as if still nervously
agitated. “Whew!” he whistled at last—“the squall’s gone off to leeward,
I think. Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that
pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone. That’s he; thank ye,
Bildad. Now then, my young man, Ishmael’s thy name, didn’t ye say? Well
then, down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth lay.”

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Moby Dick

“Captain Peleg,” said I, “I have a friend with me who wants to ship

too—shall I bring him down to-morrow?”
“To be sure,” said Peleg. “Fetch him along, and we’ll look at him.”
“What lay does he want?” groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book
in which he had again been burying himself.
“Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad,” said Peleg. “Has he ever
whaled it any?” turning to me.
“Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg.”
“Well, bring him along then.”
And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I
had done a good morning’s work, and that the Pequod was the identical
ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape.
But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the
Captain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though,
indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and
receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by
arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged,
and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain
have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not
trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners
till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a look at him
before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning back I
accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.
“And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It’s all right enough; thou
art shipped.”
“Yes, but I should like to see him.”
“But I don’t think thou wilt be able to at present. I don’t know
exactly what’s the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house;
a sort of sick, and yet he don’t look so. In fact, he ain’t sick; but no, he
isn’t well either. Any how, young man, he won’t always see me, so I don’t
suppose he will thee. He’s a queer man, Captain Ahab—so some think—
but a good one. Oh, thou’lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. He’s
a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but,
when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned;
Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ’mong the
cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery
lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest
and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and
he ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was

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 The Ship.

a crowned king!”
“And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did
they not lick his blood?”
“Come hither to me—hither, hither,” said Peleg, with a significance in
his eye that almost startled me. “Look ye, lad; never say that on board the
Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. ’Twas
a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he
was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead,
said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other
fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It’s a lie. I know
Captain Ahab well; I’ve sailed with him as mate years ago; I know what he
is—a good man—not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good
man—something like me—only there’s a good deal more of him. Aye,
aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage
home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp
shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one
might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that
accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody—desperate moody, and savage
sometimes; but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and
assure thee, young man, it’s better to sail with a moody good captain than
a laughing bad one. So good-bye to thee—and wrong not Captain Ahab,
because he happens to have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a
wife—not three voyages wedded—a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by
that sweet girl that old man has a child: hold ye then there can be any utter,
hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab
has his humanities!”
As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been
incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild
vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I
felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know what, unless it
was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him; but
that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do
not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did not disincline me towards
him; though I felt impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, so
imperfectly as he was known to me then. However, my thoughts were at
length carried in other directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped
my mind.

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 CHAPTER 17.
The Ramadan.

As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all

day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I cherish
the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never
mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even
a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures
in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite
unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased
landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet
owned and rented in his name.
I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these
things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans
and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There
was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about
Yojo and his Ramadan;—but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew
what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let
him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and
Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are
all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door; but
no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside. “Queequeg,” said I
softly through the key-hole:—all silent. “I say, Queequeg! why don’t you
speak? It’s I—Ishmael.” But all remained still as before. I began to grow
alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant time; I thought he might have
had an apoplectic fit. I looked through the key-hole; but the door opening
into an odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect was but a crooked
and sinister one. I could only see part of the foot-board of the bed and a
line of the wall, but nothing more. I was surprised to behold resting against
the wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg’s harpoon, which the landlady the
evening previous had taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber.
That’s strange, thought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder,

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and he seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside
here, and no possible mistake.
“Queequeg!—Queequeg!”—all still. Something must have happened.
Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted.
Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person I
met—the chamber-maid. “La! la!” she cried, “I thought something must
be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door was
locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it’s been just so silent ever since.
But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and locked your baggage
in for safe keeping. La! la, ma’am!—Mistress! murder! Mrs. Hussey!
apoplexy!”—and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation of
attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime.
“Wood-house!” cried I, “which way to it? Run for God’s sake, and
fetch something to pry open the door—the axe!—the axe! he’s had a
stroke; depend upon it!”—and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up
stairs again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot
and vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.
“What’s the matter with you, young man?”
“Get the axe! For God’s sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry
it open!”
“Look here,” said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-
cruet, so as to have one hand free; “look here; are you talking about prying
open any of my doors?”—and with that she seized my arm. “What’s the
matter with you? What’s the matter with you, shipmate?”
In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the
whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of her
nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed—“No! I haven’t seen
it since I put it there.” Running to a little closet under the landing of the
stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that Queequeg’s harpoon was
missing. “He’s killed himself,” she cried. “It’s unfort’nate Stiggs done over
again—there goes another counterpane—God pity his poor mother!—it
will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where’s that girl?—
there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign,
with—“no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;”—might
as well kill both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be merciful to his ghost!
What’s that noise there? You, young man, avast there!”
And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force

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open the door.

“I don’t allow it; I won’t have my premises spoiled. Go for the
locksmith, there’s one about a mile from here. But avast!” putting her
hand in her side-pocket, “here’s a key that’ll fit, I guess; let’s see.” And
with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequeg’s supplemental bolt
remained unwithdrawn within.
“Have to burst it open,” said I, and was running down the entry a little,
for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing I should
not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily
rush dashed myself full against the mark.
With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming
against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good heavens!
there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right in the middle
of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on top of his head.
He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat like a carved image
with scarce a sign of active life.
“Queequeg,” said I, going up to him, “Queequeg, what’s the matter
with you?”
“He hain’t been a sittin’ so all day, has he?” said the landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt
like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost
intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained; especially,
as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of eight or ten
hours, going too without his regular meals.
“Mrs. Hussey,” said I, “he’s alive at all events; so leave us, if you
please, and I will see to this strange affair myself.”
Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon
Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could do—
for all my polite arts and blandishments—he would not move a peg, nor
say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in the
slightest way.
I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do
they fast on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so; yes,
it’s part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he’ll get up sooner
or later, no doubt. It can’t last for ever, thank God, and his Ramadan only
comes once a year; and I don’t believe it’s very punctual then.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long
stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage,
as they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig,

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 The Ramadan.

confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only); after listening
to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o’clock, I went up stairs to
go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must certainly have
brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there he was just where I
had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow vexed with him;
it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and
half the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood on his
head.
“For heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and
have some supper. You’ll starve; you’ll kill yourself, Queequeg.” But not a
word did he reply.
Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to sleep;
and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous
to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as
it promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinary
round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into the
faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere thought of
Queequeg—not four feet off—sitting there in that uneasy position, stark
alone in the cold and dark; this made me really wretched. Think of it;
sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his hams
in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!
But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break
of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he
had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of
sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a
cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again
against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s religion,
be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other
person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s
religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in
fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think
it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.
And just so I now did with Queequeg. “Queequeg,” said I, “get
into bed now, and lie and listen to me.” I then went on, beginning with
the rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the
various religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show
Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in
cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for

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Moby Dick

the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common
sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely
sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to
see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his.
Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in;
and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the
reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions
about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively;
hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then
perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in.
He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast
given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty
of the enemy had been killed by about two o’clock in the afternoon, and all
cooked and eaten that very evening.
“No more, Queequeg,” said I, shuddering; “that will do;” for I knew
the inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had
visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a great
battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden
of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great wooden
trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts;
and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor’s
compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents were so many
Christmas turkeys.
After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow
seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered from
his own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more than one
third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and, finally, he no
doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than I did.
He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as
though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young man should be
so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.
At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously
hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not
make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the
Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.

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 CHAPTER 18.
His Mark.

As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship,
Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly
hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was
a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board
that craft, unless they previously produced their papers.
“What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?” said I, now jumping on
the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.
“I mean,” he replied, “he must show his papers.”
“Yes,” said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from
behind Peleg’s, out of the wigwam. “He must show that he’s converted.
Son of darkness,” he added, turning to Queequeg, “art thou at present in
communion with any Christian church?”
“Why,” said I, “he’s a member of the first Congregational Church.”
Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at
last come to be converted into the churches.
“First Congregational Church,” cried Bildad, “what! that worships
in Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman’s meeting-house?” and so saying,
taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam,
and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at Queequeg.
“How long hath he been a member?” he then said, turning to me; “not
very long, I rather guess, young man.”
“No,” said Peleg, “and he hasn’t been baptized right either, or it would
have washed some of that devil’s blue off his face.”
“Do tell, now,” cried Bildad, “is this Philistine a regular member of
Deacon Deuteronomy’s meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it
every Lord’s day.”
“I don’t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting,”
said I; “all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is.”
“Young man,” said Bildad sternly, “thou art skylarking with me—

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explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer
me.”
Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “I mean, sir, the same
ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there,
and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of
us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole
worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some
queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in that we all join
hands.”
“Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing nearer.
“Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast
hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy—why Father
Mapple himself couldn’t beat it, and he’s reckoned something. Come
aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog
there—what’s that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great
anchor, what a harpoon he’s got there! looks like good stuff that; and he
handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you
ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?”
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped
upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats
hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon,
cried out in some such way as this:—
“Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him?
well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!” and taking sharp aim at it, he
darted the iron right over old Bildad’s broad brim, clean across the ship’s
decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.
“Now,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him
whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead.”
“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway.
“Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We must have
Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog,
we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that’s more than ever was given a
harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.”
So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was
soon enrolled among the same ship’s company to which I myself belonged.
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready
for signing, he turned to me and said, “I guess, Quohog there don’t know
how to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or

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 His Mark.

make thy mark?”

But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken
part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the offered
pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart of
a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so that through
Captain Peleg’s obstinate mistake touching his appellative, it stood
something like this:—
Quohog. his X mark.
Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing
Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets
of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting
one entitled “The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose,” placed it in
Queequeg’s hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his,
looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, “Son of darkness, I must do my
duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the souls
of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear,
I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell,
and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say;
oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!”
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad’s language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
“Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,”
cried Peleg. “Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers—it takes the
shark out of ’em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish.
There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all
Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to
good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and
sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and
went to Davy Jones.”
“Peleg! Peleg!” said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, “thou thyself,
as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is
to have the fear of death; how, then, can’st thou prate in this ungodly guise.
Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here
had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage
when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did’st thou not think of Death
and the Judgment then?”
“Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,—“hear him, all of ye. Think
of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and

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Moby Dick

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

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 CHAPTER 19.
The Prophet.

“Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?”

Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away
from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts,
when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before
us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but
shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black
handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions
flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent,
when the rushing waters have been dried up.
“Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated.
“You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying to gain a little
more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
“Aye, the Pequod—that ship there,” he said, drawing back his whole
arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed
bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.
“Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.”
“Anything down there about your souls?”
“About what?”
“Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. “No matter
though, I know many chaps that hav’n’t got any,—good luck to ’em; and
they are all the better off for it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.”
“What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.
“He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in
other chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon
the word he.
“Queequeg,” said I, “let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere; he’s talking about something and somebody we don’t know.”
“Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old Thunder
yet, have ye?”
“Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane
earnestness of his manner.

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Moby Dick

“Captain Ahab.”
“What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?”
“Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye
hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye?”
“No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be
all right again before long.”
“All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this
left arm of mine will be all right; not before.”
“What do you know about him?”
“What did they tell you about him? Say that!”
“They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that
he’s a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.”
“That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump
when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the word
with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off
Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights;
nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in
Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash
he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according
to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word about them matters and something
more, eh? No, I don’t think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all
Nantucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about the
leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that
every one knows a’most—I mean they know he’s only one leg; and that a
parmacetti took the other off.”
“My friend,” said I, “what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don’t
know, and I don’t much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little
damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship
there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his
leg.”
“All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?”
“Pretty sure.”
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little,
turned and said:—“Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers?
Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then
again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all fixed and arranged
a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well

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 The Prophet.

these as any other men, God pity ’em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning;
the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped ye.”
“Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us,
out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in
your game; that’s all I have to say.”
“And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
you are just the man for him—the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates,
morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one
of ’em.”
“Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—you can’t fool us. It
is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret
in him.”
“Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.”
“Morning it is,” said I. “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this crazy
man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?”
“Elijah.”
Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each
other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing
but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above
a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I
did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance.
Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of
his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether
the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it
seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for
the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous,
half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all
kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected
with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape
Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him,
when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw
Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other
shadowy things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and
on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming
to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to
me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.

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 CHAPTER 20.
All Astir.

A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not
only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board,
and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened
that the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom
or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon
the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the
men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after
night-fall.
On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was
given at all the inns where the ship’s company were stopping, that their
chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the
vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving,
however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give very
long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. But no
wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many
things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped.
Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds, sauce-pans,
knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not,
are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling,
which necessitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far
from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though
this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same
extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling
voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery,
and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually
frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are
the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction
and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most
depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons,
and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate ship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the

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 All Astir.

Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water,
fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there
was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of
things, both large and small.
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain
Bildad’s sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable
spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could
help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly
getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles
for the steward’s pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief
mate’s desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the
small of some one’s rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve
her name, which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And
like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither
and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to
yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her
beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a
score or two of well-saved dollars.
But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming
on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and
a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor
Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him
a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went
his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg
came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the
hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded
by roaring back into his wigwam.
During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the
craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when
he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would
answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard
every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend
to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been
downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart
that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage,
without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute
dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when
a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already
involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even

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from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried
to think nothing.
At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would
certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start.

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 CHAPTER 21.
Going Aboard.

It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we
drew nigh the wharf.
“There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,” said I to
Queequeg, “it can’t be shadows; she’s off by sunrise, I guess; come on!”
“Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close
behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating
himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain
twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.
“Going aboard?”
“Hands off, will you,” said I.
“Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way!”
“Ain’t going aboard, then?”
“Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of yours? Do you
know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?”
“No, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly and
wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable
glances.
“Elijah,” said I, “you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing.
We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be
detained.”
“Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?”
“He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.”
“Holloa!” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a
few paces.
“Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.”
But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my
shoulder, said—“Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that
ship a while ago?”
Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, “Yes, I
thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure.”
“Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “Morning to ye.”

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Moby Dick

Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and
touching my shoulder again, said, “See if you can find ’em now, will ye?
“Find who?”
“Morning to ye! morning to ye!” he rejoined, again moving off. “Oh!
I was going to warn ye against—but never mind, never mind—it’s all one,
all in the family too;—sharp frost this morning, ain’t it? Good-bye to ye.
Shan’t see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it’s before the Grand Jury.”
And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for the
moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.
At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in
profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within;
the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward
to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light,
we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered
pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face
downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept
upon him.
“Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?” said
I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf,
Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I would have
thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were it not
for Elijah’s otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down; and
again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we
had best sit up with the body; telling him to establish himself accordingly.
He put his hand upon the sleeper’s rear, as though feeling if it was soft
enough; and then, without more ado, sat quietly down there.
“Gracious! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I.
“Oh! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “my country way; won’t hurt
him face.”
“Face!” said I, “call that his face? very benevolent countenance then;
but how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are
heavy, it’s grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, he’ll
twitch you off soon. I wonder he don’t wake.”
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and
lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over
the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his
broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing
to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great
people generally, were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders

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 Going Aboard.

for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had
only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers
and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much better
than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon
occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of
himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place.
While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the
tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper’s
head.
“What’s that for, Queequeg?”
“Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!”
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-
pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and
soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger.
The strong vapor now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell
upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed troubled in
the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who be ye smokers?”
“Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?”
“Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain
came aboard last night.”
“What Captain?—Ahab?”
“Who but him indeed?”
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when
we heard a noise on deck.
“Holloa! Starbuck’s astir,” said the rigger. “He’s a lively chief mate,
that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to.” And so
saying he went on deck, and we followed.
It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and
threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged;
and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on
board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his
cabin.

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 CHAPTER 22.
Merry Christmas.

At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and
after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the ever-
thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift—a
night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible
for the steward—after all this, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued
from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said:
“Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab
is all ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from shore, eh?
Well, call all hands, then. Muster ’em aft here—blast ’em!”
“No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,” said
Bildad, “but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.”
How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage,
Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the
quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well
as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him
was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the idea
was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship
under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at
all his proper business, but the pilot’s; and as he was not yet completely
recovered—so they said—therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all
this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant service many
captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time after
heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell
merry-making with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good
with the pilot.
But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain
Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and
commanding, and not Bildad.
“Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors lingered at the
main-mast. “Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.”
“Strike the tent there!”—was the next order. As I hinted before, this

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 Merry Christmas.

whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the
Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be
the next thing to heaving up the anchor.
“Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the next
command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes.
Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the
pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be
it known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots of
the port—he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to
save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he
never piloted any other craft—Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively
engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at
intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the
hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the
girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three days
previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed
on board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity, his
sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman’s berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped
and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would
sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on
my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils
we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was
comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious Bildad might
be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh
lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was
horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his
leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick.
“Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared.
“Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don’t ye
spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red
whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say,
all of ye, and spring your eyes out!” And so saying, he moved along the
windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable
Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must
have been drinking something to-day.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was
a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night,
we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing

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spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the
bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some
huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as
the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost
all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes
were heard,—

“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,

Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.”

Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They
were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the
boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet,
it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and
glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden,
unwilted, remains at midsummer.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed
no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
alongside.
It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected
at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very
loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage—
beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard
earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as
captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the
terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way
brimful of every interest to him,—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced
the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another
farewell word there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked
towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen
Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; looked right
and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling
a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and
holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as
much as to say, “Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.”
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his

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 Merry Christmas.

philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came
too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck—now a word
below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate.
But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about
him,—“Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-
yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful,
careful!—come, Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck—luck
to ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to ye, Mr. Flask—good-bye and good luck to ye
all—and this day three years I’ll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old
Nantucket. Hurrah and away!”
“God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,” murmured old
Bildad, almost incoherently. “I hope ye’ll have fine weather now, so that
Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye—a pleasant sun is all he
needs, and ye’ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful
in the hunt, ye mates. Don’t stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers;
good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent. within the year.
Don’t forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t
waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t
whale it too much a’ Lord’s days, men; but don’t miss a fair chance either,
that’s rejecting Heaven’s good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce,
Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr.
Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Don’t keep that cheese
too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it’ll spoil. Be careful with the
butter—twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye, if—”
“Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,—away!” and with
that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.
Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a
screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three
heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.

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 CHAPTER 23.
The Lee Shore.

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded
mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm
but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the
man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage,
could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term.
The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the
unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is
the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him
as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.
The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety,
comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our
mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy;
she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel,
would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she
crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain
would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for
refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that
mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the
wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,
slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite
as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be
ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like,
then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all
this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly,
demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy
apotheosis!

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 CHAPTER 24.
The Advocate.

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

and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among
landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am
all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us
hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the
fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted
on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were
introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but
slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to
the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval officers
he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting
card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and
ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring
us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a
butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are
surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But
butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial
Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for
the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be
initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which,
upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least
among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge
in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are
comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which
so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if the idea of
peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier’s profession; let
me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery,
would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail,
fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible

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terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the
globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!
But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales;
see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt’s time have admirals of their whaling
fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit
out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some
score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did
Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties
upwards of £1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of
America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;
sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen
thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at
the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors
a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not
something puissant in whaling?
But this is not the half; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,
point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty years
has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one
aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and
another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so
continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may
well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves
pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue
all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past the whale-ship
has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts
of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart,
where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European
men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire
salutes to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed
them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They
may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your
Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains
have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your
Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness,

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 The Advocate.

they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded,

javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all
his marines and muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made
such a flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the
life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures
which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted
unworthy of being set down in the ship’s common log. Ah, the world! Oh,
the world!
Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but
colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between
Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific
coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of
the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it
might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the
liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the
establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was
given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-
born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores
as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-
ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the
infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times
saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily
dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia
confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that
cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases
carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-
bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone
to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
æsthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver
fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler,
you will say.
The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?
Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And
who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a
prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the
words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who

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pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!

True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have
no good blood in their veins.
No good blood in their veins? They have something better than royal
blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;
afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket,
and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers—all kith and
kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the barbed iron from one side of
the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable.
Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English
statutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.” *
Oh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any
grand imposing way.
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the
mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world’s
capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast,
were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real
dignity in whaling.
No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens
attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your
hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know
a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I
account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who
boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered
prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small
but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of;
if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather
have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more
properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I
prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-
ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

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 CHAPTER 25.
Postscript.

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

substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should
wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently
upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy?
It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even
modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their
functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and
there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who
knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his
coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint
it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery?
Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of
this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and
contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that
anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that
man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule,
he can’t amount to much in his totality.
But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil
is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil,
nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can
it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the
sweetest of all oils?
Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and
queens with coronation stuff!

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 CHAPTER 26.
Knights and Squires.

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an
icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard
as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not
spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general
drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is
famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had
dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak,
seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed
the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the
man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight
skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed
with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck
seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always,
as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his
interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his
eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-
fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man,
whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a
tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there
were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases
seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious
for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery
loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but
to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to
spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents
and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the
welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories
of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the
original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent
influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-

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 Knights and Squires.

devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes

of the fishery. “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is
not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most
reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation
of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more
dangerous comrade than a coward.
“Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful
a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere long see
what that word “careful” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb,
or almost any other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all
mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this
business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship,
like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he
had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting
in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought
Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and
not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so
killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the
bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that
these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which,
under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement,
and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort
of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally
abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the
ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more
terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from
the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.
But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete
abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to
write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of
valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and
nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean

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and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such
a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him
all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate
manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact
though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at
the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such
a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting
stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes,
but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see
it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic
dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The
great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His
omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic
graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among
them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch
that workman’s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow
over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out
in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of
humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God!
who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl;
Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the
stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up
Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse;
who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty,
earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly
commons; bear me out in it, O God!

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 CHAPTER 27.
Knights and Squires.

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,
according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;
neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent
air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling
away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year.
Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as
if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited
guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of his
part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box.
When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his
unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer.
He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the
most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the
jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is
no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but,
if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner,
no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to
tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would
find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner.
What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going,
unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world
full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what
helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing
must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was
one of the regular features of his face. You would almost as soon have
expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe.
He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within
easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all
out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter;
then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed,
instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his

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mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least,
of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of
the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the
cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their
mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb’s tobacco smoke
might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vineyard.
A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,
who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and
hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with
him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all
sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic
ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger
from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale
was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only
a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in
order to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made
him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for
the fun of it; and a three years’ voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly
joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into
wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little
Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long.
They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he
could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in
Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers
inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those
battering seas.
Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous
men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the
Pequod’s boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain
Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these
three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their
long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the
harpooneers were flingers of javelins.
And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic
Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,
who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when

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the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and
moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy and
friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the
Pequod’s harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged.
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had
selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most
westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last
remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring
island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the
fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego’s
long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding eyes—
for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering
expression—all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the
unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great
New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests
of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the
woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the
sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of
the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would
almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and
half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the
Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s squire.
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
negro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended
from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them
ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In
his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in
a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the
world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by
whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery
in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they
shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe,
moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There
was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing
before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious
to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little
Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the
Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of

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the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale
fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein
it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army
and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed
in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I
say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the
brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No
small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the
outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their
crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the
Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland
Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage
homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but
Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders
in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common
continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his
own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were!
An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the
ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s
grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come
back. Black Little Pip—he never did—oh, no! he went before. Poor
Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall ere long see him,
beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the
great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his
tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there!

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 CHAPTER 28.
Ahab.

For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen
of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches,
and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the
only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin
with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they but
commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was there,
though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now
sacred retreat of the cabin.
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly
gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague
disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea,
became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by
the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me,
with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But poorly could
I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile at
the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves. But
whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness—to call it so—which
I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against
all warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers,
with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish,
and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my
previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—
and rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that
wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked.
But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship,
the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless
misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment
of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his
own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one
of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it
being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we

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had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the
southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed,
gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather
behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy
enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was
rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy
rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch,
so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers
ran over me. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his
quarter-deck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of
the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake,
when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming
them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness.
His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped
in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way
out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his
tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw
a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular
seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the
upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single
twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off
into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether
that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some
desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent,
throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by
the mates. But once Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among
the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old
did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the
fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint
seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an
old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had
never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions,
the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with
preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously
contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be
tranquilly laid out—which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—
then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-
mark on him from crown to sole.

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 Ahab.

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the
livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted
that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric
white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that
this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the
sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,” said the old Gay-
Head Indian once; “but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast
without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.”
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side
of the Pequod’s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there
was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His
bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud;
Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-
pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate,
unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of
that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him;
though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed
the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-
eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with
a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of
some mighty woe.
Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But
after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in
his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the
deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial,
he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed
from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then
kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost
continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on
the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast.
But the Pequod was only making a passage now; not regularly cruising;
nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully
competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ
or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds
that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose
the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him
from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and

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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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 CHAPTER 29.
Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.

Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went
rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually
reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly
cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as
crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with rose-water
snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled
velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent
conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, ’twas hard
to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all
the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells
and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul,
especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot
her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these
subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab’s texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less
man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders,
the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked
deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to
live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin,
than from the cabin to the planks. “It feels like going down into one’s
tomb,”—he would mutter to himself—“for an old captain like me to be
descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth.”
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night
were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below;
and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung
it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its
place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of
steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman
would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge,
gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering
touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained

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from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking

repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the
reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have
been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too
deep for common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was
measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate,
came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness,
hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one
could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting
something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the
insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab
then.
“Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb,” said Ahab, “that thou wouldst wad me
that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave;
where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at
last.—Down, dog, and kennel!”
Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, “I
am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir.”
“Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away,
as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
“No, sir; not yet,” said Stubb, emboldened, “I will not tamely be called
a dog, sir.”
“Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and
begone, or I’ll clear the world of thee!”
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing
terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
“I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,”
muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. “It’s
very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don’t well know whether to go
back and strike him, or—what’s that?—down here on my knees and pray
for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the
first time I ever did pray. It’s queer; very queer; and he’s queer too; aye,
take him fore and aft, he’s about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed
with. How he flashed at me!—his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad?
Anyway there’s something on his mind, as sure as there must be something
on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more than three
hours out of the twenty-four; and he don’t sleep then. Didn’t that Dough-
Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man’s

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 Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.

hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot,
and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful
hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess he’s
got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it’s a kind of Tic-Dolly-
row they say—worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don’t know what it
is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He’s full of riddles; I wonder
what he goes into the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he
suspects; what’s that for, I should like to know? Who’s made appointments
with him in the hold? Ain’t that queer, now? But there’s no telling, it’s the
old game—Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while
to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think
of it, that’s about the first thing babies do, and that’s a sort of queer, too.
Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em. But that’s against
my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when
you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again. But how’s that? didn’t he
call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of
jackasses on top of that! He might as well have kicked me, and done with
it. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn’t observe it, I was so taken all aback
with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil’s
the matter with me? I don’t stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that
old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have
been dreaming, though—How? how? how?—but the only way’s to stash
it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I’ll see how this
plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight.”

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 CHAPTER 30.
The Pipe.

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of
the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting
the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of
the deck, he sat and smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were
fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look
at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the
royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a
great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his
mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face.
“How now,” he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, “this smoking
no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be
gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring—aye, and
ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such
nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest
and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that
is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white
hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I’ll smoke no more—”
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the
waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made.
With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.

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 CHAPTER 31.
Queen Mab.

Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man’s
ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick
back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then,
presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking
at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you know how curious all
dreams are—through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be
thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, that kick
from Ahab. ‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘what’s the row? It’s not a real leg, only a
false leg.’ And there’s a mighty difference between a living thump and a
dead thump. That’s what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times
more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that
makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while,
mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid—so
confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to
myself, ‘what’s his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone cane. Yes,’ thinks I,
‘it was only a playful cudgelling—in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave
me—not a base kick. Besides,’ thinks I, ‘look at it once; why, the end of
it—the foot part—what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed
farmer kicked me, there’s a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled
down to a point only.’ But now comes the greatest joke of the dream, Flask.
While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old
merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews
me round. ‘What are you ’bout?’ says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened.
Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. ‘What
am I about?’ says I at last. ‘And what business is that of yours, I should
like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do you want a kick?’ By the lord, Flask, I
had no sooner said that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over,
and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout—what do you think,
I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes,
with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts, ‘I guess I won’t kick you,

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old fellow.’ ‘Wise Stubb,’ said he, ‘wise Stubb;’ and kept muttering it all
the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he
wasn’t going to stop saying over his ‘wise Stubb, wise Stubb,’ I thought I
might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted
my foot for it, when he roared out, ‘Stop that kicking!’ ‘Halloa,’ says I,
‘what’s the matter now, old fellow?’ ‘Look ye here,’ says he; ‘let’s argue
the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I—‘right
here it was.’ ‘Very good,’ says he—‘he used his ivory leg, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise Stubb, what have you to
complain of? Didn’t he kick with right good will? it wasn’t a common
pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were kicked by a great
man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It’s an honor; I consider it an
honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest lords think it great
glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-knights of; but, be your
boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of.
Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on
no account kick back; for you can’t help yourself, wise Stubb. Don’t you
see that pyramid?’ With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some
queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was
in my hammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask?”
“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.’”
“May be; may be. But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask. D’ye see
Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing
you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him, whatever
he says. Halloa! What’s that he shouts? Hark!”
“Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!
“If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!
“What do you think of that now, Flask? ain’t there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh? A white whale—did ye mark that, man?
Look ye—there’s something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask.
Ahab has that that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way.”

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 CHAPTER 32.
Cetology.

Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be
lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass;
ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls
of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost
indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special
leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow.
It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad
genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.
“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology,” says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry
as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families. * * *
Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal” (sperm whale),
says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.”
“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field strewn
with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us
naturalists.”
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and
Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real
knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some
small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men,
small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or
in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:—The Authors of the Bible;
Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnæus;
Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten;
Lacépède; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John
Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of
Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate

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generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will
show.
Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing authority.
But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale,
compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning.
And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne
of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet,
owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which,
till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown
sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but
some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every
way complete. Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great
poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one
rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come
for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,—
the Greenland whale is deposed,—the great sperm whale now reigneth!
There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the
living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale’s and Bennett’s; both
in their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact
and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to be found
in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent
quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. As yet, however,
the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature.
Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.
Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present,
hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers. As no
better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own
poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because any human thing
supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. I
shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species,
or—in this place at least—to much of any description. My object here is
simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the
architect, not the builder.
But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office

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is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have
one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of
the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook
the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me.
Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him
is vain! But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I
have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I
will try. There are some preliminaries to settle.
First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still
remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature,
A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the fish.”
But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and
shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were still
found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the
whales from the waters, he states as follows: “On account of their warm
bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem
intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex lege naturæ jure
meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley
Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they
united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient.
Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This
fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal respect does
the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnæus has given you those
items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all
other fish are lungless and cold blooded.
Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so
as conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a
whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him.
However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation.
A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because
he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as
coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish
familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail.
Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped,
invariably assumes a horizontal position.

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By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude

from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with
the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link
with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.* Hence, all
the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this
ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire
whale host.
*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins
and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are
included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a
noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding
on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as
whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom
of Cetology.
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them
all, both small and large.
I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the
DUODECIMO WHALE.
As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale; of the OCTAVO,
the Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:—I. The
Sperm Whale; II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin-Back Whale; IV. the Hump-
backed Whale; V. the Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale).—This whale, among
the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter
whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French,
and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long
Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most
formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and
lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature
from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his
peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with
his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd.
Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown
in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally
obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem,
was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the
one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale. It was the

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idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the
Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses.
In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used
for light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had
from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I
opine, in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known,
its original name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance
its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the
appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from
which this spermaceti was really derived.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale).—In one respect this is
the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by
man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the
oil specially known as “whale oil,” an inferior article in commerce. Among
the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles:
The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the
True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the
identity of the species thus multitudinously baptised. What then is the
whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great
Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English
whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands
Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more than two centuries
past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is
the whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian
ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor’ West Coast, and various other parts
of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of
the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely
agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single
determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by
endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that
some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The
right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to
elucidating the sperm whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back).—Under this head I
reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout,
and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the
whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his

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baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth,
and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-
like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles.
His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name,
is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some three or four feet long,
growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape,
and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest other part
of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly
projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly
marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and
casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that
the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style
and wavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes
back. The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some
men are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising
to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single
lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted
with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present
pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From
having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with
the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales,
that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone whales, there
would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little
known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales;
bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the
fishermen’s names for a few sorts.
In connection with this appellative of “Whalebone whales,” it is of
great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain
to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his
baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or
features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular
system of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which
the whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-
fin, and teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately
dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any regard to what may be the
nature of their structure in other and more essential particulars. Thus, the
sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the

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similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland
whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases. And
it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of
whales, they form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one
of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general
methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the
whale-naturalists has split.
But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the
whale, in his anatomy—there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right
classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland
whale’s anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by
his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if
you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will
not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those
external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take
hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort
them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and
it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To
proceed.
BOOK I. (Folio) CHAPTER IV. (Hump Back).—This whale is often
seen on the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured
there, and towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or
you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular
name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale
also has a hump though a smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He
has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales,
making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. (Razor Back).—Of this whale little
is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of
a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no
coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises
in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does
anybody else.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI. (Sulphur Bottom).—Another retiring
gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the
Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at
least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then
always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is never chased;
he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him.

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Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can
the oldest Nantucketer.
Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II. (Octavo).
OCTAVOES.*—These embrace the whales of middling magnitude,
among which present may be numbered:—I., the Grampus; II., the Black
Fish; III., the Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer.
*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the
former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure,
yet the bookbinder’s Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not
preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus).—Though this fish,
whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a
proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not
popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive
features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one.
He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet
in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims
in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in
quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is
regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER II. (Black Fish).—I give the popular
fishermen’s names for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where
any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest
another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, because blackness
is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if
you please. His voracity is well known, and from the circumstance that
the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting
Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen
or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all latitudes. He has a
peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks
something like a Roman nose. When not more profitably employed,
the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep
up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment—as some frugal
housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves,
burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very
thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER III. (Narwhale), that is, Nostril
whale.—Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose

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from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The
creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet,
though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking,
this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a
little depressed from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister
side, which has an ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the
aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn
or lance answers, it would be hard to say. It does not seem to be used like
the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that
the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for
food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale,
rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts
his horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove either of these
surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however this one-sided
horn may really be used by the Narwhale—however that may be—it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. The
Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and
the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism
to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain
cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn’s horn was
in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as such,
preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile
salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are
manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object
of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his
return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled
hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed
down the Thames; “when Sir Martin returned from that voyage,” saith
Black Letter, “on bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious
long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the castle
at Windsor.” An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended
knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a
land beast of the unicorn nature.
The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black.
His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and he is
seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER IV. (Killer).—Of this whale little is
precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed

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naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say that he
was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage—a sort of Feegee
fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there
like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is never
hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to
the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For
we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER V. (Thrasher).—This gentleman is
famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He
mounts the Folio whale’s back, and as he swims, he works his passage by
flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar
process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are
outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends BOOK II. (Octavo), and begins BOOK III. (Duodecimo).
DUODECIMOES.—These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza
Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet
should be marshalled among WHALES—a word, which, in the popular
sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down
above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition
of what a whale is—i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER 1. (Huzza Porpoise).—This is
the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my
own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something
must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he always swims
in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to
heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generally
hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably
come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the lads that always
live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself
can withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven
help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump
Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine
and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in
request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones.
Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to
you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very
readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and

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you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. (Algerine Porpoise).—A
pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is
somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general
make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him
many times, but never yet saw him captured.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. (Mealy-mouthed
Porpoise).—The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific,
so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto
been designated, is that of the fishers—Right-Whale Porpoise, from the
circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape,
he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund
and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He
has no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail,
and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils
all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a
boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship’s hull, called the “bright
waist,” that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colours,
black above and white below. The white comprises part of his head, and
the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just escaped
from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect! His
oil is much like that of the common porpoise.

******

Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch

as the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the
Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-
fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by reputation,
but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their fore-castle appellations;
for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, who may
complete what I have here but begun. If any of the following whales, shall
hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated into
this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:—
The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the
Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale;
the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog
Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English
authorities, there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed

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with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete;
and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism,
but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here,
and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my
word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished,
even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still
standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may
be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the
copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This
whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time,
Strength, Cash, and Patience!

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 CHAPTER 33.
The Specksnyder.

Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as

any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising from the
existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course in
any other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is evinced
by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and more
ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person
now called the captain, but was divided between him and an officer called
the Specksnyder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in
time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain’s
authority was restricted to the navigation and general management of
the vessel; while over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns,
the Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British
Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old
Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged.
At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one
of the captain’s more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good
conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely
depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important
officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a
whaling ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore the
grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live
apart from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as
their professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as
their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea,
is this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so,
too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the
after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain’s
cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.

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Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the
longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it,
and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom,
high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their
common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard
work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous
discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much
like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive
instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of
the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done
away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the
skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in
any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he
wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage
he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required
no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-
deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances
connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in
unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet
even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms
and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those
forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally
making use of them for other and more private ends than they were
legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain,
which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through
those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible
dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it
can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men,
without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always,
in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps
God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the
highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous
more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the
Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level
of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme
political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even

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to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case
of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles
an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the
tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict
mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a
hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-
hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and
housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must
needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured
in the unbodied air!

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 CHAPTER 34.
The Cabin-Table.

It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread

face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master; who,
sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the
sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-
shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his
ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings, you would think
that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, catching hold
of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even,
unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,” disappears into the
cabin.
When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and Starbuck,
the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck
rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after
a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness,
“Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges
about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see
whether it will be all right with that important rope, he likewise takes up
the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner, Mr. Flask,” follows after his
predecessors.
But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,
seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts
of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he
strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand
Turk’s head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the
mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains
visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the
rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses,
ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask
enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.
It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some

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officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly

enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the
next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander’s
cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble
air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous,
sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps
not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been
Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have
been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal
and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited
guests, that man’s unchallenged power and dominion of individual
influence for the time; that man’s royalty of state transcends Belshazzar’s,
for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends,
has tasted what it is to be Cæsar. It is a witchery of social czarship which
there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the
official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the
cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion
on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential
cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were
as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk
the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened
upon the old man’s knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not
suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment with
the slightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather.
No! And when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice
of beef was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards him,
the mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly;
and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and
chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For,
like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor
profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals
were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old
Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief
it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold
below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this
weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would
have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this
must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had

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he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have been
able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless, strange to say,
Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the chances were
Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did Flask presume to
help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it
to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether
he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was
at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was,
Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask
is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask’s dinner was badly jammed
in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they
also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but
a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon
shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself,
he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy
usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask
once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an
officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise
than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his
hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask,
have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I
could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I
was before the mast. There’s the fruits of promotion now; there’s the vanity
of glory: there’s the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere
sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask’s official capacity,
all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft
at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting
silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first
table in the Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted
order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored
to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers
were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a
sort of temporary servants’ hall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free
license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the
harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound

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of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with
such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled
their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous
appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made
by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a
great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if
he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-
jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by
darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with
a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up
bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while
Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping
him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow,
this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital
nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab,
and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-
Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing
the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape
from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at
them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing
his filed teeth to the Indian’s: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the
floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low
carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin
framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a
ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to
say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small
mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial,
and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank
deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils
snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are
giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack
of the lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so much so, that the trembling
Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in
his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for
him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted
steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by
his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers
carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which

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whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that

grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How
could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly
have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-
Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin
should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great
delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous,
fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step,
like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely
ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they
passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the
ship’s cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody
else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and
harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived
out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it was something
as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a moment, only to
be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open
air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no companionship;
socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census
of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the
last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and
Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in
the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so,
in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk
of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!

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 CHAPTER 35.
The Mast-Head.

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other
seamen my first mast-head came round.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost
simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may
have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper
cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is
drawing nigh home with anything empty in her—say, an empty vial even—
then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-
poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the
hope of capturing one whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a
very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.
I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians;
because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their
progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have
intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere
the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said
to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore,
we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that
the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based
upon the general belief among archæologists, that the first pyramids were
founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the
peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby,
with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were
wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-
outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight.
In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him
a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his
life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him
we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who
was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet;

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but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of
modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron,
and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are
still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering
any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column
of Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in
the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe,
Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft
on his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’ pillars,
his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals
will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-
head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London
smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is
smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor
Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked
to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze;
however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick
haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.
It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head
standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is
plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of
Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early
times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of
the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the sea-coast,
to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, something
as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan was
adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the
game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this
custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-
head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned
from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the
helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather
of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy
meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the
silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts,
while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest
monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the
famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series
of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently

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rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor.
For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness
invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling
accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements;
you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are
never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all
your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your
bill of fare is immutable.
In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years’
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the
mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be
deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion
of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of
anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a
comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,
a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and
snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most
usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand
upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’
gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about
as cosy as he would standing on a bull’s horns. To be sure, in cold weather
you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but
properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the
unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, and
cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running
great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in
winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope,
or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers
in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of your
watch-coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of
a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or
pulpits, called crow’s-nests, in which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler
are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fireside
narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled “A Voyage among the Icebergs, in
quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of
the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this admirable volume,
all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial
account of the then recently invented crow’s-nest of the Glacier, which

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

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 The Mast-Head.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as

Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly
counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas
in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the
rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or
any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way
further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary
view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate
destination.
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept
but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how
could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering
altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-
ships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every
time.”
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean
brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who
offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of
such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and
this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world,
and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions
at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for
many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with
the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe
Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some
luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:—

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young
philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient “interest”
in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable
ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than
otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their
vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the
visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.
“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve

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been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a
whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.”
Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in
the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant,
unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence
of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic
ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul,
pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding,
beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of
some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive
thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this
enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused
through time and space; like Cranmer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes,
forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a
gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the
inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move
your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes
back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-
day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through
that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it
well, ye Pantheists!

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 CHAPTER 36.
The Quarter-Deck.

(Enter Ahab: Then, all.)

It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning
shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway
to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country
gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden.
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old
rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented,
like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly
gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still
stranger foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing
thought.
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his
nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought
was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast
and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in him
as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely possessing him,
indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement.
“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick that’s in him
pecks the shell. ’Twill soon be out.”
The hours wore on;—Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing
the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the
bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one
hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
“Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
“Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “Mast-heads, there! come
down!”
When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious
and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked
not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after

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rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the
crew, started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him
resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched
hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among
the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have
summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But
this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:—
“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”
“Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of
clubbed voices.
“Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically
thrown them.
“And what do ye next, men?”
“Lower away, and after him!”
“And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”
“A dead whale or a stove boat!”
More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began
to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they
themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.
But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his
pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost
convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:—
“All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a
white whale. Look ye! d’ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?”—holding up
a broad bright coin to the sun—“it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D’ye see
it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.”
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking,
was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as
if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile
lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and
inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his
vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-
mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the
other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me
a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever
of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in

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his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white

whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”
“Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they
hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.
“It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw down the
topmaul: “a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with
even more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
separately touched by some specific recollection.
“Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “that white whale must be the same
that some call Moby Dick.”
“Moby Dick?” shouted Ahab. “Do ye know the white whale then,
Tash?”
“Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?” said the
Gay-Header deliberately.
“And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very bushy, even for
a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?”
“And he have one, two, three—oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
Captain,” cried Queequeg disjointedly, “all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him—
him—” faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round
as though uncorking a bottle—“like him—him—”
“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted
and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole
shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great
annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in
a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen—Moby
Dick—Moby Dick!”
“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus
far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed
struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. “Captain
Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took off
thy leg?”
“Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye, Starbuck; aye,
my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick
that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted
with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose;
“Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor

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pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with
measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him
round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom,
and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have
shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over
all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye,
men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”
“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
excited old man: “A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for Moby
Dick!”
“God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye,
men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what’s this long face
about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for
Moby Dick?”
“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain
Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came
here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels
will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will
not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”
“Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a
little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants
have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with
guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my
vengeance will fetch a great premium here!”
“He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for? methinks it
rings most vast, but hollow.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee
from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain
Ahab, seems blasphemous.”
“Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,
are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the
undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth
the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man
will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall,
shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis
enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with
an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I
hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will

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wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike
the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the
other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over
all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over
me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than
fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my
heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in
heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are
small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder
Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn—living, breathing pictures painted by the
sun. The Pagan leopards—the unrecking and unworshipping things, that
live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew,
man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the
whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it.
Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!
And what is it? Reckon it. ’Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat
for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best
lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every
foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I
see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye! thy silence, then,
that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has
inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now,
without rebellion.”
“God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured Starbuck, lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab
did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the
hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor
yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their
hearts sank in. For again Starbuck’s downcast eyes lighted up with
the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds
blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye
admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are
ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions
from without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little
external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still
drive us on.
“The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he
ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him

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near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates
stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship’s company
formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing
every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes
of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their
head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of
the Indian.
“Drink and pass!” he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman. “The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short
draughts—long swallows, men; ’tis hot as Satan’s hoof. So, so; it goes
round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye.
Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it
me—here’s a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped
and gone. Steward, refill!
“Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan;
and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there
with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort
revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will
yet see that—Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand
it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, wer’t not thou St.
Vitus’ imp—away, thou ague!
“Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let
me touch the axis.” So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three
level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing, suddenly
and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck
to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some nameless,
interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery
emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The
three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb
and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell
downright.
“In vain!” cried Ahab; “but, maybe, ’tis well. For did ye three but
once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, that had
perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye
dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do
appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there—yon three
most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain
the task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his
tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, that shall

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bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the
poles, ye harpooneers!”
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up,
before him.
“Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know
ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers,
advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!” Forthwith, slowly
going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with
the fiery waters from the pewter.
“Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha!
Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon
it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful
whaleboat’s bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not
hunt Moby Dick to his death!” The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted;
and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were
simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and
shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds
among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all
dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.

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 CHAPTER 37.
Sunset.

The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.
I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I
sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but
first I pass.
Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like
wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from
noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill.
Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy.
Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings;
but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. ’Tis iron—that
I know—not gold. ’Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so,
my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the
sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!
Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly
spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not
me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with
the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly
and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good night—good
night! (waving his hand, he moves from the window.)
’Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;
but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they
revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand
before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself
must needs be wasting! What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed,
I’ll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am
madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend
itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost
this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now,
then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than ye, ye great
gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists,
ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to

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 Sunset.

bullies—Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve
knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come
forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come,
Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me?
ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve
me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul
is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of
mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle,
naught’s an angle to the iron way!

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 CHAPTER 38.
Dusk.

By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by a madman!
Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he
drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his
impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable
thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut.
Horrible old man! Who’s over him, he cries;—aye, he would be a democrat
to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my
miserable office,—to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of
pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.
Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round
watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His
heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it
not like lead. But my whole clock’s run down; my heart the all-controlling
weight, I have no key to lift again.
[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]
Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of
human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The
white whale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry
is forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life.
Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering
bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his
sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on,
hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills me through! Peace!
ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! ’tis in an hour like this, with soul
beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to
feed—Oh, life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but ’tis not
me! that horror’s out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me,
yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me,
bind me, O ye blessed influences!

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 CHAPTER 39.
First Night-Watch.

Fore-Top.
(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I’ve been thinking over it
ever since, and that ha, ha’s the final consequence. Why so? Because a
laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will,
one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated.
I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuck then
looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has
fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had had the gift, might readily have
prophesied it—for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it. Well,
Stubb, wise Stubb—that’s my title—well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here’s
a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go
to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel
funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra! What’s my juicy little pear at home doing now?
Crying its eyes out?—Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare
say, gay as a frigate’s pennant, and so am I—fa, la! lirra, skirra! Oh—

We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light,

To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker’s brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.

A brave stave that—who calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir—(Aside)

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

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 CHAPTER 40.
Midnight, Forecastle.

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.

(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning,
and lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.)

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!

Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain’s commanded.—

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for
the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me!
(Sings, and all follow.)

Our captain stood upon the deck,

A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
And by your braces stand,
And we’ll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!

MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there,

forward!
2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there!
d’ye hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let
me call the watch. I’ve the sort of mouth for that—the hogshead mouth.
So, so, (thrusts his head down the scuttle,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight
bells there below! Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that.

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 Midnight, Forecastle.

I mark this in our old Mogul’s wine; it’s quite as deadening to some as
filliping to others. We sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there, like ground-
tier butts. At ’em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em
through it. Tell ’em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell ’em it’s the
resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment. That’s the
way—that’s it; thy throat ain’t spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let’s have a jig or two before we ride
to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch.
Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!
PIP. (Sulky and sleepy.) Don’t know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men,
I say; merry’s the word; hurrah! Damn me, won’t you dance? Form, now,
Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs!
legs!
ICELAND SAILOR. I don’t like your floor, maty; it’s too springy
to my taste. I’m used to ice-floors. I’m sorry to throw cold water on the
subject; but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where’s your girls? Who but a fool
would take his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d’ye do?
Partners! I must have partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!—then I’ll hop with ye;
yea, turn grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there’s plenty more
of us. Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here
comes the music; now for it!
AZORE SAILOR. (Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the
scuttle.) Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bitts; up you mount!
Now, boys! (The half of them dance to the tambourine; some go below;
some sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)
AZORE SAILOR. (Dancing) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig
it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
PIP. Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a
pagoda of thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump
through it! Split jibs! tear yourselves!
TASHTEGO. (Quietly smoking.) That’s a white man; he calls that fun:
humph! I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink

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them of what they are dancing over. I’ll dance over your grave, I will—
that’s the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled crews!
Well, well; belike the whole world’s a ball, as you scholars have it; and so
’tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you’re young; I was
once.
3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than
pulling after whales in a calm—give us a whiff, Tash.
(They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky
darkens—the wind rises.)
LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon. The
sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow,
Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR. (Reclining and shaking his cap.) It’s the
waves—the snow’s caps turn to jig it now. They’ll shake their tassels soon.
Now would all the waves were women, then I’d go drown, and chassee
with them evermore! There’s naught so sweet on earth—heaven may not
match it!—as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when
the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR. (Reclining.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet
interlacings of the limbs—lithe swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip! heart!
hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come
satiety. Eh, Pagan? (Nudging.)
TAHITAN SAILOR. (Reclining on a mat.) Hail, holy nakedness of
our dancing girls!—the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti!
I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven in
the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn and
wilted quite. Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear the change! How then, if
so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee’s
peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the villages?—
The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (Leaps to his feet.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing ’gainst the side!
Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell
they’ll go lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest,
thou holdest! Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He’s no more
afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-
lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard

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old Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a
waterspout with a pistol—fire your ship right into it!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man’s a grand old cove! We
are the lads to hunt him up his whale!
ALL. Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the
hardest sort of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there’s
none but the crew’s cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort
of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our
captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there’s another in the sky—
lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
DAGGOO. What of that? Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! I’m
quarried out of it!
SPANISH SAILOR. (Aside.) He wants to bully, ah!—the old grudge
makes me touchy (Advancing.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable
dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.
DAGGOO (grimly). None.
ST. JAGO’S SAILOR. That Spaniard’s mad or drunk. But that can’t
be, or else in his one case our old Mogul’s fire-waters are somewhat long in
working.
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. What’s that I saw—lightning? Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO (springing). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white
liver!
SPANISH SAILOR (meeting him). Knife thee heartily! big frame,
small spirit!
ALL. A row! a row! a row!
TASHTEGO (with a whiff). A row a’low, and a row aloft—Gods and
men—both brawlers! Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a
row! Plunge in with ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard’s knife! A ring, a
ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In
that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God,
mad’st thou the ring?
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the
halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!
ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (They scatter.)

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PIP (shrinking under the windlass). Jollies? Lord help such jollies!
Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip,
here comes the royal yard! It’s worse than being in the whirled woods, the
last day of the year! Who’d go climbing after chestnuts now? But there
they go, all cursing, and here I don’t. Fine prospects to ’em; they’re on
the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those chaps
there are worse yet—they are your white squalls, they. White squalls?
white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the
white whale—shirr! shirr!—but spoken of once! and only this evening—it
makes me jingle all over like my tambourine—that anaconda of an old man
swore ’em in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere
in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve
him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!

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 CHAPTER 41.
Moby Dick.

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my
oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did
I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild,
mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed
mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster
against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and
revenge.
For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly
frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of
his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen
him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given
battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of whale-
cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery
circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest along
solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or
more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort; the
inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the times of
sailing from home; all these, with other circumstances, direct and indirect,
long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of
the special individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to
be doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such or
such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon
magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his
assailants, had completely escaped them; to some minds it was not an
unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no
other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been
marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning,
and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by
accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for
the most part, were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more,

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as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the
individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between
Ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.
And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by
chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every
one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any
other whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in
these assaults—not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs,
or devouring amputations—but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those
repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon
Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave
hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.
Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the
more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only
do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising
terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime
life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever
there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses
the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of
maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which
sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt
from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but
of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact
with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not
only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone,
in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and
passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-
stone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes
and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is
wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a
mighty birth.
No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit
over the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale
did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and
half-formed fœtal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which eventually
invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that
visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally strike,
that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale, few
of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw.

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 Moby Dick.

But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work.
Not even at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm Whale,
as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the leviathan, died out
of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among
them, who, though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to
the Greenland or Right whale, would perhaps—either from professional
inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the
Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among
those whaling nations not sailing under the American flag, who have
never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge
of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued
in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a
childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern
whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale
anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows
which stem him.
And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary
times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists—Olassen
and Povelson—declaring the Sperm Whale not only to be a consternation
to every other creature in the sea, but also to be so incredibly ferocious
as continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor even down to so late a
time as Cuvier’s, were these or almost similar impressions effaced. For in
his Natural History, the Baron himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm
Whale, all fish (sharks included) are “struck with the most lively terrors,”
and “often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against the
rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death.” And however
the general experiences in the fishery may amend such reports as these;
yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson,
the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of their vocation,
revived in the minds of the hunters.
So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a
few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days
of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long
practised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring
warfare; such men protesting that although other leviathans might be
hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition as
the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would be
inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. On this head, there are some
remarkable documents that may be consulted.

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Moby Dick

Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things
were ready to give chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater number who,
chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the specific
details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious accompaniments,
were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if offered.
One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked
with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the
unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been
encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.
Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit
altogether without some faint show of superstitious probability. For as the
secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged, even to
the most erudite research; so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale when
beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to his pursuers;
and from time to time have originated the most curious and contradictory
speculations regarding them, especially concerning the mystic modes
whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transports himself with such
vast swiftness to the most widely distant points.
It is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships,
and as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby,
that some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose
bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas.
Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has been declared
that the interval of time between the two assaults could not have exceeded
very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been believed by some
whalemen, that the Nor’ West Passage, so long a problem to man, was
never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the real living experience of
living men, the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain
in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks
of ships floated up to the surface); and that still more wonderful story of
the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have
come from the Holy Land by an underground passage); these fabulous
narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.
Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and
knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had
escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen
should go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not
only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time);
that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would

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still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to spout

thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for again in
unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied jet would
once more be seen.
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough
in the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the
imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his uncommon
bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, as
was elsewhere thrown out—a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead,
and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent features;
the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his
identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.
The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with
the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive
appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by his
vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea,
leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden
gleamings.
Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet
his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural
terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to
specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults.
More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps
aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with every
apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn
round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to
splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.
Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar
disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the
fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale’s infernal
aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused,
was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of
his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed
boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white
curds of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight,
that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in
the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had

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dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with
a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain
was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped
lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a
mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian
or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason
was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab
had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for
that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only
all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The
White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those
malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are
left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity
which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern
Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the
east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship
it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white
whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens
and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it;
all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of
life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made
practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump
the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam
down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s
shell upon it.
It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the
precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster,
knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal
animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but
felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this
collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and
weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding
in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that
his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing,
made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the
encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from
the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and,
though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian
chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were

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forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock.
In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when
running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails spread,
floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man’s
delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he
bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders
once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now
gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness
is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it
may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full
lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson,
when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the
Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of
Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not
one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent,
now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his
special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its
concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost
his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more
potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable
object.
This is much; yet Ahab’s larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.
But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far
down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we
here stand—however grand and wonderful, now quit it;—and take your
way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where
far beneath the fantastic towers of man’s upper earth, his root of grandeur,
his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique buried beneath
antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken throne, the great gods
mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on
his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye
prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A family likeness!
aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grim sire
only will the old State-secret come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my
means are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill,
or change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did long
dissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing of his dissembling was

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only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will determinate. Nevertheless,

so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that when with ivory leg he
stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him otherwise than but
naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the terrible casualty which
had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly
ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which
always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on the present
voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that far
from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on account of
such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent isle were
inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he was all the
better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness
as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched without,
with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one,
could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift
his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason
thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would
seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the
attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of
his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed
upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engrossing object of
hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore
but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their
aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish
man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down
in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and
supernatural revenge.
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with
curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly
made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally
enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-
mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and
recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a
crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal
fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so
aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by what evil magic their
souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White
Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be—what

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the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings,

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

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 CHAPTER 42.
The Whiteness of the Whale.

What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was
to me, as yet remains unsaid.
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,
which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm,
there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning
him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest;
and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of
putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that
above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here;
and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these
chapters might be naught.
Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty,
as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas,
and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a
certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings
of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their
other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam
unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the
Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the
great Austrian Empire, Cæsarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the
imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it
applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over
every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even
made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked
a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings,
this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things—the
innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of
America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge
of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice
in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and
queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries

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of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine
spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked
flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies,
Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though
to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was
by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature
being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the
annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin
word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their
sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though
among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in
the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John,
white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders
stand clothed in white before the great white throne, and the Holy One that
sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations,
with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an
elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of
panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.
This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when
divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object
terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the
white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their
smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are?
That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness,
even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So
that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage
as the white-shrouded bear or shark.*
*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him
who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness,
separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that
brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only
rises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the
creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and
hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the
Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all
this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that
intensified terror.
As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the

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same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit by
the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish mass for
the dead begins with “Requiem eternam” (eternal rest), whence Requiem
denominating the mass itself, and any other funeral music. Now, in allusion
to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness
of his habits, the French call him Requin.
Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual
wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God’s great,
unflattering laureate, Nature.*
*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged
gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch
below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the
main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and
with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast
archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings
and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as
some king’s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible,
strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As
Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so
white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the
miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at
that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted
through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird
was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that name before; is
it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore!
never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name
for albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge’s wild Rhyme have
had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when
I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor
knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly
burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.
I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird
chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that
by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I
have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld the
Antarctic fowl.
But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will
tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea. At last

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the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round its
neck, with the ship’s time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt
not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven, when
the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking, and adoring
cherubim!
Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the
White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed,
small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs
in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds
of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the
Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward
trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts
of light. The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his tail,
invested him with housings more resplendent than gold and silver-beaters
could have furnished him. A most imperial and archangelical apparition
of that unfallen, western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and
hunters revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked
majestic as a god, bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether
marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts
that endlessly streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with
his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White
Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through
his cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to
the bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.
Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this
noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed
him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which, though
commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.
But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that
accessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and
Albatross.
What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks
the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is that
whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The
Albino is as well made as other men—has no substantive deformity—and
yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely
hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so?
Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but not
the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this crowning

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attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of
the Southern Seas has been denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some
historic instances, has the art of human malice omitted so potent an
auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart,
when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperate White
Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place!
Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all
mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It cannot
well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which
most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there; as if indeed that
pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world, as
of mortal trepidation here. And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow
the expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in
our superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our
phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog—Yea, while these terrors
seize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when personified by the
evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to
account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then, by
the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of whiteness—
though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct
associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless, is
found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modified;—can we thus
hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we
seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety, and
without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And
though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions about to
be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were
entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not be able to
recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention of
Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless processions
of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or,
to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States,

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why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such
an eyeless statue in the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors
and kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White
Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an
untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors—
the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers, the
White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods, comes
that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of that name,
while the thought of Virginia’s Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant
dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the
name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness over the fancy, while that
of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild
afternoons on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of
sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to
the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does “the
tall pale man” of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly
glides through the green of the groves—why is this phantom more terrible
than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness
of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning
spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards
of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over
upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;—it is not these things alone
which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can’st see.
For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this
whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for
ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads
over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own
distortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of
whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror
of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught
of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost
solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under
any form at all approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean
by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the
following examples.

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First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands,
if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just
enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely
similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his ship
sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness—as if from encircling
headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him, then
he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened
waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the lead assures him he is
still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never rests till
blue water is under him again. Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee,
“Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that
hideous whiteness that so stirred me?”
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the snow-
howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the mere
fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes,
and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself
in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the backwoodsman
of the West, who with comparative indifference views an unbounded
prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break the
fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the
Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in
the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead
of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems a
boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and
splintered crosses.
But thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is
but a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo,
Ishmael.
Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley
of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey—why is it that upon the
sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that he
cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness—why will he
start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright?
There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creatures in his
green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he smells cannot recall
to him anything associated with the experience of former perils; for what
knows he, this New England colt, of the black bisons of distant Oregon?
No: but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles from

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Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring bison
herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which this
instant they may be trampling into dust.
Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of
the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the windrowed
snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo
robe to the frightened colt!
Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which
the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt,
somewhere those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this
visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in
fright.
But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and
learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and
far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning
symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and
yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to
mankind.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids
and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the
thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky
way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as
the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all
colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full
of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of
atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory
of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues—every stately or
lovely emblazoning—the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and
the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all
these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only
laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the
harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within;
and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic
which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for
ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium
upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own
blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper;
and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and
colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself

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blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around
him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye
then at the fiery hunt?

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 CHAPTER 43.
Hark!

“HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing
in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the
scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill
the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of
the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet. From
hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by the
occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing
keel.
It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose
post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the
words above.
“Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d’ye mean?”
“There it is again—under the hatches—don’t you hear it—a cough—it
sounded like a cough.”
“Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.”
“There again—there it is!—it sounds like two or three sleepers turning
over, now!”
“Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It’s the three soaked biscuits
ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye—nothing else. Look to the
bucket!”
“Say what ye will, shipmate; I’ve sharp ears.”
“Aye, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of the old
Quakeress’s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you’re the
chap.”
“Grin away; we’ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is
somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I
suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask,
one morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the wind.”
“Tish! the bucket!”

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 CHAPTER 44.
The Chart.

Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that
took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose
with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom,
and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them
before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before it, you
would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which
there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses
over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he would refer to piles of
old log-books beside him, wherein were set down the seasons and places in
which, on various former voyages of various ships, sperm whales had been
captured or seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over
his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw
shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost
seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the
wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses
upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his cabin,
Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were brought
out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and others were
substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was
threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain
accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.
Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,
it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary
creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem to
Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating
the driftings of the sperm whale’s food; and, also, calling to mind the
regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes;
could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to certainties,
concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his

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 The Chart.

prey.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the
sperm whale’s resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that,
could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world; were
the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then
the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in
invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows. On
this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory charts
of the sperm whale.*

*Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne

out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of
the National Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By
that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is in
course of completion; and portions of it are presented in
the circular. “This chart divides the ocean into districts
of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude;
perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve
columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each
of which districts are three lines; one to show the number
of days that have been spent in each month in every
district, and the two others to show the number of days in
which whales, sperm or right, have been seen.”

Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another,

the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct—say, rather, secret
intelligence from the Deity—mostly swim in veins, as they are called;
continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with one tithe
of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direction taken
by any one whale be straight as a surveyor’s parallel, and though the line
of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet
the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to swim, generally
embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed
to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-
ship’s mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The
sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and along that path,
migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate

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Moby Dick

feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing

the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so
place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly without
prospect of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps.
Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons for
particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which
haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out
to be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding
season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where
the contrary of this has proved true. In general, the same remark, only
within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries and hermits among the
matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former
year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in
the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not
follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent
corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too,
with some other feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed himself.
But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to
speak, not his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab’s chances of
accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only
been made to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere
a particular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities would
become probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the
next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined
in the one technical phrase—the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then,
for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried,
lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters
for a predicted interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that
most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there
the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where
the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance.
But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with
which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would
not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above
mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes; nor in the
sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to
postpone all intervening quest.

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 The Chart.

Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning
of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her
commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and
then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific
in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season.
Yet the premature hour of the Pequod’s sailing had, perhaps, been correctly
selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. Because,
an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights was before
him; an interval which, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would
spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his
vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should
turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or
China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons,
Pampas, Nor’-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and
Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of
the Pequod’s circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it
not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary
whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual
recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged
thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar snow-white brow
of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but be unmistakable.
And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after
poring over his charts till long after midnight he would throw himself back
in reveries—tallied him, and shall he escape? His broad fins are bored, and
scalloped out like a lost sheep’s ear! And here, his mad mind would run on
in a breathless race; till a weariness and faintness of pondering came over
him; and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover his strength.
Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed
with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and
wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably
vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts
through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and
whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the
very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when,
as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being
up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked
flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap

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Moby Dick

down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild
cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would
burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on
fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of
some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest
tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming,
unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone
to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in
horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and
in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which
at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously
sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which,
for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist
unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab’s
case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose;
that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods
and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay,
could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was
conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth.
Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what
seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a
formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without
an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old
man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense
thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for
ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

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 CHAPTER 45.
The Affidavit.

So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as

indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in
the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as
important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it
requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be
adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a
profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to
the natural verity of the main points of this affair.
I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items,
practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these
citations, I take it—the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.
First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after
receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval
(in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand,
and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher,
have been taken from the body. In the instance where three years
intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I think it may
have been something more than that; the man who darted them happening,
in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore
there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into the interior, where
he travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangered by serpents,
savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perils
incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the
whale he had struck must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had
thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of
Africa; but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came together,
and the one vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three
instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck;
and, upon the second attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks
cut in them, afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance,

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Moby Dick

it so fell out that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the last
time distinctly recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale’s
eye, which I had observed there three years previous. I say three years, but
I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are three instances, then, which
I personally know the truth of; but I have heard of many other instances
from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no good ground to
impeach.
Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however
ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several
memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean
has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such
a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to
his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however
peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end
to his peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly
valuable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences
of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a
whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen
were content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when
he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to
cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that
happen to know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive
salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance
further, they might receive a summary thump for their presumption.
But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity—Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he
famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death, but
he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name;
had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Cæsar. Was it not so, O Timor
Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long did’st
lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from the
palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror
of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land?
Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times
assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not
so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with
mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here are four whales as
well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to the
classic scholar.

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 The Affidavit.

But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at various
times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels, were
finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and killed by
valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with that express
object as much in view, as in setting out through the Narragansett Woods,
Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture that notorious murderous
savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip.
I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make
mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in
printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole
story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is
one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much
bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest
and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching
the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout
at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a
hideous and intolerable allegory.
First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general
perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid
conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur. One
reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and deaths
by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at home, however
transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you suppose that that
poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the whale-line off
the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the bottom of the sea
by the sounding leviathan—do you suppose that that poor fellow’s name
will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read to-morrow at your
breakfast? No: because the mails are very irregular between here and
New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular news
direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I tell you that upon one particular
voyage which I made to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty
different ships, every one of which had had a death by a whale, some of
them more than one, and three that had each lost a boat’s crew. For God’s
sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn,
but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.
Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that
a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever
found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-
fold enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my

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Moby Dick

facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being

facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.
But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon
testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Sperm
Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously
malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and sink
a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale has done it.
First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket,
was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her
boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of
the whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping
from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the
ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that in less
than “ten minutes” she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving plank
of her has been seen since. After the severest exposure, part of the crew
reached the land in their boats. Being returned home at last, Captain
Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another ship, but
the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers; for the
second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith forswearing the sea,
he has never tempted it since. At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of
Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at
the time of the tragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative; I have
conversed with his son; and all this within a few miles of the scene of the
catastrophe.*
*The following are extracts from Chace’s narrative: “Every fact
seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which
directed his operations; he made two several attacks upon the ship, at a
short interval between them, both of which, according to their direction,
were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby
combining the speed of the two objects for the shock; to effect which, the
exact manœuvres which he made were necessary. His aspect was most
horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury. He came directly from
the shoal which we had just before entered, and in which we had struck
three of his companions, as if fired with revenge for their sufferings.”
Again: “At all events, the whole circumstances taken together, all
happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in
my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many
of which impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied that I
am correct in my opinion.”

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 The Affidavit.

Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during
a black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any
hospitable shore. “The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the
fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon
hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation,
seemed scarcely entitled to a moment’s thought; the dismal looking wreck,
and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed my
reflections, until day again made its appearance.”
In another place—p. 45,—he speaks of “the mysterious and mortal
attack of the animal.”
Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807
totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic particulars of
this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter, though from the whale
hunters I have now and then heard casual allusions to it.
Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J——, then
commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be
dining with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in the
harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the
Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength
ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present. He peremptorily
denied for example, that any whale could so smite his stout sloop-of-war as
to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful. Very good; but there is more
coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore set sail in this impregnable
craft for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a portly sperm
whale, that begged a few moments’ confidential business with him. That
business consisted in fetching the Commodore’s craft such a thwack, that
with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave
down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore’s
interview with that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus converted
from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no
nonsense.
I will now refer you to Langsdorff’s Voyages for a little circumstance
in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you must
know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern’s
famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.
Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:
“By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day
we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was
very clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on

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our fur clothing. For some days we had very little wind; it was not till the
nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up. An uncommon
large whale, the body of which was larger than the ship itself, lay almost
at the surface of the water, but was not perceived by any one on board till
the moment when the ship, which was in full sail, was almost upon him,
so that it was impossible to prevent its striking against him. We were thus
placed in the most imminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up its
back, raised the ship three feet at least out of the water. The masts reeled,
and the sails fell altogether, while we who were below all sprang instantly
upon the deck, concluding that we had struck upon some rock; instead of
this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity.
Captain D’Wolf applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or
not the vessel had received any damage from the shock, but we found that
very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured.”
Now, the Captain D’Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual adventures
as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of Dorchester near Boston.
I have the honor of being a nephew of his. I have particularly questioned
him concerning this passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates every word.
The ship, however, was by no means a large one: a Russian craft built on
the Siberian coast, and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the
vessel in which he sailed from home.
In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so
full, too, of honest wonders—the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient
Dampier’s old chums—I found a little matter set down so like that
just quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a
corroborative example, if such be needed.
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to “John Ferdinando,” as he calls the
modern Juan Fernandes. “In our way thither,” he says, “about four o’clock
in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues from
the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our men in
such consternation that they could hardly tell where they were or what to
think; but every one began to prepare for death. And, indeed, the shock
was so sudden and violent, that we took it for granted the ship had struck
against a rock; but when the amazement was a little over, we cast the lead,
and sounded, but found no ground. * * * * * The suddenness of the shock
made the guns leap in their carriages, and several of the men were shaken
out of their hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was
thrown out of his cabin!” Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an

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 The Affidavit.

earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great

earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief
along the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in the darkness of
that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseen
whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another
known to me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In
more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing
boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand
all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall can
tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have
been examples where the lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in
a calm, been transferred to the ship, and secured there; the whale towing
her great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it
is very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time
to rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate
designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some
eloquent indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will
frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several
consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a
concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which
you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this
book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels
(like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth
time we say amen with Solomon—Verily there is nothing new under the
sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate
of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius
general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work
every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been
considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in
some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently to be
mentioned.
Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term of
his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the
neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels
at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. A fact thus
set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any
reason it should be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not

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mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must

have been a whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And
I will tell you why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been
always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting
with it. Even now I am certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never
can be, in the present constitution of things, a place for his habitual
gregarious resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me,
that in modern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of
the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that
on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the
skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes through
the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out of
the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance
called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have every
reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale—squid or cuttle-fish—
lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means
the largest of that sort, have been found at its surface. If, then, you properly
put these statements together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly
perceive that, according to all human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster,
that for half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all
probability have been a sperm whale.

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 CHAPTER 46.
Surmises.

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts
and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though
he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion;
nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation
far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether to abandon the
collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if this were otherwise,
there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him. It
would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to
hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly
extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more
monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that
each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he
hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still
additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the
wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying
him.
To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in
the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for
example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over
Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man
any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership;
for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal
relation. Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s, so
long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain; still he knew that for all
this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain’s quest, and could he,
would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It might be
that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During
that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of
rebellion against his captain’s leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential,
circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that,
but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more

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significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in

foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped
of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that
the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men’s courage is proof against protracted meditation
unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches, his
officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby
Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed
the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer weather, and they
inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any object remote and blank
in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is
above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should
intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash.
Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion
mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent.
The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought
Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts
of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds
a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it
they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more
common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders
of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to
fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking
pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been
strictly held to their one final and romantic object—that final and romantic
object, too many would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these
men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash—aye, cash. They may scorn cash
now; but let some months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them,
and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same
cash would soon cashier Ahab.
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more
related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the
Pequod’s voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he
had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation;
and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed,
and to that end competent, could refuse all further obedience to him,
and even violently wrest from him the command. From even the barely

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hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible consequences of such

a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been
most anxious to protect himself. That protection could only consist in his
own predominating brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely
calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was
possible for his crew to be subjected to.
For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be
verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good
degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod’s
voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force himself
to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his
profession.
Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.

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 CHAPTER 47.
The Mat-Maker.

It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about
the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg
and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an
additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow
preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the
air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I
kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long
yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg,
standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the
threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly
drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign
all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull
sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and
I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the
Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single,
ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to
admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This
warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my
own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads.
Meantime, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the
woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;
and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding
contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword,
thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof;
this easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free will, and
necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working together.
The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate
course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free
will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though
restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its

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motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by

turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free
will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence
that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad
Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand
stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his
cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being
heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as
high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry
have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and
eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some
prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries
announcing their coming.
“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”
“Where-away?”
“On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!”
Instantly all was commotion.
The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating
and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from
other tribes of his genus.
“There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
disappeared.
“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”
Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the
exact minute to Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently
rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down
heading to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in
advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm
Whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless,
while concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in
the opposite quarter—this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action;
for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had been
in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men
selected for shipkeepers—that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this
time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and

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mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes
were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over
the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks
their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was
expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war’s
men about to throw themselves on board an enemy’s ship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was
surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.

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 CHAPTER 48.
The First Lowering.

The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of
the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and
bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always been deemed
one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain’s, on account
of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by
its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from
its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally
invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But
strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the
living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head. Less swart
in aspect, the companions of this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow
complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;—a
race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white
mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on
the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to be
elsewhere.
While yet the wondering ship’s company were gazing upon these
strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head, “All
ready there, Fedallah?”
“Ready,” was the half-hissed reply.
“Lower away then; d’ye hear?” shouting across the deck. “Lower
away there, I say.”
Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the
men sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with
a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous,
off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like,
leaped down the rolling ship’s side into the tossed boats below.
Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship’s lee, when a fourth
keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and
showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern,
loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, so

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as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all their eyes again riveted
upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other boats
obeyed not the command.
“Captain Ahab?—” said Starbuck.
“Spread yourselves,” cried Ahab; “give way, all four boats. Thou,
Flask, pull out more to leeward!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his
great steering oar. “Lay back!” addressing his crew. “There!—there!—
there again! There she blows right ahead, boys!—lay back!”
“Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.”
“Oh, I don’t mind ’em, sir,” said Archy; “I knew it all before now.
Didn’t I hear ’em in the hold? And didn’t I tell Cabaco here of it? What say
ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask.”
“Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little
ones,” drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom
still showed signs of uneasiness. “Why don’t you break your backbones,
my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They
are only five more hands come to help us—never mind from where—the
more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone—devils
are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that’s the stroke for
a thousand pounds; that’s the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the
gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men—all hearts alive!
Easy, easy; don’t be in a hurry—don’t be in a hurry. Why don’t you snap
your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so, then:—softly,
softly! That’s it—that’s it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The
devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring,
ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can’t ye? pull, won’t ye? Why
in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don’t ye pull?—pull and break
something! pull, and start your eyes out! Here!” whipping out the sharp
knife from his girdle; “every mother’s son of ye draw his knife, and pull
with the blade between his teeth. That’s it—that’s it. Now ye do something;
that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her—start her, my silver-spoons! Start
her, marling-spikes!”
Stubb’s exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had
rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in
inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this
specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions
with his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief peculiarity.
He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a tone so strangely

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compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a
spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer invocations without
pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing. Besides
he all the time looked so easy and indolent himself, so loungingly managed
his steering-oar, and so broadly gaped—open-mouthed at times—that the
mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted
like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of
humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all
inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them.
In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
across Stubb’s bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty
near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.
“Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye
please!”
“Halloa!” returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he
spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set like a
flint from Stubb’s.
“What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!”
“Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
boys!)” in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: “A sad
business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind,
Mr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what will.
(Spring, my men, spring!) There’s hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb,
and that’s what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm’s the play! This
at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand.”
“Aye, aye, I thought as much,” soliloquized Stubb, when the boats
diverged, “as soon as I clapt eye on ’em, I thought so. Aye, and that’s what
he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected.
They were hidden down there. The White Whale’s at the bottom of it. Well,
well, so be it! Can’t be helped! All right! Give way, men! It ain’t the White
Whale to-day! Give way!”
Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant
as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably
awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship’s
company; but Archy’s fancied discovery having some time previous got
abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some
small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge
of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb’s confident way of
accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from

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superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for all
manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab’s precise agency in the matter
from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I
had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as
well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the
furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a
circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those
tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five
trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which
periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler
out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen pulling the
harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed his
naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut
against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other
end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a fencer’s, thrown half backward
into the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; Ahab was seen
steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere
the White Whale had torn him. All at once the outstretched arm gave a
peculiar motion and then remained fixed, while the boat’s five oars were
seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea.
Instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales
had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly
discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab
had observed it.
“Every man look out along his oars!” cried Starbuck. “Thou,
Queequeg, stand up!”
Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the
savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards
the spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme
stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the
gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself
to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast
blue eye of the sea.
Not very far distant Flask’s boat was also lying breathlessly still; its
commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort
of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the
stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its top is
not more spacious than the palm of a man’s hand, and standing upon such

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a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the mast-head of some ship which
had sunk to all but her trucks. But little King-Post was small and short, and
at the same time little King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so
that this loggerhead stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.
“I can’t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that.”
Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady
his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty
shoulders for a pedestal.
“Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?”
“That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you
fifty feet taller.”
Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the
boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to Flask’s
foot, and then putting Flask’s hand on his hearse-plumed head and bidding
him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous fling landed the
little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask now standing,
Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a breastband to lean
against and steady himself by.
At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous
habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect posture
in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse and
cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon the
loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of little Flask
mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining
himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty,
the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine
form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The
bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous,
ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but
not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro’s lordly chest. So
have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but
the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.
Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing
solicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular soundings,
not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case, Stubb,
as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing
interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband, where he always
wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed home the loading
with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his match across the rough

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sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had
been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped like light
from his erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry,
“Down, down all, and give way!—there they are!”
To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been
visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water,
and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing
off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling billows. The air
around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it were, like the air over intensely
heated plates of iron. Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, and
partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming.
Seen in advance of all the other indications, the puffs of vapor they
spouted, seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders.
All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
water and air. But it bade fair to outstrip them; it flew on and on, as a mass
of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the hills.
“Pull, pull, my good boys,” said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but
intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance
from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two
visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much
to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him. Only the silence
of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar
whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with entreaty.
How different the loud little King-Post. “Sing out and say something,
my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on
their black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I’ll sign over to you my
Martha’s Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children, boys. Lay
me on—lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad! See!
see that white water!” And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head,
and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it far off upon the
sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat’s stern like a crazed
colt from the prairie.
“Look at that chap now,” philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with
his unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a short
distance, followed after—“He’s got fits, that Flask has. Fits? yes, give him
fits—that’s the very word—pitch fits into ’em. Merrily, merrily, hearts-
alive. Pudding for supper, you know;—merry’s the word. Pull, babes—
pull, sucklings—pull, all. But what the devil are you hurrying about?
Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing

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 The First Lowering.

more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your knives in two—that’s all.
Take it easy—why don’t ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and
lungs!”
But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew
of his—these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed
light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas
may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red
murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.
Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of
Flask to “that whale,” as he called the fictitious monster which he declared
to be incessantly tantalizing his boat’s bow with its tail—these allusions
of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause some one
or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder. But this was
against all rule; for the oarsmen must put out their eyes, and ram a skewer
through their necks; usage pronouncing that they must have no organs but
ears, and no limbs but arms, in these critical moments.
It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the
omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along
the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the
brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the
knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to
cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows;
the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the
headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;—all these, with the cries of
the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen,
with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats
with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;—all this
was thrilling.
Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the
fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man’s ghost encountering the
first unknown phantom in the other world;—neither of these can feel
stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time
finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm
whale.
The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more
and more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-
shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted
everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes.
The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales

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running dead to leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still rising
wind, we rushed along; the boat going with such madness through the
water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape
being torn from the row-locks.
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither
ship nor boat to be seen.
“Give way, men,” whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the
sheet of his sail; “there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes.
There’s white water again!—close to! Spring!”
Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted
that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when
with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: “Stand up!” and
Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril
so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of
the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had
come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants
stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the
mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of
enraged serpents.
“That’s his hump. There, there, give it to him!” whispered Starbuck.
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron
of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push
from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail
collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by;
something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole
crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white
curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended
together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed.
Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across
the gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in
the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward
gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from
the bottom of the ocean.
The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers
together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like
a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning;
immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well

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 The First Lowering.

roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those
boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew
darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The
rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless
as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting
the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck
contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole,
handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There,
then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty
forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith,
hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat,
we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the
sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly
Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard
a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm. The
sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge,
vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed
into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much more
than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant
it tossed and gaped beneath the ship’s bows like a chip at the base of a
cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till
it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against
it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere
the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from their fish and
returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us up, but was still
cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing,—an oar
or a lance pole.

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 CHAPTER 49.
The Hyena.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we
call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke,
though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that
the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits,
and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all
creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible,
never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down
bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects
of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem
to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed
by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward
mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme
tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just
before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but
a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to
breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I
now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale
its object.
“Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the
deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water;
“Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?” Without
much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to
understand that such things did often happen.
“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his oil-
jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr. Stubb, I think I
have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr.
Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, that going
plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of
a whaleman’s discretion?”
“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off
Cape Horn.”

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 The Hyena.

“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close
by; “you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell me
whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to
break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s jaws?”
“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law. I
should like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face foremost.
Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind that!”
Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement
of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings in
the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of common
occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the superlatively critical
instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life into the hands of him
who steered the boat—oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in
his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic
stampings; considering that the particular disaster to our own particular
boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck’s driving on to his whale almost
in the teeth of a squall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding,
was famous for his great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that
I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s boat; and finally
considering in what a devil’s chase I was implicated, touching the White
Whale: taking all things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below
and make a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said I, “come along, you
shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”
It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their
last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond
of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had
done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present
occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart.
Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that
Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so
many months or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself; my death
and burial were locked up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and
contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the
bars of a snug family vault.
Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,
here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil
fetch the hindmost.

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

“Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had but one leg you
would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my
timber toe. Oh! he’s a wonderful old man!”
“I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask. “If
his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. That would
disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left, you
know.”
“I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.”
Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether,
considering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the
voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active
perils of the chase. So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with tears in their
eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest
of the fight.
But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering
that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger;
considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and
extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then
comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man
to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of
the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little
of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of
the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his
orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned
to him as a regular headsman in the hunt—above all for Captain Ahab to
be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s crew, he well knew
that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the
Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a boat’s crew from them, nor had
he in any way hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken
private measures of his own touching all that matter. Until Cabaco’s

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 Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.

published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure
when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded the
customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time
after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of
making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of
the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers,
which when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the
bow: when all this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude
in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to
make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also
the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy
cleat, as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for
bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was
observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed
in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter’s chisel
gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these things,
I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time. But almost
everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab
must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had
already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But
such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to
any boat’s crew being assigned to that boat.
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon
waned away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then
such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the
unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws
of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway
creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck,
oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that
Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to
chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement
in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate
phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were
somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a
muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this,
by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with
Ahab’s peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted
influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority over him;

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all this none knew. But one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning
Fedallah. He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the
temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like
of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities,
especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent—those insulated,
immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still
preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations,
when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men
his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real
phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to
what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted
with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins,
indulged in mundane amours.

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 CHAPTER 51.
The Spirit-Spout.

Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the
Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio
de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly
from St. Helena.
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and,
by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not
a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the
white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed
some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first
descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount
to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision
as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night,
not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You
may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental
perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions
in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there for several
successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this
silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-
lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit
had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. “There she blows!”
Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet
still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most unwonted
hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost
every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded
the t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best
man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned,
the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving,
lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails,

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made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet; while
still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in
her—one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some
horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would
have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his
one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead
limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But
though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows,
the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night.
Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.
This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some
days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again
it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after night,
till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear
moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing again for one
whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct
repetition to be advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary
jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the
Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever
and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart
latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same
whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense
of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously
beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon
us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which,
beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish
charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily,
lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand,
seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began
howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that
are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and
gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the
foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life

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went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens.
And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen;
and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,
as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing
appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless
selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as
if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in
anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as
called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before
had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea,
where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed
condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat
that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying;
still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from
before, the solitary jet would at times be descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything
above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively
to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical
fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with
one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand
gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow
would all but congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew
driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly
broke over its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist;
and the better to guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped
himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as
in a loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as
if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the
swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same
muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in
silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to
the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would
not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old

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man’s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the
barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-
screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he
had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved
hat and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts
of tides and currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern
swung from his tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head
was thrown back so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of
the tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling.*
*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to
the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of
the course of the ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.

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 CHAPTER 52.
The Albatross.

South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising
ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross)
by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-
head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far
ocean fisheries—a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance
was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars and
her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-
frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-
bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins
of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four
years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed
and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided
close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other
that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those
of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they
passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail
was being heard from below.
“Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was
in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his
hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to
make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the
distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod
were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first mere
mention of the White Whale’s name to another ship, Ahab for a moment
paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board
the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage
of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by
her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound

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home, he loudly hailed—“Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the
world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and this
time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to ——”
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then,
in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that
for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away
with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with
the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab
must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac
man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the
water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more
of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced.
But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in
the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—“Up
helm! Keep her off round the world!”
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud
feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through
numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we
left behind secure, were all the time before us.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for
ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than
any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the
voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented
chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all
human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us
on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

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 CHAPTER 53.
The Gam.

The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had
spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this not
been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded her—judging
by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions—if so it had been that, by
the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer to the question
he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not to consort, even for
five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he could contribute some
of that information he so absorbingly sought. But all this might remain
inadequately estimated, were not something said here of the peculiar
usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each other in foreign seas, and
especially on a common cruising-ground.
If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering each
other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of them, cannot
well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment to interchange
the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and resting in concert:
then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and
Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each other at the
ends of the earth—off lone Fanning’s Island, or the far away King’s Mills;
how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships
should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly
and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of
course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains,
officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other; and
consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about.
For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on
board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date
a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files.
And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the
latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be
destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this

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will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other’s track
on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent
from home. For one of them may have received a transfer of letters from
some third, and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be
for the people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange
the whaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they
meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar
congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared
privations and perils.
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with
Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number
of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when
they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for
your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy
that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers
sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American
whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript
provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the
English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing
that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the
English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the
English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart;
probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas,
some merchant ships crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic,
will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,
mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in
Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon
each other’s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea,
they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such
a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down
hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slave-
ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run away
from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance
to cross each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is—“How many skulls?”—
the same way that whalers hail—“How many barrels?” And that question
once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains

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on both sides, and don’t like to see overmuch of each other’s villanous
likenesses.
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another
whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a “Gam,” a thing so utterly
unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if
by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome
stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,” and such like pretty
exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates
and Man-of-War’s men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful
feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer.
Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that
profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in
uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when
a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his
superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high
lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to
stand on.
But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running
up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr.
Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold
it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in
constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it
needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that
view, let me learnedly define it.
GAM. NOUN—A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships,
generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they
exchange visits by boats’ crews: the two captains remaining, for the time,
on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.
There is another little item about Gamming which must not be
forgotten here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail;
so has the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the
captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets
on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself
with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons.
But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and
no tiller at all. High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about
the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a
tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and therefore

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as in gamming a complete boat’s crew must leave the ship, and hence as
the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the
steersman upon the occasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in,
is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree. And often you will
notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting
on him from the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive
to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor
is this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting
steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-
oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely
wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by
settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat
will often go far to topple him, because length of foundation is nothing
without corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles,
and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would never do in plain sight
of the world’s riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this straddling
captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by catching
hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant
self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers’ pockets; but
perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for
ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones
too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment
or two, in a sudden squall say—to seize hold of the nearest oarsman’s hair,
and hold on there like grim death.

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 CHAPTER 54.
The Town-Ho’s Story.

(As told at the Golden Inn.)

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there,
is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet
more travellers than in any other part.
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-
bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned
almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us
strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White
Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-
Ho’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain
wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God
which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance,
with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the
secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of
Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown
to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of
three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems,
communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the
following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it
in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen
in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange
delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the
secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod’s
main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the
story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now
proceed to put on lasting record.
*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-
head, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
For my humor’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once
narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint’s

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eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those
fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer
terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put,
and which are duly answered at the time.
“Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket,
was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward from
the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of
the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage,
it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common. They
supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having
some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those
latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not
being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find
it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy
weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the
pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more days went
by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased.
So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood
away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove
out and repaired.
“Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest
chance favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the
way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at
them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never
mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this
passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all
but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence
of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney,
the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a
Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.
“‘Lakeman!—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is
Buffalo?’ said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.
“On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your
courtesy—may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gentlemen,
in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as large and stout as
any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in
the land-locked heart of our America, had yet been nurtured by all those
agrarian freebooting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean.

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 The Town-Ho’s Story.

For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours,—

Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,—possess an
ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean’s noblest traits; with
many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round
archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large
part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they
furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from
the East, dotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon
by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they
have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield
their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out
their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and
unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings
in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts
of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar
Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as
well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship,
the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are
swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted
wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however
inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking
crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born,
and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And
for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone
Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had
long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was
he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman,
fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this
Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman,
a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible
firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition
which is the meanest slave’s right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been
retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but
Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt—but, gentlemen, you
shall hear.
“It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing
her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho’s leak seemed again
increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every
day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic,

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for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across
it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen
to forget his duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and
his shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all hands
gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far
from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to
keep clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of
considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if
any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel
is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless
latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.
“Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak
was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern
manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the mate.
He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew,
and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose,
was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous
apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking
creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen.
Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship,
some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a
part owner in her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps,
there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them,
as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear
water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen—that bubbling from the
pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee
scupper-holes.
“Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional
world of ours—watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in
command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly
his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man
he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a
chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern’s tower, and make
a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen,
at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a
Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your
last viceroy’s snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him,
gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son
to Charlemagne’s father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet

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as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt

knew it.
“Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his
gay banterings.
“‘Aye, aye, my merry lads, it’s a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one
of ye, and let’s have a taste. By the Lord, it’s worth bottling! I tell ye what,
men, old Rad’s investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part
of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began
the job; he’s come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and
file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of ’em are now hard at work
cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If
old Rad were here now, I’d tell him to jump overboard and scatter ’em.
They’re playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him. But he’s a simple
old soul,—Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is
invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he’d give a poor devil like me the
model of his nose.’
“‘Damn your eyes! what’s that pump stopping for?’ roared Radney,
pretending not to have heard the sailors’ talk. ‘Thunder away at it!’
“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. ‘Lively, boys, lively,
now!’ And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men
tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs
was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life’s utmost energies.
“Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went
forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery
red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now
what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle
with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so
it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him
to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove
some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.
“Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship’s deck at sea is a piece of
household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to
every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually
foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages
and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not
willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this
broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be
aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been

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divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic
seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one
of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial
business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case with
his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may understand
exactly how this affair stood between the two men.
“But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost
as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in
his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this;
and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended
when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for a moment,
and as he steadfastly looked into the mate’s malignant eye and perceived
the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow-match silently
burning along towards them; as he instinctively saw all this, that strange
forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in
any already ireful being—a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by
really valiant men even when aggrieved—this nameless phantom feeling,
gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.
“Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily
exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping
the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then, without
at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary
sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little or nothing
all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most domineering and
outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile
advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper’s club
hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.
“Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps,
for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could
but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the
conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted
to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few
inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding.
“Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily
followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated
his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had
not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his
twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to
no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass;

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when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had now
forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on
the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:
“‘Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to
yourself.’ But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where the
Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his
teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions. Retreating
not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye with the
unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind
him and creepingly drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer
but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen,
the fool had been branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the
hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was
stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale.
“Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
mastheads. They were both Canallers.
“‘Canallers!’ cried Don Pedro. ‘We have seen many whale-ships in
our harbours, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are
they?’
“‘Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal.
You must have heard of it.’
“‘Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary
land, we know but little of your vigorous North.’
“‘Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha’s very fine; and
ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such
information may throw side-light upon my story.’
“For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire
breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and
most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and
affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-
room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over
Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through
all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and
especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost
like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and
often lawless life. There’s your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your
pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung
shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches. For by some curious

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fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever

encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in
holiest vicinities.
“‘Is that a friar passing?’ said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the
crowded plazza, with humorous concern.
“‘Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella’s Inquisition wanes in
Lima,’ laughed Don Sebastian. ‘Proceed, Senor.’
“‘A moment! Pardon!’ cried another of the company. ‘In the name
of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have
by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima
for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look
surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast—“Corrupt as Lima.”
It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than billiard-
tables, and for ever open—and “Corrupt as Lima.” So, too, Venice; I have
been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark!—St. Dominic,
purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.’
“Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would
make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he.
Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile,
he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening
his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is
dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his
slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the
smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage
and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his
own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank
him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime
redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an
arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum,
gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced
by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished
graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are
so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the
curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and
young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal
furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-
field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.
“‘I see! I see!’ impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha
upon his silvery ruffles. ‘No need to travel! The world’s one Lima. I had

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thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and
holy as the hills.—But the story.’
“I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly
had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and
the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down
the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar,
and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of
the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued;
while standing out of harm’s way, the valiant captain danced up and down
with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious
scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran
close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart
of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But
Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they succeeded
in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about three or four
large casks in a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched
themselves behind the barricade.
“‘Come out of that, ye pirates!’ roared the captain, now menacing
them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. ‘Come
out of that, ye cut-throats!’
“Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there,
defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to understand
distinctly, that his (Steelkilt’s) death would be the signal for a murderous
mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might prove
but too true, the captain a little desisted, but still commanded the insurgents
instantly to return to their duty.
“‘Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?’ demanded their
ringleader.
“‘Turn to! turn to!—I make no promise;—to your duty! Do you want
to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!’ and he once
more raised a pistol.
“‘Sink the ship?’ cried Steelkilt. ‘Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us
turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say ye,
men?’ turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.
“The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his
eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:—‘It’s not our
fault; we didn’t want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy’s
business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the
buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain’t

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those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those
handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word;
don’t be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and
we’re your men; but we won’t be flogged.’
“‘Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!’
“‘Look ye, now,’ cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,
‘there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for the
cruise, d’ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as
soon as the anchor is down; so we don’t want a row; it’s not our interest;
we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won’t be flogged.’
“‘Turn to!’ roared the Captain.
“Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:—‘I tell you
what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby
rascal, we won’t lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say
the word about not flogging us, we don’t do a hand’s turn.’
“‘Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I’ll keep ye there till
ye’re sick of it. Down ye go.’
“‘Shall we?’ cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were
against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down
into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.
“As the Lakeman’s bare head was just level with the planks, the
Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over
the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly
called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the
companionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered
something down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them—
ten in number—leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had
remained neutral.
“All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward
and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which
last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through
the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men
who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking
and clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded
through the ship.
“At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,
summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was
then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were
tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it,

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the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days
this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and
then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and
suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to
turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps
to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at
discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the
rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and
betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the
mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought
to restrain them. Only three were left.
“‘Better turn to, now?’ said the Captain with a heartless jeer.
“‘Shut us up again, will ye!’ cried Steelkilt.
“‘Oh certainly,’ said the Captain, and the key clicked.
“It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of
seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had
last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black
as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two
Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their
hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen
mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each
end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness
of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he
said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should
spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of
the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad
thing, for anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each
insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the rush
should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving that
priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the
one to the other, in the matter; and both of them could not be first, for the
ladder would but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul
play of these miscreants must come out.
“Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of
treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first
of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby secure
whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit. But when
Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last, they

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in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany, mixed their before

secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally
opened their souls to each other in three sentences; and bound the sleeper
with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the Captain at
midnight.
“Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood,
he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In
a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still
struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies,
who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe
for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along the deck like
dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizzen rigging, like
three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. ‘Damn ye,’ cried
the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, ‘the vultures would not touch
ye, ye villains!’
“At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had
rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former
that he had a good mind to flog them all round—thought, upon the whole,
he would do so—he ought to—justice demanded it; but for the present,
considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand,
which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.
“‘But as for you, ye carrion rogues,’ turning to the three men in the
rigging—‘for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;’ and, seizing a
rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two traitors, till
they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two
crucified thieves are drawn.
“‘My wrist is sprained with ye!’ he cried, at last; ‘but there is still rope
enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn’t give up. Take that gag
from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.’
“For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of
his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort
of hiss, ‘What I say is this—and mind it well—if you flog me, I murder
you!’
“‘Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me’—and the Captain drew off
with the rope to strike.
“‘Best not,’ hissed the Lakeman.
“‘But I must,’—and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.
“Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain;
who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly

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two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, ‘I
won’t do it—let him go—cut him down: d’ye hear?’
“But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale
man, with a bandaged head, arrested them—Radney the chief mate.
Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing
the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the
whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak;
but mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what
the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his
pinioned foe.
“‘You are a coward!’ hissed the Lakeman.
“‘So I am, but take that.’ The mate was in the very act of striking,
when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no
more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt’s threat, whatever that might
have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to,
and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as
before.
“Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,
besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own
instance they were put down in the ship’s run for salvation. Still, no sign
of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that
mainly at Steelkilt’s instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest
peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port,
desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage,
they all agreed to another thing—namely, not to sing out for whales, in
case any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite of all her
other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her captain
was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft
first struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready
to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in
death the vital jaw of the whale.
“But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort
of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all
was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man
who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the
chief mate’s watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than
half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted,

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against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head of his
watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt
systematically built the plan of his revenge.
“During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship’s side. In this
attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable
vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the
sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm
would come round at two o’clock, in the morning of the third day from that
in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in
braiding something very carefully in his watches below.
“‘What are you making there?’ said a shipmate.
“‘What do you think? what does it look like?’
“‘Like a lanyard for your bag; but it’s an odd one, seems to me.’
“‘Yes, rather oddish,’ said the Lakeman, holding it at arm’s length
before him; ‘but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven’t enough
twine,—have you any?’
“But there was none in the forecastle.
“‘Then I must get some from old Rad;’ and he rose to go aft.
“‘You don’t mean to go a begging to him!’ said a sailor.
“‘Why not? Do you think he won’t do me a turn, when it’s to help
himself in the end, shipmate?’ and going to the mate, he looked at him
quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given
him—neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron
ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman’s monkey
jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-
four hours after, his trick at the silent helm—nigh to the man who was apt
to doze over the grave always ready dug to the seaman’s hand—that fatal
hour was then to come; and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate
was already stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.
“But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to
take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have done.
“It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the
second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid
Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out,
‘There she rolls! there she rolls!’ Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.

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“‘Moby Dick!’ cried Don Sebastian; ‘St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do
whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?’
“‘A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster,
Don;—but that would be too long a story.’
“‘How? how?’ cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.
“‘Nay, Dons, Dons—nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get
more into the air, Sirs.’
“‘The chicha! the chicha!’ cried Don Pedro; ‘our vigorous friend looks
faint;—fill up his empty glass!’
“No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.—Now, gentlemen,
so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship—
forgetful of the compact among the crew—in the excitement of the
moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been
plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.
‘The White Whale—the White Whale!’ was the cry from captain, mates,
and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious
to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed
askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass,
that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living
opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the
whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself
was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast
to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his
lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command.
Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate’s got the start; and
none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained
at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand,
Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a
boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale’s topmost
back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a
blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat
struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing
mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale’s slippery back, the boat righted,
and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the
sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and,
for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove
himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a
sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high

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up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.

“Meantime, at the first tap of the boat’s bottom, the Lakeman had
slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking
on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking
of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale
was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of
Radney’s red woollen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All
four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly
disappeared.
“In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port—a savage, solitary
place—where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman,
all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among the
palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the
savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.
“The ship’s company being reduced to but a handful, the captain
called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving
down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their
dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both by
night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent, that
upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a weakened
condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel.
After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship as far off shore
as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his
muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at
their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whale-
boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant,
to procure a reinforcement to his crew.
“On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which
seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it;
but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt
hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The captain
presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes,
the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much
as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.
“‘What do you want of me?’ cried the captain.
“‘Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?’ demanded
Steelkilt; ‘no lies.’
“‘I am bound to Tahiti for more men.’
“‘Very good. Let me board you a moment—I come in peace.’ With

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that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale,
stood face to face with the captain.
“‘Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me.
As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island,
and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me!’
“‘A pretty scholar,’ laughed the Lakeman. ‘Adios, Senor!’ and leaping
into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.
“Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots
of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived at
Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships
were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of precisely
that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and so for
ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work
them legal retribution.
“Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,
and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians,
who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native
schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there,
again resumed his cruisings.
“Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give
up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that destroyed him.

****

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

“‘I am, Don.’
“‘Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did
you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.’
“‘Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebastian’s
suit,’ cried the company, with exceeding interest.
“‘Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,
gentlemen?’
“‘Nay,’ said Don Sebastian; ‘but I know a worthy priest near by, who
will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised? this
may grow too serious.’
“‘Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?’
“‘Though there are no Auto-da-Fés in Lima now,’ said one of

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the company to another; ‘I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the
archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need
of this.’
“‘Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg
that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you
can.’

******

“‘This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,’ said Don Sebastian,
gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.
“‘Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light,
and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.
“‘So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true;
it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and
talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.’”

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 CHAPTER 55.
Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.

I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something
like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the
whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside
the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth
while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits
of him which even down to the present day confidently challenge the faith
of the landsman. It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving
such pictures of the whale all wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For
ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions,
cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-armor like
Saladin’s, and a helmeted head like St. George’s; ever since then has
something of the same sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular
pictures of the whale, but in many scientific presentations of him.
Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting
to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta,
in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of
that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable
avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually
came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession
of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale
referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the
incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the
Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as
only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong.
It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of
the true whale’s majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter’s
portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian

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Hindoo. It is Guido’s picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the

sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange
creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own
“Perseus Descending,” make out one whit better. The huge corpulence of
that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one
inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked
mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors’
Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale, as depicted
in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said
of these? As for the book-binder’s whale winding like a vine-stalk round
the stock of a descending anchor—as stamped and gilded on the backs and
title-pages of many books both old and new—that is a very picturesque
but purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on
antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless
call this book-binder’s fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so
intended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old
Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival of
Learning; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period,
dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan.
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books
you will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all
manner of spouts, jets d’eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-
Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of
the original edition of the “Advancement of Learning” you will find some
curious whales.
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those
pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by
those who know. In old Harris’s collection of voyages there are some plates
of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled
“A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter
Peterson of Friesland, master.” In one of those plates the whales, like
great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears
running over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is
made of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain
Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled “A Voyage round Cape
Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti
Whale Fisheries.” In this book is an outline purporting to be a “Picture of a

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Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed on the coast
of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck.” I doubt not the captain had
this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines. To mention but
one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied, according to
the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye
of that whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain,
why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the
benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake.
Look at that popular work “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In the abridged
London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged “whale” and a
“narwhale.” I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks
much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it
is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriff
could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacépède, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these are
not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale
(that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man as
touching that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.
But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron.
In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives
what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture
to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary retreat from
Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier’s Sperm Whale is not a Sperm
Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the benefit of a whaling
voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived that picture, who
can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor in the same field,
Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese
drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are,
many queer cups and saucers inform us.
As for the sign-painters’ whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting
on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their
deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.
But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very

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surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been
taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing
of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent the noble
animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants
have stood for their full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly
floated himself for his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and
significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat
the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship;
and out of that element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man
to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells
and undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference
of contour between a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian
Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales
hoisted to a ship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered,
varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could
not catch.
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all.
For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his
skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy
Bentham’s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of
his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old
gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics; yet
nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan’s articulated
bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale
bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the
insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity
is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be
incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in the side fin, the
bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand,
minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index,
middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their
fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering. “However
recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one
day, “he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens.”
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world
which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit
the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very

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considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out

precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which
you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a
whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally
stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too
fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.

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

In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted

here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to
be found in certain books, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny,
Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by.
I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
Colnett’s, Huggins’s, Frederick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. In the previous
chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins’s is far better
than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale’s is the best. All Beale’s drawings
of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of three
whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His frontispiece,
boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to excite the
civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like in its
general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are
pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his
fault though.
Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they
are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has but
one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because it is by
such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive anything like
a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living hunters.
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to
be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent
attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble
Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath the
boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air upon
his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of the boat is
partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monster’s spine;
and standing in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time,

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

you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the
whale, and in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action of the
whole thing is wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied line-tub floats
on the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely
bob in it; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in
contrasting expressions of affright; while in the black stormy distance the
ship is bearing down upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the
anatomical details of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I
could not draw so good a one.
In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the
barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black weedy
bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His
jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so abounding a smoke
in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in
the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish,
and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes
carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan
is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his
wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught
nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all
raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy
level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless
ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag
of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.
Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he
was either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously
tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for
painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and where
will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas,
as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way,
pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of France; where every
sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings
and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly
unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.
The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings
they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England’s
experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the
Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only

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finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale
hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen
seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things,
such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness
of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a
pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving
us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical
engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the
microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a
shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals.
I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a
veteran), but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to
have procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland
Justice of the Peace.
In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other
French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself
“H. Durand.” One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present
purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet
noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored,
inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened sails of
the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the background, both drooping
together in the breezeless air. The effect is very fine, when considered
with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few
aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is quite a different affair:
the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic
life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove
over to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from
this scene of activity, is about giving chase to whales in the distance. The
harpoons and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the
mast in its hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands
half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke
of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a
village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest
of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.

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

On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen
a crippled beggar (or kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted board
before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There
are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to contain
the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched by the jaws
of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me, has that man
held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But
the time of his justification has now come. His three whales are as good
whales as were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump
as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western clearings.
But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech does
the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully
contemplating his own amputation.
Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford,
and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-
teeth, or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like
skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious
contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours
of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking
implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But,
in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost
omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in
the way of a mariner’s fancy.
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores
a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called
savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois.
I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the
Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.
Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic

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hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-

club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is
as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but
a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark’s tooth, that miraculous intricacy of
wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady
application.
As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the
same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark’s tooth, of his
one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as
workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek
savage, Achilles’s shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as
the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of
the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of
American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.
At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales
hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter
is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking
whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some
old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for
weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents
and purposes so labelled with “Hands off!” you cannot examine them
closely enough to decide upon their merit.
In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you
will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly
merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of
green surges.
Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is
continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some
lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of
whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough
whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return
to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting
latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else so chance-like are
such observations of the hills, that your precise, previous stand-point
would require a laborious re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands, which still
remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old
Figuera chronicled them.

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

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out
great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as when
long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked
in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan
round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that
first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have
boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far
beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish.
With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons
for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies,
to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie
encamped beyond my mortal sight!

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 CHAPTER 58.
Brit.

Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows

of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely
feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to
be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.
On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure
from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of
that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated
from the water that escaped at the lip.
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these
monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*
*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the “Brazil Banks”
does not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of
there being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at
all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when
they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked
more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the great
hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass
on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking
them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him,
who for the first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And
even when recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard
really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be
instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.
Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though

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 Brit.

some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of
their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing,
this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does
the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious
kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any generic respect
be said to bear comparative analogy to him.
But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so
that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his
one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all
mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and
hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but
a moment’s consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of
his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science
and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom,
the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest
frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very
impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which
aboriginally belongs to it.
The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a
widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked
ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided;
two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews,
when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened
and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in
precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but
it is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who
murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath
spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own
cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and
leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no
power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed
that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures

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glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously
hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish
brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty
embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the
universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other,
carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile
earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a
strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular
Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half
known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never
return!

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 CHAPTER 59.
Squid.

Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her
way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her
keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly
waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at
wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.
But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost
preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant
calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden
finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves
whispered together as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the
visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-
head.
In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and
higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before
our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for
a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and
silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick?
thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing
once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod,
the negro yelled out—“There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead!
The White Whale, the White Whale!”
Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time
the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on
the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave
his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction indicated
aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect the
ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular whale
he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed him;
whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly perceive

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the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave orders for
lowering.
The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars
suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot where
it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all
thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon
which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy
mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay
floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and
curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any
hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no
conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the
billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck
still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice
exclaimed—“Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to
have seen thee, thou white ghost!”
“What was it, Sir?” said Flask.
“The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld,
and returned to their ports to tell of it.”
But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel;
the rest as silently following.
Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected
with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being so very
unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness.
So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them declare it to be the
largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few of them have any but the
most vague ideas concerning its true nature and form; notwithstanding,
they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale his only food. For though
other species of whales find their food above water, and may be seen by
man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food
in unknown zones below the surface; and only by inference is it that any
one can tell of what, precisely, that food consists. At times, when closely
pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of
the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet
in length. They fancy that the monster to which these arms belonged
ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale,
unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it.

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 Squid.

There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in
which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some
other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But much
abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it.
By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish, to
which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to belong, but
only as the Anak of the tribe.

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 CHAPTER 60.
The Line.

With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for

the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have
here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.
The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes;
for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-
maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for
common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much
stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected;
but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means
adds to the rope’s durability or strength, however much it may give it
compactness and gloss.
Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so
durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will
add (since there is an æsthetics in all things), is much more handsome and
becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of
Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.
The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its
one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty
pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons.
In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two
hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away
in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one
round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded “sheaves,” or layers of
concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the “heart,” or minute
vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in
the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody’s arm, leg, or
entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub.
Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business,

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carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block
towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible
wrinkles and twists.
In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line
being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this;
because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat,
and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet
in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a
craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of the
whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed
weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas
cover is clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were
pulling off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub,
and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This
arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order
to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat,
in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off
the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the
whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to
the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort.
Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety’s sake; for
were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the
whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute
as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would
infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in
that case no town-crier would ever find her again.
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again
carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon
the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in
rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the
opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed
prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common
quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight
festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some
ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the
bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then

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attached to the short-warp—the rope which is immediately connected with

the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through
sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye
of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes
sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for
the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while
straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the
harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play
like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder
that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken
jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer
sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never
heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white
cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses; and, like
the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the
crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you
may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those
repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—
of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost.
For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being
seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full
play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is
worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because
the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the
other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting
buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape
being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun
himself could never pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for,
indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains
it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the
ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently
serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this
is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this

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dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-
lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught
in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle,
ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in
the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than
though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by
your side.

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 CHAPTER 61.
Stubb Kills a Whale.

If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to

Queequeg it was quite a different object.
“When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the
bow of his hoisted boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.”
The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special
to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep
induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through
which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground;
that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and
other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de
la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.
It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in
what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that
dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my
body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long
after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the
seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at
last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that
we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The
waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the
sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices
my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved
me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not
forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like
the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,
glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough
of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, the whale
looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But

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that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter’s wand,
the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into wakefulness;
and more than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously
with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the
great fish slowly and regularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air.
“Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried Ahab. And obeying his own order,
he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale;
and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the
leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples
as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab
gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but
in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats,
we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the
noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster
perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then sank out of
sight like a tower swallowed up.
“There go flukes!” was the cry, an announcement immediately
followed by Stubb’s producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now
a respite was granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed,
the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker’s boat, and
much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honor
of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become
aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer
of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And still
puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault.
Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy,
he was going “head out”; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast
which he brewed.*
*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance
the entire interior of the sperm whale’s enormous head consists. Though
apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him.
So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when
going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part
of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the
lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to
transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed
New York pilot-boat.
“Start her, start her, my men! Don’t hurry yourselves; take plenty of

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time—but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that’s all,” cried Stubb,
spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. “Start her, now; give ’em the
long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all;
but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy—only
start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead
perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that’s all. Start her!”
“Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising
some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
which the eager Indian gave.
But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. “Kee-
hee! Kee-hee!” yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his
seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.
“Ka-la! Koo-loo!” howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a
mouthful of Grenadier’s steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut
the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged
his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth.
Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was
heard—“Stand up, Tashtego!—give it to him!” The harpoon was hurled.
“Stern all!” The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something went
hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line.
An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it
round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a
hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from
his pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just
before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both
of Stubb’s hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas
sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like
holding an enemy’s sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy
all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.
“Wet the line! wet the line!” cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him
seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.*
More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat
now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego
here changed places—stem for stern—a staggering business truly in that
rocking commotion.
*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated,
that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with
water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for that

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purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of
the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would
have thought the craft had two keels—one cleaving the water, the other
the air—as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once.
A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her
wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger,
the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the
sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat,
to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the
steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of
gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their
way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.
“Haul in—haul in!” cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet
the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly
planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying
fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way
of the whale’s horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another fling.
The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks
down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which
bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun
playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into
every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the
while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle
of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited
headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line
attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows
against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.
“Pull up—pull up!” he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning
whale relaxed in his wrath. “Pull up!—close to!” and the boat ranged along
the fish’s flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned
his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and
churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the
whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere
he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost
life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that
unspeakable thing called his “flurry,” the monster horribly wallowed in his
blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that

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the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to
struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.
And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into
view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting
his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush
after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine,
shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his
motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!
“He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo.
“Yes; both pipes smoked out!” and withdrawing his own from his
mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment,
stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

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 CHAPTER 62.
The Dart.

A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

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

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officer of the little craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.
Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish
and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last;
he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever
should be expected of him, except under circumstances obvious to any
fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a slight loss of speed
in the chase; but long experience in various whalemen of more than one
nation has convinced me that in the vast majority of failures in the fishery,
it has not by any means been so much the speed of the whale as the before
described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has caused them.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this
world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.

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 CHAPTER 63.
The Crotch.

Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters.
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent
mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length,
which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the
bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the
harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow.
Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as
readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is
customary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called
the first and second irons.
But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected
with the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming drag,
one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of
the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the instantaneous,
violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving the first iron,
it becomes impossible for the harpooneer, however lightning-like in his
movements, to pitch the second iron into him. Nevertheless, as the second
iron is already connected with the line, and the line is running, hence
that weapon must, at all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat,
somehow and somewhere; else the most terrible jeopardy would involve
all hands. Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in such cases; the spare
coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding chapter) making this feat, in
most instances, prudently practicable. But this critical act is not always
unattended with the saddest and most fatal casualties.
Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror, skittishly
curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them,
and making a prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, in general, is it
possible to secure it again until the whale is fairly captured and a corpse.

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Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is supplied
with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first one be
ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are faithfully
narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several most important,
however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be painted.

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 CHAPTER 64.
Stubb’s Supper.

Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm;
so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of
towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our
thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly
toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it
seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals; good evidence was
hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we moved. For, upon
the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they call it, in China, four or five
laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a
mile an hour; but this grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if
laden with pig-lead in bulk.
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod’s main-
rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab dropping
one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the
heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for securing it for
the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, went his way into the
cabin, and did not come forward again until morning.
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature
was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed
working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby
Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales were brought
to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac
object. Very soon you would have thought from the sound on the Pequod’s
decks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy
chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the port-
holes. But by those clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to
be moored. Tied by the head to the stern, and by the tail to the bows, the
whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel’s and seen through
the darkness of the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the
two—ship and whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks,

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whereof one reclines while the other remains standing.*

*A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,
is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively
heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death,
causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot
get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty
is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden
float at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other end is
secured to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise
on the other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the
chain is readily made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at
last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction
with its broad flukes or lobes.
If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be
known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed
an unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was
he in that the staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned to him
for the time the sole management of affairs. One small, helping cause of
all this liveliness in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a
high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish
thing to his palate.
“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut
me one from his small!”
Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a
general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the
enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing
the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these
Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the
Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering extremity of
the body.
About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two
lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at
the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the
only banqueter on whale’s flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings
with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming
round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few
sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping
of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers’ hearts.

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Peering over the side you could just see them (as before you heard them)
wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on their backs
as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of
a human head. This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous.
How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out
such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all
things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened to the
hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight,
sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry
dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down
every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant
butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other’s
live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also,
with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under
the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair
upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say,
a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks
also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic,
systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be
carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one
or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms,
places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most
hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you
will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial
spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at
sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the
propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.
But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was
going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his
own epicurean lips.
“Cook, cook!—where’s that old Fleece?” he cried at length, widening
his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at
the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance;
“cook, you cook!—sail this way, cook!”
The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously
roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came
shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was
something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well

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scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came
shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after
a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony
floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to
a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb’s sideboard; when, with both
hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his
arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head,
so as to bring his best ear into play.
“Cook,” said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
mouth, “don’t you think this steak is rather overdone? You’ve been beating
this steak too much, cook; it’s too tender. Don’t I always say that to be
good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the
side, don’t you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are
kicking up! Cook, go and talk to ’em; tell ’em they are welcome to help
themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me,
if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here,
take this lantern,” snatching one from his sideboard; “now then, go and
preach to ’em!”
Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck
to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the
sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he
solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling
voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind,
overheard all that was said.
“Fellow-critters: I’se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin’ ob de lip! Massa Stubb say
dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must
stop dat dam racket!”
“Cook,” here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden
slap on the shoulder,—“Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn’t swear
that way when you’re preaching. That’s no way to convert sinners, cook!”
“Who dat? Den preach to him yourself,” sullenly turning to go.
“No, cook; go on, go on.”
“Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:”—
“Right!” exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, “coax ’em to it; try that,” and
Fleece continued.
“Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,
fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness—’top dat dam slappin’ ob de tail!
How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam slappin’ and bitin’

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 Stubb’s Supper.

dare?”
“Cook,” cried Stubb, collaring him, “I won’t have that swearing. Talk
to ’em gentlemanly.”
Once more the sermon proceeded.
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for;
dat is natur, and can’t be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de
pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you
be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now,
look here, bred’ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from
dat whale. Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbour’s mout, I say.
Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on
you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. I know
some o’ you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts
sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to
swaller wid, but to bit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t
get into de scrouge to help demselves.”
“Well done, old Fleece!” cried Stubb, “that’s Christianity; go on.”
“No use goin’ on; de dam willains will keep a scougin’ and slappin’
each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don’t hear one word; no use a-preachin’ to
such dam g’uttons as you call ’em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies
is bottomless; and when dey do get ’em full, dey wont hear you den; for
den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can’t hear not’ing
at all, no more, for eber and eber.”
“Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the
benediction, Fleece, and I’ll away to my supper.”
Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his
shrill voice, and cried—
“Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill
your dam’ bellies ’till dey bust—and den die.”
“Now, cook,” said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; “stand
just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular
attention.”
“All dention,” said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the
desired position.
“Well,” said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; “I shall now go
back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you, cook?”
“What dat do wid de ’teak,” said the old black, testily.
“Silence! How old are you, cook?”
“’Bout ninety, dey say,” he gloomily muttered.

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“And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook,
and don’t know yet how to cook a whale-steak?” rapidly bolting another
mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the
question. “Where were you born, cook?”
“’Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin’ ober de Roanoke.”
“Born in a ferry-boat! That’s queer, too. But I want to know what
country you were born in, cook!”
“Didn’t I say de Roanoke country?” he cried sharply.
“No, you didn’t, cook; but I’ll tell you what I’m coming to, cook.
You must go home and be born over again; you don’t know how to cook a
whale-steak yet.”
“Bress my soul, if I cook noder one,” he growled, angrily, turning
round to depart.
“Come back, cook;—here, hand me those tongs;—now take that bit of
steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be? Take
it, I say”—holding the tongs towards him—“take it, and taste it.”
Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro
muttered, “Best cooked ’teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy.”
“Cook,” said Stubb, squaring himself once more; “do you belong to
the church?”
“Passed one once in Cape-Down,” said the old man sullenly.
“And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town,
where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his
beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and tell
me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?” said Stubb. “Where do you
expect to go to, cook?”
“Go to bed berry soon,” he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
“Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It’s an awful question.
Now what’s your answer?”
“When dis old brack man dies,” said the negro slowly, changing his
whole air and demeanor, “he hisself won’t go nowhere; but some bressed
angel will come and fetch him.”
“Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And
fetch him where?”
“Up dere,” said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and
keeping it there very solemnly.
“So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when
you are dead? But don’t you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets?
Main-top, eh?”

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 Stubb’s Supper.

“Didn’t say dat t’all,” said Fleece, again in the sulks.

“You said up there, didn’t you? and now look yourself, and see where
your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by
crawling through the lubber’s hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don’t get
there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It’s a ticklish
business, but must be done, or else it’s no go. But none of us are in heaven
yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye hear? Hold your
hat in one hand, and clap t’other a’top of your heart, when I’m giving my
orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?—that’s your gizzard! Aloft!
aloft!—that’s it—now you have it. Hold it there now, and pay attention.”
“All ’dention,” said the old black, with both hands placed as desired,
vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at one and
the same time.
“Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,
that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don’t you?
Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for my private
table here, the capstan, I’ll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by
overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal to it with the
other; that done, dish it; d’ye hear? And now to-morrow, cook, when we
are cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have
them put in pickle. As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook.
There, now ye may go.”
But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.
“Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch.
D’ye hear? away you sail, then.—Halloa! stop! make a bow before you
go.—Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast—don’t forget.”
“Wish, by gor! whale eat him, ’stead of him eat whale. I’m bressed
if he ain’t more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself,” muttered the old man,
limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.

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 CHAPTER 65.
The Whale as a Dish.

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp,
and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems
so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and
philosophy of it.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right
Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court
obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten
with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of whale.
Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The meat is
made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned
and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls. The old monks of
Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great porpoise grant from
the crown.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all
hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but
when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet
long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men
like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are
not so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare
old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous
doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly
juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen,
who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel—
that these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of
whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among
the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called “fritters”; which, indeed, they
greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something like old
Amsterdam housewives’ dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have
such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep
his hands off.

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 The Whale as a Dish.

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his

exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be
delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the
buffalo’s (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid
of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the
transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of
its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless,
many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other substance,
and then partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common
thing for the seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let
them fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine
dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump,
whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),
they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess,
in flavor somewhat resembling calves’ head, which is quite a dish among
some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the
epicures, by continually dining upon calves’ brains, by and by get to have
a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf’s head from their
own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is
the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf’s head before
him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a
sort of reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu Brute!” expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence;
that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before
mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the
sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever
murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if
he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and
he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of
a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long
rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the
cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be
more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his
cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident
Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened
gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated
livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.

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But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized
and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle
made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating?
And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose?
With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of
the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his
circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a
resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.

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 CHAPTER 66.
The Shark Massacre.

When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at
least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For
that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed;
and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to
take in all sail; lash the helm a’lee; and then send every one below to his
hammock till daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-
watches shall be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the
crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that all goes well.
But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will
not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round
the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch,
little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other
parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely abound,
their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by
vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure
notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them
into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the
Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights,
to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the
whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper
was concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman
came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for
immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering
three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea,
these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant
murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls,
seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed
and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and
this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe.

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They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but

like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed
swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided
by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the
corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic
vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be
called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the
sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg’s hand off,
when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.
*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best
steel; is about the bigness of a man’s spread hand; and in general shape,
corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its sides
are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower.
This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is
occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty
to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.
“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage,
agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket
god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”

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 CHAPTER 67.
Cutting In.

It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio

professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was
turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have
thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.
In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous
things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which
no single man can possibly lift—this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up
to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest
point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end of the hawser-like rope
winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to the windlass,
and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale; to
this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds,
was attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and
Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the
body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two side-
fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook
is inserted, and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now
commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly,
the entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the
nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and
nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over
to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a
helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard;
with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale,
and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged
semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes
the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from
the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For
the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale
rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly
peels off along the line called the “scarf,” simultaneously cut by the spades

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of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off,
and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and
higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass
then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping
mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every one present
must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears
and pitch him headlong overboard.
One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen
weapon called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously
slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into
this hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked so
as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what follows.
Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to stand off,
once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong,
desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completely in twain; so that while
the short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip, called a blanket-
piece, swings clear, and is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward
now resume their song, and while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting
a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly slackened away, and
down goes the first strip through the main hatchway right beneath, into an
unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room. Into this twilight apartment
sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were
a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two
tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass
heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the
mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by
way of assuaging the general friction.

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 CHAPTER 68.
The Blanket.

I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the
whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat,
and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged; but
it is only an opinion.
The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you
know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of
firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges
from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any
creature’s skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in
point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because
you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale’s body
but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if
reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin? True, from the unmarred
dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely
thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of
isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to
being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather
hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in
my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the
printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted
a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales
through their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at
here is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit,
invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the
skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply
ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner
and more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.
Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this
skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of
one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity,

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or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths,
and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of
the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere
integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the
ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff
of the whale’s skin.
In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among
the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely
crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array,
something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these
marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above
mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon
the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant
eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground
for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those
mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the
proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of
the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck
with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous
hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those
mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.
This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides
all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents,
he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced
in great part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude
scratches, altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those
New England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the
marks of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs—I should
say, that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this
particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably
made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them
in the large, full-grown bulls of the species.
A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of
the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces,
called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and
significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real
blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head,
and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his
body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers,

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in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale,
say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy
surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean
waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish,
whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under
the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire;
whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood,
and he dies. How wonderful is it then—except after explanation—that this
great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to
man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips
for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they
are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the
hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising
is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar
whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of
interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale!
Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world
without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole.
Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man!
in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of
erections, how few are domed like St. Peter’s! of creatures, how few vast
as the whale!

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 CHAPTER 69.
The Funeral.

“Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!”

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body
of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed
in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal.
Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed
by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of
screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the
whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from
the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks
and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and
hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath
the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea,
wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till
lost in infinite perspectives.
There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all
in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In
life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure
he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously
do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest
whale is free.
Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or
blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the
swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the
sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s
unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals,
rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards,
perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a
vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held.
There’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of traditions; there’s the
story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth,

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and now not even hovering in the air! There’s orthodoxy!

Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror
to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than
the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe
in them.

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 CHAPTER 70.
The Sphynx.

It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the
body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm
Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale
surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;
on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that very
place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must
operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and
his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discoloured, rolling, and
oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these
untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in
that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into
the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear of all
adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical point
hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s
boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a
cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it
is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown
leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale’s head embraces nearly
one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as
that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as
to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers’ scales.
The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head
was hoisted against the ship’s side—about half way out of the sea, so that
it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there
with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the enormous
downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that
side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that blood-dripping head
hung to the Pequod’s waist like the giant Holofernes’s from the girdle of
Judith.

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 The Sphynx.

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen
went below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but
now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus,
was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the
sea.
A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze
over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb’s long
spade—still remaining there after the whale’s decapitation—and striking it
into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutch-
wise under one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed
on this head.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast
and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a
beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head,
and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived
the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved
amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that
awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where
bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless
mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked
lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank
beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false
to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the
midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate
maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings
shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband
to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the
planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
“Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That
lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man.—
Where away?”
“Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze
to us!

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“Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that
way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul
of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the
smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in
mind.”

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 CHAPTER 71.
The Jeroboam’s Story.

Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than the
ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.
By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and manned mast-
heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and
shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the
Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what
response would be made.
Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of
the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which signals
being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels attached,
every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders are
enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at considerable
distances and with no small facility.
The Pequod’s signal was at last responded to by the stranger’s setting
her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring
her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee, and
lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being rigged
by Starbuck’s order to accommodate the visiting captain, the stranger in
question waved his hand from his boat’s stern in token of that proceeding
being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant
epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting
the Pequod’s company. For, though himself and boat’s crew remained
untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible
sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet conscientiously adhering to the
timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct
contact with the Pequod.
But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an
interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam’s boat
by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod,
as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh),
with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by the sudden onset

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of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some way ahead; but
would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings again. Subject to
this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a conversation was
sustained between the two parties; but at intervals not without still another
interruption of a very different sort.
Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam’s boat, was a man of a singular
appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities
make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all
over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long-
skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped him; the
overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled,
fanatic delirium was in his eyes.
So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed—
“That’s he! that’s he!—the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho’s
company told us of!” Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the
Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time previous when
the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account and what was
subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained
a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story
was this:
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of
Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,
secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way
of a trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which
he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing gunpowder,
was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim
having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with
that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common-
sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the
Jeroboam’s whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon
the ship’s getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet.
He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the
captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he set
himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of
all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he declared these
things;—the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited imagination, and
all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united to invest this Gabriel
in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of
sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a man, however,

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was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he refused to work
except when he pleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been
rid of him; but apprised that that individual’s intention was to land him in
the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and
vials—devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case
this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples
among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him
if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain. He was
therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be
any way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it came to pass that
Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The consequence of all this
was, that the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and mates;
and since the epidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand than ever;
declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at his sole command; nor
should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly
poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience
to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god.
Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true.
Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless
self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceiving
and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to the Pequod.
“I fear not thy epidemic, man,” said Ahab from the bulwarks, to
Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat’s stern; “come on board.”
But now Gabriel started to his feet.
“Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible
plague!”
“Gabriel! Gabriel!” cried Captain Mayhew; “thou must either—”
But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings
drowned all speech.
“Hast thou seen the White Whale?” demanded Ahab, when the boat
drifted back.
“Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the
horrible tail!”
“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that—” But again the boat tore ahead as if
dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession
of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices of
the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm
whale’s head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing it
with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to

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warrant.
When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from
Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed
leagued with him.
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon
speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence
of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this
intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the
White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity,
pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God
incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year or two
afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey,
the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain
himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all
the archangel’s denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in
persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after
much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last
succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to
the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and
hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of
his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat’s
bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild
exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his
poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick,
fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the
oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten
bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at
the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a
hair of any oarsman’s head; but the mate for ever sank.
It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the Sperm-
Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any. Sometimes,
nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat’s
bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the headsman stands, is
torn from its place and accompanies the body. But strangest of all is the
circumstance, that in more instances than one, when the body has been
recovered, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the man being stark
dead.
The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly

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descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek—“The vial! the vial!”
Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the
whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence;
because his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically fore-
announced it, instead of only making a general prophecy, which any one
might have done, and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the
wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to the ship.
Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions
to him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which
Ahab answered—“Aye.” Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started
to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with
downward pointed finger—“Think, think of the blasphemer—dead, and
down there!—beware of the blasphemer’s end!”
Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, “Captain, I have just
bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy officers, if I
mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.”
Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.
Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received after
attaining an age of two or three years or more.
Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely
tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in
consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter,
Death himself might well have been the post-boy.
“Can’st not read it?” cried Ahab. “Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it’s but
a dim scrawl;—what’s this?” As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a
long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert
the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any
closer to the ship.
Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “Mr. Har—yes, Mr.
Harry—(a woman’s pinny hand,—the man’s wife, I’ll wager)—Aye—Mr.
Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;—why it’s Macey, and he’s dead!”
“Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,” sighed Mayhew; “but
let me have it.”
“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going that
way.”
“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by

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now to receive it”; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s hands, he
caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat. But as
he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted
a little towards the ship’s stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly
ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized
the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into
the ship. It fell at Ahab’s feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to
give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot
away from the Pequod.
As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket
of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
affair.

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 CHAPTER 72.
The Monkey-Rope.

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is

much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are
wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying
in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done
everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description
of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that
upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was
inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But
how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that
hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty
it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special
purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the
harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping
operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely
submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there,
some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders
about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves
like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg
figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes,
at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better
chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.
Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-
oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to
attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead
whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by
a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down
there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope,
attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we
proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends;
fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one.

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So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and
should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor
demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his
wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my
own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous
liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,
that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive
that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of
two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s
mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster
and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in
Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an
injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then
from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still
further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise
situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or
other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your
banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison
in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you
may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life.
But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he
jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly
forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*
*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the
Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This
improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than
Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible
guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.
I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the
whale and the ship—where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant
rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy
he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during
the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before
pent blood which began to flow from the carcass—the rabid creatures
swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.
And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed
them aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible
were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise

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miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.

Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a
ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them.
Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked
the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a
peculiarly ferocious shark—he was provided with still another protection.
Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego and Daggoo
continually flourished over his head a couple of keen whale-spades,
wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could reach. This
procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and benevolent of
them. They meant Queequeg’s best happiness, I admit; but in their hasty
zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks
were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet
spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail. But poor
Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron
hook—poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his
life into the hands of his gods.
Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in
and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it,
after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this
whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks,
your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades
you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.
But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For now,
as with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs up
the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over the side;
the steward advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory glance hands
him—what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye gods! hands him a cup
of tepid ginger and water!
“Ginger? Do I smell ginger?” suspiciously asked Stubb, coming
near. “Yes, this must be ginger,” peering into the as yet untasted cup.
Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards
the astonished steward slowly saying, “Ginger? ginger? and will you have
the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger?
Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in
this shivering cannibal? Ginger!—what the devil is ginger? Sea-coal?
firewood?—lucifer matches?—tinder?—gunpowder?—what the devil is
ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg here.”
“There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this

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business,” he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just

come from forward. “Will you look at that kannakin, sir: smell of it, if you
please.” Then watching the mate’s countenance, he added, “The steward,
Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap to Queequeg,
there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an apothecary, sir? and may
I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by which he blows back the life into
a half-drowned man?”
“I trust not,” said Starbuck, “it is poor stuff enough.”
“Aye, aye, steward,” cried Stubb, “we’ll teach you to drug a
harpooneer; none of your apothecary’s medicine here; you want to poison
us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder us
all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?”
“It was not me,” cried Dough-Boy, “it was Aunt Charity that brought
the ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits,
but only this ginger-jub—so she called it.”
“Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye to
the lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr. Starbuck.
It is the captain’s orders—grog for the harpooneer on a whale.”
“Enough,” replied Starbuck, “only don’t hit him again, but—”
“Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something
of that sort; and this fellow’s a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?”
“Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself.”
When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and
a sort of tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and was
handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity’s gift, and that was
freely given to the waves.

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

It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale’s
prodigious head hanging to the Pequod’s side. But we must let it continue
hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it. For the
present other matters press, and the best we can do now for the head, is to
pray heaven the tackles may hold.
Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually
drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit, gave
unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan
that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking anywhere near.
And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of those inferior
creatures; and though the Pequod was not commissioned to cruise for
them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them near the Crozetts
without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale had been brought
alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the announcement was made
that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if opportunity offered.
Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two
boats, Stubb’s and Flask’s, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further and
further away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at the mast-
head. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of tumultuous
white water, and soon after news came from aloft that one or both the boats
must be fast. An interval passed and the boats were in plain sight, in the
act of being dragged right towards the ship by the towing whale. So close
did the monster come to the hull, that at first it seemed as if he meant it
malice; but suddenly going down in a maelstrom, within three rods of the
planks, he wholly disappeared from view, as if diving under the keel. “Cut,
cut!” was the cry from the ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed
on the point of being brought with a deadly dash against the vessel’s side.
But having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding very
rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulled with
all their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the struggle

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was intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened line in
one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the contending strain
threatened to take them under. But it was only a few feet advance they
sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when instantly, a
swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, as the strained
line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under her bows,
snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its drippings, that the drops fell
like bits of broken glass on the water, while the whale beyond also rose
to sight, and once more the boats were free to fly. But the fagged whale
abated his speed, and blindly altering his course, went round the stern of
the ship towing the two boats after him, so that they performed a complete
circuit.
Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for lance;
and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the multitudes
of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale’s body, rushed to
the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at every new gash, as
the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains that poured from the
smitten rock.
At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
turned upon his back a corpse.
While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his
flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, some
conversation ensued between them.
“I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard,” said
Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so
ignoble a leviathan.
“Wants with it?” said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat’s bow,
“did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm Whale’s head
hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale’s on the
larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never afterwards
capsize?”
“Why not?
“I don’t know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so,
and he seems to know all about ships’ charms. But I sometimes think he’ll
charm the ship to no good at last. I don’t half like that chap, Stubb. Did
you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake’s head,
Stubb?”
“Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a

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

dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look
down there, Flask”—pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both
hands—“Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in disguise.
Do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been stowed
away on board ship? He’s the devil, I say. The reason why you don’t see
his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries it coiled away in
his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of it, he’s always wanting
oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots.”
“He sleeps in his boots, don’t he? He hasn’t got any hammock; but
I’ve seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging.”
“No doubt, and it’s because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye
see, in the eye of the rigging.”
“What’s the old man have so much to do with him for?”
“Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose.”
“Bargain?—about what?”
“Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and
the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away his
silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then he’ll surrender
Moby Dick.”
“Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?”
“I don’t know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the old flag-
ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and
inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and asked
the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching his hoofs, up and says, ‘I
want John.’ ‘What for?’ says the old governor. ‘What business is that of
yours,’ says the devil, getting mad,—‘I want to use him.’ ‘Take him,’ says
the governor—and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn’t give John the
Asiatic cholera before he got through with him, I’ll eat this whale in one
mouthful. But look sharp—ain’t you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead,
and let’s get the whale alongside.”
“I think I remember some such story as you were telling,” said Flask,
when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
towards the ship, “but I can’t remember where.”
“Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded
soldadoes? Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?”
“No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me,
Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was
the same you say is now on board the Pequod?”

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“Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn’t the devil
live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see
any parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a latch-
key to get into the admiral’s cabin, don’t you suppose he can crawl into a
porthole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask?”
“How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?”
“Do you see that mainmast there?” pointing to the ship; “well, that’s
the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod’s hold, and string
along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that wouldn’t
begin to be Fedallah’s age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn’t show
hoops enough to make oughts enough.”
“But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you
meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if he’s so
old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going to live for ever,
what good will it do to pitch him overboard—tell me that?
“Give him a good ducking, anyhow.”
“But he’d crawl back.”
“Duck him again; and keep ducking him.”
“Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though—yes,
and drown you—what then?”
“I should like to see him try it; I’d give him such a pair of black
eyes that he wouldn’t dare to show his face in the admiral’s cabin again
for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and
hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil,
Flask; so you suppose I’m afraid of the devil? Who’s afraid of him, except
the old governor who daresn’t catch him and put him in double-darbies, as
he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping people; aye, and signed a
bond with him, that all the people the devil kidnapped, he’d roast for him?
There’s a governor!”
“Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?”
“Do I suppose it? You’ll know it before long, Flask. But I am going
now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very suspicious
going on, I’ll just take him by the nape of his neck, and say—Look here,
Beelzebub, you don’t do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I’ll make
a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such
a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short off at the stump—
do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that
queer fashion, he’ll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his
tail between his legs.”

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

“And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?”

“Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;—what else?”
“Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along,
Stubb?”
“Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship.”
The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side,
where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for
securing him.
“Didn’t I tell you so?” said Flask; “yes, you’ll soon see this right
whale’s head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti’s.”
In good time, Flask’s saying proved true. As before, the Pequod
steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the
counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely
strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s
head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s
and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for
ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads
overboard, and then you will float light and right.
In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the
ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the case
of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off whole,
but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed and hoisted
on deck, with all the well known black bone attached to what is called the
crown-piece. But nothing like this, in the present case, had been done. The
carcases of both whales had dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a
little resembled a mule carrying a pair of overburdening panniers.
Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale’s head, and
ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own
hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow;
while, if the Parsee’s shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with,
and lengthen Ahab’s. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish speculations were
bandied among them, concerning all these passing things.

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

Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us join
them, and lay together our own.
Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right
Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly
hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all
the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them
is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment
hanging from the Pequod’s side; and as we may freely go from one to the
other, by merely stepping across the deck:—where, I should like to know,
will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here?
In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these
heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain
mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale’s which the Right Whale’s
sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale’s head. As you
behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point
of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is heightened
by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the summit, giving token of
advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen
technically call a “grey-headed whale.”
Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads—namely, the
two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of the
head, and low down, near the angle of either whale’s jaw, if you narrowly
search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a
young colt’s eye; so out of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head.
Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale’s eyes, it
is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more
than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale’s eyes
corresponds to that of a man’s ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, how
it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through your ears.
You would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of vision
in advance of the straight side-line of sight; and about thirty more behind

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it. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, with dagger
uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more than if
he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two
backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for
what is it that makes the front of a man—what, indeed, but his eyes?
Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the
eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to
produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the
whale’s eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid
head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating two
lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions
which each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore, must see
one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that side;
while all between must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man
may, in effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with
two joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes
are separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing
the view. This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing always to be
borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in some
subsequent scenes.
A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning
this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with
a hint. So long as a man’s eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is
involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever
objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one’s experience will teach
him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at
one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to
examine any two things—however large or however small—at one and the
same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side and touch each
other. But if you now come to separate these two objects, and surround
each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them, in
such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly
excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it, then, with the
whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is
his brain so much more comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man’s,
that he can at the same moment of time attentively examine two distinct
prospects, one on one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite
direction? If he can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man
were able simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct

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problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in

this comparison.
It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer frights, so
common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the
helpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically
opposite powers of vision must involve them.
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an
entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for hours,
and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf whatever; and
into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it.
It is lodged a little behind the eye. With respect to their ears, this important
difference is to be observed between the sperm whale and the right. While
the ear of the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely
and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible
from without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world
through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is
smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s
great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would
that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why
then do you try to “enlarge” your mind? Subtilize it.
Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at
hand, cant over the sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up; then,
ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and
were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with a
lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his
stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where
we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to
ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy
as bridal satins.
But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which
seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge
at one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead,
and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas!
it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall
with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms
down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with

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his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-
angles with his body, for all the world like a ship’s jib-boom. This whale is
not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and
so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in
that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt,
imprecate lock-jaws upon him.
In most cases this lower jaw—being easily unhinged by a practised
artist—is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting
the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with
which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes,
umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.
With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an
anchor; and when the proper time comes—some few days after the other
work—Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists,
are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the
gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged
from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old
oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in
old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial
fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists
for building houses.

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

Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale’s
head.
As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may be compared
to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly
rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale’s head bears a rather
inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years
ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker’s last.
And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with
the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her
progeny.
But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different
aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and
look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole head for
an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its sounding-
board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested, comb-
like incrustation on the top of the mass—this green, barnacled thing, which
the Greenlanders call the “crown,” and the Southern fishers the “bonnet”
of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the
head for the trunk of some huge oak, with a bird’s nest in its crotch. At
any rate, when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet,
such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your
fancy has been fixed by the technical term “crown” also bestowed upon
it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how this mighty
monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has
been put together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be
a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that
hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by
carpenter’s measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk
and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.
The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important

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 The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.

interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the
beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into
the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be
the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah
went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle,
as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy
sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats
of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the
upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which
have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are
fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water,
and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he
goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of bone,
as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves,
hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the creature’s
age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of
this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical
probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to
the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous
“whiskers” inside of the whale’s mouth;* another, “hogs’ bristles”; a third
old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: “There are
about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop,
which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.”
*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or
rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper
part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts impart a rather
brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance.
As every one knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,”
“blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other
stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has long been on
the decline. It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was in its glory, the
farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved
about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a
shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same
jaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,
standing in the Right Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing

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all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you

not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon
its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest
Turkey—the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of the mouth. It
is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting it on deck. This
particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I should say it was a
six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that amount of oil.
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with—
that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely different
heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale’s there is no great well of
sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like
the Sperm Whale’s. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds
of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the
Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet
lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will
not be very long in following.
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale’s there? It is the
same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem
now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity,
born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head’s
expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the
vessel’s side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head
seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This
Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian,
who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.

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 CHAPTER 76.
The Battering-Ram.

Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I would have you, as
a sensible physiologist, simply—particularly remark its front aspect, in all
its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate it now with the
sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate
of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point;
for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for
ever remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true
events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.
You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm
Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to
the water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably
backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which
receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely
under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth
were entirely under your chin. Moreover you observe that the whale has
no external nose; and that what nose he has—his spout hole—is on the
top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides of his
head, nearly one third of his entire length from the front. Wherefore, you
must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale’s head is a
dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort
whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme,
lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest
vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do
you come to the full cranial development. So that this whole enormous
boneless mass is as one wad. Finally, though, as will soon be revealed,
its contents partly comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to
be apprised of the nature of the substance which so impregnably invests
all that apparent effeminacy. In some previous place I have described to
you how the blubber wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an
orange. Just so with the head; but with this difference: about the head this
envelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by

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any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest
lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is
as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses’ hoofs.
I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.
Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded
Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks,
what do the sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point
of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No,
they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the
thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the
jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-
bars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But
supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary
fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will,
of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know,
has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable
manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface,
and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water; considering the
unobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering the unique interior of
his head; it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical
lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown
and unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible
to atmospheric distension and contraction. If this be so, fancy the
irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive
of all elements contributes.
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable
wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass
of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—by
the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that
when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations
of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall
show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will
have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that
though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien,
and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair
of your eye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial
and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants
only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What
befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess’s veil at Lais?

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 CHAPTER 77.
The Great Heidelburgh Tun.

Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must
know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated
upon.
Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you may, on
an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower
is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an
unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the
expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the
forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two
almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal wall
of a thick tendinous substance.
*Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical
mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a solid
which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep
inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides.
The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense
honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten
thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its
whole extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as
the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great
tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale’s vast plaited forehead
forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his
wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished
with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun of
the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages; namely,
the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous
state. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of
the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure
to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful
crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just forming in
water. A large whale’s case generally yields about five hundred gallons

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of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is

spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the
ticklish business of securing what you can.
I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun
was coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not
possibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like
the lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm Whale’s
case.
It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since—as has
been elsewhere set forth—the head embraces one third of the whole length
of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty feet for a good sized
whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for the depth of the tun, when it
is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a ship’s side.
As in decapitating the whale, the operator’s instrument is brought
close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the
spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a
careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out
its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, also, which
is at last elevated out of the water, and retained in that position by the
enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen combinations, on one side, make
quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter.
Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous
and—in this particular instance—almost fatal operation whereby the
Sperm Whale’s great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.

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 CHAPTER 78.
Cistern and Buckets.

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect
posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part
where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a
light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling through
a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down from
the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly
held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the
Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the
head. There—still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom
he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good
people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade
being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin
breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very heedfully, like a
treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find where the
gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout iron-
bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of
the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held
by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp
of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.
Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket
into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen
at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid’s
pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted
vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large
tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same round until
the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram
his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until
some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.
Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this
way; several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at
once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild

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Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-
handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether
the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the
Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular
reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as
the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up—my God! poor
Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped
head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible
oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!
“Man overboard!” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation
first came to his senses. “Swing the bucket this way!” and putting one foot
into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself,
the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before Tashtego
could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there was a terrible
tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing
and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with
some momentous idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously
revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.
At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing
the whip—which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles—a
sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all, one
of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast
vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship reeled
and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon
which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be on the
point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent motions of
the head.
“Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with
one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop,
he would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line,
rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the
buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.
“In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “are you ramming home a
cartridge there?—Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound
bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye!”
“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket.
Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous
mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool;
the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering

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 Cistern and Buckets.

copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the sailors’
heads, and now over the water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray,
was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor, buried-
alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea! But
hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with a
boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over
the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg
had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every
eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of
either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a
boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.
“Ha! ha!” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging
perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm
thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust
forth from the grass over a grave.
“Both! both!—it is both!”—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout;
and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and
with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting
boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was long in
coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.
Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after
the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side
lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping
his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled
out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him,
a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be,
and might occasion great trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by a
dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that
with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way—head foremost. As
for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of
Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was
successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and
apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be
forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and
boxing, riding and rowing.
I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure
to seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may
have either seen or heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore; an

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Moby Dick

accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than the
Indian’s, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the Sperm
Whale’s well.
But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest
and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of
a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at all, but I
have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been nearly emptied
of its lighter contents, leaving little but the dense tendinous wall of the
well—a double welded, hammered substance, as I have before said, much
heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost.
But the tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present
instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining
undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed,
affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the
run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running delivery, so it was.
Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and
sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be
recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey
in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning
too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think
ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished
there?

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 CHAPTER 79.
The Prairie.

To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has
as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful
as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar,
or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the
Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats of
the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of horses,
birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the modifications of
expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim
failed to throw out some hints touching the phrenological characteristics
of other beings than man. Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a
pioneer, in the application of these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will
do my endeavor. I try all things; I achieve what I can.
Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous
creature. He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and
most conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies
and finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that
its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect the
countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola,
monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the
completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in keeping
without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the nose from
Phidias’s marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless,
Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so stately,
that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in
him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale
would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail
round his vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are
never insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent
conceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the
mightiest royal beadle on his throne.

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In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view

to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This
aspect is sublime.
In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a
touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the
elephant’s brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as
that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to their decrees. It
signifies—“God: done this day by my hand.” But in most creatures, nay
in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying
along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare’s or
Melancthon’s rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves
seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the
forehead’s wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending
there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer.
But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity
inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that
full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly
than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one
point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or
mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament
of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom
of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow
diminish; though that way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon
you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic
depression in the forehead’s middle, which, in man, is Lavater’s mark of
genius.
But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever
written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in
his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his
pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale
been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by
their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because
the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least
it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter
any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the
merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now
egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove’s
high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.

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 The Prairie.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there

is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s
face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable.
If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read
the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings,
how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm
Whale’s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.

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 CHAPTER 80.
The Nut.

If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his

brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square.
In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in
length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side of
a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in life—as
we have elsewhere seen—this inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost
squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the
high end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under
the long floor of this crater—in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches
in length and as many in depth—reposes the mere handful of this monster’s
brain. The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it
is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within
the amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it secreted
in him, that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the
Sperm Whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed
by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses,
and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the
idea of his general might to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his
intelligence.
It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the
creature’s living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain, you
can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that are
mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.
If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of its
rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its resemblance to the
human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from the same point of view.
Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among
a plate of men’s skulls, and you would involuntarily confound it with them;
and remarking the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological
phrase you would say—This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And
by those negations, considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious

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bulk and power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the
most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.
But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale’s proper brain,
you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another
idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped’s spine, you
will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebræ to a strung necklace of
dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is
a German conceit, that the vertebræ are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But
the curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first
men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton
of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebræ of which he was inlaying, in a
sort of basso-relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that
the phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not pushing their
investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe
that much of a man’s character will be found betokened in his backbone. I
would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist
of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as
in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.
Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His
cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that
vertebra the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across,
being eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards.
As it passes through the remaining vertebræ the canal tapers in size, but
for a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course, this
canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance—the spinal
cord—as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain. And what
is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain’s cavity, the
spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the
brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey
and map out the whale’s spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light,
the wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than
compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord.
But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I
would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the
Sperm Whale’s hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of
the larger vertebræ, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould
of it. From its relative situation then, I should call this high hump the organ
of firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale. And that the great
monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to know.

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 CHAPTER 81.
The Pequod Meets The Virgin.

The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick
De Deer, master, of Bremen.
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and
Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide intervals
of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the
Pacific.
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.
While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping
a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the
bows instead of the stern.
“What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, pointing to
something wavingly held by the German. “Impossible!—a lamp-feeder!”
“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he’s
coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don’t you see that big tin
can there alongside of him?—that’s his boiling water. Oh! he’s all right, is
the Yarman.”
“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
He’s out of oil, and has come a-begging.”
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on
the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the
old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a
thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did
indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at
all heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German
soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately
turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some
remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in profound
darkness—his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a single flying-
fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding by hinting that his
ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a clean one (that

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is, an empty one), well deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his
ship’s side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the mast-
heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without
pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed round his
boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod’s
keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they
were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind, rubbing
their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness. They left a
great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great wide parchment
upon the sea.
Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as
by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted
with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to
the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such
venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their
wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the
white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell
formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and
laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in
torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which
seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters
behind him to upbubble.
“Who’s got some paregoric?” said Stubb, “he has the stomach-ache,
I’m afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse
winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It’s the first foul wind I
ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before? it
must be, he’s lost his tiller.”
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a
deck load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her
way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly
turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious
wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost that
fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were hard to say.
“Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for that wounded
arm,” cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.

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“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. “Give way, or the
German will have him.”
With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this one
fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most valuable
whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going with
such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At
this juncture the Pequod’s keels had shot by the three German boats last
lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick’s boat still led the
chase, though every moment neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing
they feared, was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he would
be enabled to dart his iron before they could completely overtake and pass
him. As for Derick, he seemed quite confident that this would be the case,
and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other
boats.
“The ungracious and ungrateful dog!” cried Starbuck; “he mocks and
dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!”—
then in his old intense whisper—“Give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!”
“I tell ye what it is, men”—cried Stubb to his crew—“it’s against my
religion to get mad; but I’d like to eat that villainous Yarman—Pull—won’t
ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love brandy? A hogshead
of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don’t some of ye burst a
blood-vessel? Who’s that been dropping an anchor overboard—we don’t
budge an inch—we’re becalmed. Halloo, here’s grass growing in the boat’s
bottom—and by the Lord, the mast there’s budding. This won’t do, boys.
Look at that Yarman! The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or
not?”
“Oh! see the suds he makes!” cried Flask, dancing up and down—
“What a hump—Oh, do pile on the beef—lays like a log! Oh! my lads,
do spring—slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads—baked
clams and muffins—oh, do, do, spring,—he’s a hundred barreller—don’t
lose him now—don’t oh, don’t!—see that Yarman—Oh, won’t ye pull
for your duff, my lads—such a sog! such a sogger! Don’t ye love sperm?
There goes three thousand dollars, men!—a bank!—a whole bank! The
bank of England!—Oh, do, do, do!—What’s that Yarman about now?”
At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at
the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view of
retarding his rivals’ way, and at the same time economically accelerating
his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.
“The unmannerly Dutch dogger!” cried Stubb. “Pull now, men, like

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fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d’ye say,

Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for
the honor of old Gayhead? What d’ye say?”
“I say, pull like god-dam,”—cried the Indian.
Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the
Pequod’s three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,
momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of the
headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up proudly,
occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry of, “There
she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman!
Sail over him!”
But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all their
gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not a righteous
judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade of his
midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free his white-
ash, and while, in consequence, Derick’s boat was nigh to capsizing, and
he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;—that was a good time for
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they took a mortal start forwards,
and slantingly ranged up on the German’s quarter. An instant more, and
all four boats were diagonically in the whale’s immediate wake, while
stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.
It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was
now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual
tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright.
Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at
every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways
rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with
clipped wing making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving
to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive
cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of
the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that
choking respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him
unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and
omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the
Pequod’s boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game,
Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually
long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.
But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three

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tigers—Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo—instinctively sprang to their feet,

and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and
darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket irons
entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and white-fire! The three boats,
in the first fury of the whale’s headlong rush, bumped the German’s aside
with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled
out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.
“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting a passing
glance upon them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently—all right—I
saw some sharks astern—St. Bernard’s dogs, you know—relieve distressed
travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam!
Hurrah!—Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar! This
puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain—makes
the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way; and there’s
danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the
way a fellow feels when he’s going to Davy Jones—all a rush down an
endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!”
But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he
tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round
the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them;
while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would
soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught
repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at last—owing to the
perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks of the boats, whence the
three ropes went straight down into the blue—the gunwales of the bows
were almost even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the
air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained
in that attitude, fearful of expending more line, though the position was a
little ticklish. But though boats have been taken down and lost in this way,
yet it is this “holding on,” as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs
of his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan
into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak
of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always
the best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken
whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the
enormous surface of him—in a full grown sperm whale something less
than 2000 square feet—the pressure of the water is immense. We all know
what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under;
even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,

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bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at

least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it
at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores,
and men on board.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort,
nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what
landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity,
the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!
Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it
credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended
like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three
bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly
said—“Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-
spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the
dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot
make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a
spear!” This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the
prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan
had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him from the
Pequod’s fish-spears!
In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent
down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enough
to shade half Xerxes’ army. Who can tell how appalling to the wounded
whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
“Stand by, men; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly
vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by
magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every
oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part from
the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards,
as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are scared from it
into the sea.
“Haul in! Haul in!” cried Starbuck again; “he’s rising.”
The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand’s breadth
could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all
dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship’s
lengths of the hunters.
His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land
animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins,

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whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut
off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities
it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that
when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at
once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by
the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance below the surface,
his life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast
is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior
fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable
period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-
springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled
upon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying flukes, and the
lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from the
new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural spout-
hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted
moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no
vital part of him had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly call
it, was untouched.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part
of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly
revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were
beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest
oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale’s eyes had once
occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there
was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must
die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other
merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that
preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood,
at last he partially disclosed a strangely discoloured bunch or protuberance,
the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.
“A nice spot,” cried Flask; “just let me prick him there once.”
“Avast!” cried Starbuck, “there’s no need of that!”
But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an
ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than
sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury
blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews all
over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask’s boat and marring the bows.
It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by loss of blood,
that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made; lay panting

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on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over
slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his
belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout.
As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some
mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-
column lowers and lowers to the ground—so the last long dying spout of
the whale.
Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body
showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately,
by Starbuck’s orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so that
ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a few
inches beneath them by the cords. By very heedful management, when the
ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was strongly
secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless
artificially upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade,
the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh,
on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of
harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with
the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any kind
to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been some other
unknown reason in the present case fully to account for the ulceration
alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone
being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm
about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? It might have been
darted by some Nor’ West Indian long before America was discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries,
by the ship’s being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea,
owing to the body’s immensely increasing tendency to sink. However,
Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the last; hung
on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship would have been
capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the body; then, when the
command was given to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain
upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened,
that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod
was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the
steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the
ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places,

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by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought

to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the
timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged
ends could not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of
ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the
point of going over.
“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye?” cried Stubb to the body, “don’t be in
such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something or
go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run
one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains.”
“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s heavy
hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing at the
largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when the
exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap, every fastening went
adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.
Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy,
with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the only
whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their
pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you
might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon
specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of
buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest
health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the
warm flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them; even
these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty
Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in
no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his
Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this
incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances
where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale
again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvious.
Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes
a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him
under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New
Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to

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him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know
where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard
from the Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again
lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back,
belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its incredible
power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s spout is so similar to
the Sperm Whale’s, that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it.
And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this
unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four young
keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful
chase.
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.

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 CHAPTER 82.
The Honor and Glory of Whaling.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true

method.
The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches
up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with
its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many
great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other
have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I
myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to
the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by
our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the
knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the
distressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine
story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter
of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the
very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly
advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the maid. It
was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers
of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first
dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now
Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for
many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city’s legends and all the
inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus
slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy
in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this
story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda—indeed, by some
supposed to be indirectly derived from it—is that famous story of St.
George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for
in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together,
and often stand for each other. “Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a

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dragon of the sea,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth,
some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much
subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a
crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster
of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a
Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.
Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though
the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted on
land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance
of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;
and considering that as in Perseus’ case, St. George’s whale might have
crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal
ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse;
bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible with
the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-
called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed
before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that
fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being
planted before the ark of Israel, his horse’s head and both the palms of his
hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him remained.
Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary
guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket
should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let
not the knights of that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say,
have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never
eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred
trowsers we are much better entitled to St. George’s decoration than they.
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that
antique Crockett and Kit Carson—that brawny doer of rejoicing good
deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether
that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere
appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the
inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary whaleman; at
any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I claim him for one
of our clan.
But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more

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ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versâ; certainly
they are very similar. If I claim the demi-god then, why not the prophet?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the
whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal
kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in nothing
short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now
to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one
of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine
Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten
earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When
Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the
world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to
preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal
would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the
creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape
of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom
of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down
in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this
Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a
horseman?
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there’s a member-
roll for you! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like that?

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 CHAPTER 83.
Jonah Historically Regarded.

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the
preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical
story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks
and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times,
equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and
the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those
traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.
One old Sag-Harbor whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the
Hebrew story was this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles,
embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented
Jonah’s whale with two spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with
respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of
that order), concerning which the fishermen have this saying, “A penny roll
would choke him”; his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb’s
anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we
consider Jonah as tombed in the whale’s belly, but as temporarily lodged
in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough in the good
Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a couple
of whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah
might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts,
the Right Whale is toothless.
Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for
his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely
in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric juices. But
this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist
supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a dead
whale—even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned their
dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has been divined
by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboard
from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escape to another vessel
near by, some vessel with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would add,

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possibly called “The Whale,” as some craft are nowadays christened the
“Shark,” the “Gull,” the “Eagle.” Nor have there been wanting learned
exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of
Jonah merely meant a life-preserver—an inflated bag of wind—which the
endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor
Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still another
reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right: Jonah was
swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he
was vomited up somewhere within three days’ journey of Nineveh, a city
on the Tigris, very much more than three days’ journey across from the
nearest point of the Mediterranean coast. How is that?
But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within
that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round
by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage
through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up the
Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the complete
circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the Tigris
waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to swim
in. Besides, this idea of Jonah’s weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so
early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of that great headland
from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make modern
history a liar.
But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his
foolish pride of reason—a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing
that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the sun
and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable,
devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a Portuguese Catholic
priest, this very idea of Jonah’s going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good
Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of the general miracle. And
so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly
believe in the historical story of Jonah. And some three centuries ago, an
English traveller in old Harris’s Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built
in honor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt
without any oil.

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 CHAPTER 84.
Pitchpoling.

To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are anointed;
and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an analogous
operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it to be
doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly be of
no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are hostile;
that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to make the boat
slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing his boat, and one
morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau disappeared, took more
than customary pains in that occupation; crawling under its bottom, where
it hung over the side, and rubbing in the unctuousness as though diligently
seeking to insure a crop of hair from the craft’s bald keel. He seemed to be
working in obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did it remain
unwarranted by the event.
Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down
to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight, as
of Cleopatra’s barges from Actium.
Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb’s was foremost. By great
exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the stricken
whale, without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal flight, with
added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted iron must
sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became imperative to lance the flying
whale, or be content to lose him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was
impossible, he swam so fast and furious. What then remained?
Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and
countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced,
none exceed that fine manœuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small
sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like it. It is only
indispensable with an inveterate running whale; its grand fact and feature
is the wonderful distance to which the long lance is accurately darted from
a violently rocking, jerking boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood
included, the entire spear is some ten or twelve feet in length; the staff is

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much slighter than that of the harpoon, and also of a lighter material—pine.
It is furnished with a small rope called a warp, of considerable length, by
which it can be hauled back to the hand after darting.
But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though
the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it is
seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently successful, on account
of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as compared with
the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. As a general thing,
therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes
into play.
Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate
coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified
to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of
the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead.
Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length
to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the
warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest
unobstructed. Then holding the lance full before his waistband’s middle,
he levels it at the whale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses
the butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon
stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you
somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment
with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans
the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of
sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
“That drove the spigot out of him!” cried Stubb. “’Tis July’s immortal
Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old Orleans
whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego,
lad, I’d have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we’d drink round it! Yea,
verily, hearts alive, we’d brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole
there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff.”
Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated,
the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash.
The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is slackened, and
the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the
monster die.

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 CHAPTER 85.
The Fountain.

That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of
ages before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea,
and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many
sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands
of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching
these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should be, and yet, that down
to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M.
of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a
problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but
vapor—this is surely a noteworthy thing.
Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their gills,
the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is combined
with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod might live
a century, and never once raise its head above the surface. But owing to
his marked internal structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human
being’s, the whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open
atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodical visits to the upper
world. But he cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his
ordinary attitude, the Sperm Whale’s mouth is buried at least eight feet
beneath the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no connexion
with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on
the top of his head.
If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function indispensable
to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element,
which being subsequently brought into contact with the blood imparts to
the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I shall err; though I may
possibly use some superfluous scientific words. Assume it, and it follows
that if all the blood in a man could be aerated with one breath, he might
then seal up his nostrils and not fetch another for a considerable time.
That is to say, he would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it may

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seem, this is precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives,
by intervals, his full hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing
a single breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air; for,
remember, he has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side
of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth
of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are
completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more,
a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him,
just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of
drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical
fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon
it is reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the
otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings
out, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon
rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of
time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays
eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths;
then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths
over again, to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm
him, so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good
his regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will
he finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however, that in
different individuals these rates are different; but in any one they are alike.
Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his spoutings out,
unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere descending for good? How
obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the whale’s rising exposes him to
all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by hook or by net could this vast
leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight.
Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the
victory to thee!
In man, breathing is incessantly going on—one breath only serving for
two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to attend to,
waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the Sperm Whale
only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.
It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole;
if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water, then
I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell
seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all answers
to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged with two

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elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling. But

owing to the mystery of the spout—whether it be water or whether it be
vapor—no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it
is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what
does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea.
Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting
canal, and as that long canal—like the grand Erie Canal—is furnished with
a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward retention of air or the
upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice; unless you
insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through
his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known
any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced
to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the
world is such an excellent listener!
Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is
for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along, horizontally, just
beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little to one side; this curious
canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side of a
street. But the question returns whether this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe;
in other words, whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor
of the exhaled breath, or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water
taken in at the mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that
the mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot
be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through the
spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be,
when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale’s
food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would.
Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time him with your watch, you
will find that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the
periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.
But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out!
You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not tell
water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these
plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all. And as
for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as
to what it is precisely.
The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist
enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from
it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a close

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view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading

all around him. And if at such times you should think that you really
perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know that they are
not merely condensed from its vapor; or how do you know that they are
not those identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure,
which is countersunk into the summit of the whale’s head? For even when
tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with his elevated
hump sun-dried as a dromedary’s in the desert; even then, the whale always
carries a small basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will
sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain.
Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the
precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be peering
into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to this
fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into slight
contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, which will often happen,
your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of the thing so touching
it. And I know one, who coming into still closer contact with the spout,
whether with some scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot say,
the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen,
the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have
heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into
your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do then, it
seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone.
Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides other
reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations touching the
great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him
no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he
is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other whales sometimes
are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am convinced that from the
heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil,
Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible
steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little
treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and
ere long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation
in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while
plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled
attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for the above
supposition.

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 The Fountain.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to
behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild
head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable
contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see it—glorified
by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For,
d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor.
And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine
intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray.
And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or
denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly,
and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither
believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal
eye.

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 CHAPTER 86.
The Tail.

Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, and
the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I celebrate
a tail.
Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale’s tail to begin at that point
of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises upon
its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The compact
round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes,
gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness. At the crotch
or junction, these flukes slightly overlap, then sideways recede from each
other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy between. In no living thing are
the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders
of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tail
will considerably exceed twenty feet across.
The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews;
but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:—upper,
middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and
horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise
between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as anything else,
imparts power to the tail. To the student of old Roman walls, the middle
layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin course of tiles always
alternating with the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique, and
which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strength of the masonry.
But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough,
the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of
muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins and
running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely
contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent measureless force
of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur
to matter, this were the thing to do it.
Nor does this—its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful
flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through

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 The Tail.

a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most

appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony,
but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength
has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over
seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would
be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse
of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that
seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the
Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they
may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical
Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied;
these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any
power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance,
which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his
teachings.
Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether
wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it be in,
its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein no fairy’s
arm can transcend it.
Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping;
Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.
First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan’s tail acts in a
different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles.
In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the
sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body,
and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular
darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-
fins only serve to steer by.
Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only fights
another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his conflicts
with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In striking at a boat,
he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is only inflicted by
the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed air, especially if it descend to
its mark, the stroke is then simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can
withstand it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways
through the opposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the
whale-boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or a dashed
plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the most serious result.

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These submerged side blows are so often received in the fishery, that they
are accounted mere child’s play. Some one strips off a frock, and the hole is
stopped.
Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale
the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect there is a
delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the elephant’s trunk. This
delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of sweeping, when in maidenly
gentleness the whale with a certain soft slowness moves his immense
flukes from side to side upon the surface of the sea; and if he feel but a
sailor’s whisker, woe to that sailor, whiskers and all. What tenderness there
is in that preliminary touch! Had this tail any prehensile power, I should
straightway bethink me of Darmonodes’ elephant that so frequented the
flower-market, and with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels,
and then caressed their zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that
the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard
of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his
trunk and extracted the dart.
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of
the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence
of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth.
But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are
flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion
resounds for miles. You would almost think a great gun had been
discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapor from the spiracle
at his other extremity, you would think that that was the smoke from the
touch-hole.
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes lie
considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely out of
sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into the deeps,
his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the
air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of
view. Excepting the sublime breach—somewhere else to be described—
this peaking of the whale’s flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen
in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail
seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have
I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from
the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what
mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that
of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a

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sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the
east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with
peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment of
adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire
worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I then
testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all beings. For
according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity often hailed the
morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence.
The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the
other are concerned, should not tend to place those two opposite organs on
an equality, much less the creatures to which they respectively belong. For
as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan, so, compared with
Leviathan’s tail, his trunk is but the stalk of a lily. The most direful blow
from the elephant’s trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the
measureless crush and crash of the sperm whale’s ponderous flukes, which
in repeated instances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all
their oars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his
balls.*
*Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale
and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the elephant
stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to the elephant;
nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious similitude;
among these is the spout. It is well known that the elephant will often draw
up water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it, jet it forth in a stream.
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability
to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well
grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd,
so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I have heard
hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that
the whale, indeed, by these methods intelligently conversed with the world.
Nor are there wanting other motions of the whale in his general body, full
of strangeness, and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect
him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will.
But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head?
much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt
see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen.
But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will
about his face, I say again he has no face.

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 CHAPTER 87.
The Grand Armada.

The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from

the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia. In a
continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra,
Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a vast mole, or
rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia, and dividing the long
unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded oriental archipelagoes.
This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports for the convenience of
ships and whales; conspicuous among which are the straits of Sunda and
Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels bound to China from the
west, emerge into the China seas.
Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green
promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond
to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire: and
considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and jewels, and
gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that oriental sea are
enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature, that such treasures,
by the very formation of the land, should at least bear the appearance,
however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping western world.
The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering
fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic,
and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the
obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession
of ships before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day,
have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the
costliest cargoes of the east. But while they freely waive a ceremonial like
this, they do by no means renounce their claim to more solid tribute.
Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the
low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels
sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their
spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have received

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at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs has of late
been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present day, we occasionally
hear of English and American vessels, which, in those waters, have been
remorselessly boarded and pillaged.
With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and
thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and
there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and
gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling season there. By
these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost all the
known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous to descending
upon the Line in the Pacific; where Ahab, though everywhere else foiled
in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the
sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he might most
reasonably be presumed to be haunting it.
But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does
his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time,
now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no
sustenance but what’s in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler.
While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred to
foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries no cargo but
herself and crew, their weapons and their wants. She has a whole lake’s
contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not
altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years’ water in
her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the
Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but
yesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence
it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and
back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval,
may not have sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but
floating seamen like themselves. So that did you carry them the news that
another flood had come; they would only answer—“Well, boys, here’s the
ark!”
Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast
of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of
the ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an
excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more
upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admonished
to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of the land soon

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loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the fresh
cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was descried. Almost
renouncing all thought of falling in with any game hereabouts, the ship had
well nigh entered the straits, when the customary cheering cry was heard
from aloft, and ere long a spectacle of singular magnificence saluted us.
But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with
which of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm
Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached companies,
as in former times, are now frequently met with in extensive herds,
sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost seem as
if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for
mutual assistance and protection. To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale
into such immense caravans, may be imputed the circumstance that even
in the best cruising grounds, you may now sometimes sail for weeks and
months together, without being greeted by a single spout; and then be
suddenly saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and
forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a
continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noon-
day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right Whale,
which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft drooping
boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the Sperm Whale
presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually rising and falling
away to leeward.
Seen from the Pequod’s deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill
of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up into the air,
and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze, showed like the
thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried of a balmy
autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the
mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous
passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon
the plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward
through the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and
swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.
Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their yet
suspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they, that chased
through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy into the

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Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their number. And who
could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Moby Dick himself might
not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped white-elephant in the
coronation procession of the Siamese! So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail,
we sailed along, driving these leviathans before us; when, of a sudden, the
voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly directing attention to something in our
wake.
Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in
our rear. It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling
something like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely
come and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing.
Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his pivot-hole,
crying, “Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets to wet the sails;—Malays,
sir, and after us!”
As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should
fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot
pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the swift
Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase; how very
kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to her own
chosen pursuit,—mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that they were. As
with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck; in his forward turn
beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after one the bloodthirsty
pirates chasing him; some such fancy as the above seemed his. And when
he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the ship was
then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay the route to his
vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate he was now both
chasing and being chased to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd
of remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally
cheering him on with their curses;—when all these conceits had passed
through his brain, Ahab’s brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black
sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able
to drag the firm thing from its place.
But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and
when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod at
last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging
at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers seemed more
to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining upon the ship, than to
rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still
driving on in the wake of the whales, at length they seemed abating their

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speed; gradually the ship neared them; and the wind now dying away, word
was passed to spring to the boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some
presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale, become notified of the
three keels that were after them,—though as yet a mile in their rear,—than
they rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions, so that their
spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with
redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and
after several hours’ pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase,
when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating
token that they were now at last under the influence of that strange
perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in
the whale, they say he is gallied. The compact martial columns in which
they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swimming, were now broken
up in one measureless rout; and like King Porus’ elephants in the Indian
battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with consternation. In all
directions expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming
hither and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed
their distraction of panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those of
their number, who, completely paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like
water-logged dismantled ships on the sea. Had these Leviathans been but a
flock of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they
could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this occasional
timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures. Though banding
together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have
fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when
herded together in the sheepfold of a theatre’s pit, they will, at the slightest
alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling,
jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore,
withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for
there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by
the madness of men.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor
retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is customary in those
cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some one lone whale
on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes’ time, Queequeg’s
harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted blinding spray in our faces, and
then running away with us like light, steered straight for the heart of the

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herd. Though such a movement on the part of the whale struck under such
circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented; and indeed is almost always
more or less anticipated; yet does it present one of the more perilous
vicissitudes of the fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and
deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only
exist in a delirious throb.
As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power
of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we
thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the
crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was like a
ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer through their
complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what moment it may be
locked in and crushed.
But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off
from this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away
from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the
time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of our way
whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for there was no time to
make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty
was now altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the shouting
part of the business. “Out of the way, Commodore!” cried one, to a great
dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface, and for an instant
threatened to swamp us. “Hard down with your tail, there!” cried a second
to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cooling himself
with his own fan-like extremity.
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented
by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood of
equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross each other’s
grain at right angles; a line of considerable length is then attached to the
middle of this block, and the other end of the line being looped, it can in
a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly among gallied whales
that this drugg is used. For then, more whales are close round you than
you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not every day
encountered; while you may, then, you must kill all you can. And if you
cannot kill them all at once, you must wing them, so that they can be
afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the
drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them.
The first and second were successfully darted, and we saw the whales
staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of

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the towing drugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and
ball. But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy
wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat, and in an instant
tore it out and carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat’s bottom as
the seat slid from under him. On both sides the sea came in at the wounded
planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped
the leaks for the time.
It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were it
not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale’s way greatly diminished;
moreover, that as we went still further and further from the circumference
of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So that when at last
the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways vanished;
then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we glided between
two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain
torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring
glens between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central
expanse the sea presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek,
produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet
moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at
the heart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld
the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of
whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied
spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic
circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones, and so have
gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing
whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd,
no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch
for a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had only
admitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the centre of the lake, we
were occasionally visited by small tame cows and calves; the women and
children of this routed host.
Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving
outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in
any one of those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the
whole multitude, must have contained at least two or three square miles.
At any rate—though indeed such a test at such a time might be deceptive—
spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that seemed playing up
almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention this circumstance, because,
as if the cows and calves had been purposely locked up in this innermost

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fold; and as if the wide extent of the herd had hitherto prevented them from
learning the precise cause of its stopping; or, possibly, being so young,
unsophisticated, and every way innocent and inexperienced; however it
may have been, these smaller whales—now and then visiting our becalmed
boat from the margin of the lake—evinced a wondrous fearlessness and
confidence, or else a still becharmed panic which it was impossible not to
marvel at. Like household dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to
our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had
suddenly domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck
scratched their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for
the time refrained from darting it.
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still
stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in
those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales,
and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers.
The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly
transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly
gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time;
and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting
upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these
whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit
of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers
also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain
queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen
feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as
yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it
had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all
ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow.
The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the
plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived from foreign
parts.
“Line! line!” cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; “him fast!
him fast!—Who line him! Who struck?—Two whale; one big, one little!”
“What ails ye, man?” cried Starbuck.
“Look-e here,” said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds
of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows
the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the
air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame

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Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not
seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line, with the
maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one, so that the
cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed
divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours in
the deep.*
*The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but
unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation
which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a
time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and
Jacob:—a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously
situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend
upwards from that. When by chance these precious parts in a nursing
whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the mother’s pouring milk and blood
rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich;
it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries. When
overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute more hominum.
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations
and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and
fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled
in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my
being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while
ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and
deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats, still
engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or possibly
carrying on the war within the first circle, where abundance of room
and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight of the
enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro across
the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is sometimes the
custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful and alert, to
seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or maiming his gigantic
tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled cutting-spade, to which
is attached a rope for hauling it back again. A whale wounded (as we
afterwards learned) in this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had
broken away from the boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon
line; and in the extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing
among the revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the

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battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went.

But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed
to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the
intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we perceived that by
one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whale had become
entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he had also run away with the
cutting-spade in him; and while the free end of the rope attached to that
weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the harpoon-line round
his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose from his flesh. So that
tormented to madness, he was now churning through the water, violently
flailing with his flexible tail, and tossing the keen spade about him,
wounding and murdering his own comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake began
to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by half spent
billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to heave and swell;
the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished; in more and more
contracting orbits the whales in the more central circles began to swim in
thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was departing. A low advancing
hum was soon heard; and then like to the tumultuous masses of block-ice
when the great river Hudson breaks up in Spring, the entire host of whales
came tumbling upon their inner centre, as if to pile themselves up in one
common mountain. Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places;
Starbuck taking the stern.
“Oars! Oars!” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm—“gripe your
oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off,
you Queequeg—the whale there!—prick him!—hit him! Stand up—stand
up, and stay so! Spring, men—pull, men; never mind their backs—scrape
them!—scrape away!”
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks,
leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate
endeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way
rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching for another outlet. After
many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly glided into what had
just been one of the outer circles, but now crossed by random whales,
all violently making for one centre. This lucky salvation was cheaply
purchased by the loss of Queequeg’s hat, who, while standing in the bows
to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from his head by the

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air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes close by.
Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it
soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having
clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless; but
the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged whales might
be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask had killed and
waifed. The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of which are carried
by every boat; and which, when additional game is at hand, are inserted
upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both to mark its place on
the sea, and also as token of prior possession, should the boats of any other
ship draw near.
The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious
saying in the Fishery,—the more whales the less fish. Of all the drugged
whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for the time,
but only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft than the
Pequod.

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 CHAPTER 88.
Schools and Schoolmasters.

The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm

Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those
vast aggregations.
Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as
must have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.
Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those
composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young
vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated.
In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably
see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm,
evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his
ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about
over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces
and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman and
his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest
leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not more than
one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are comparatively
delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen yards round the
waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the whole they are
hereditarily entitled to en bon point.
It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in leisurely
search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower of
the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from spending
the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of all unpleasant
weariness and warmth. By the time they have lounged up and down the
promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in
anticipation of the cool season there, and so evade the other excessive
temperature of the year.
When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange

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suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming
that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with
what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High
times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to
invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the Bashaw will,
he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed; for, alas! all
fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible
duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes
come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower
jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy
like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured
having the deep scars of these encounters,—furrowed heads, broken teeth,
scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away
at the first rush of the harem’s lord, then is it very diverting to watch that
lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there
awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomon
devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines. Granting other
whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these
Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and
hence their unctuousness is small. As for the sons and the daughters they
beget, why, those sons and daughters must take care of themselves; at
least, with only the maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving
lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery,
however much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his
anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good time,
nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps increase;
as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude
overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love
for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory
stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary,
sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels
saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous
errors.
Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so is
the lord and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster.
It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably satirical, that after
going to school himself, he should then go abroad inculcating not what

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he learned there, but the folly of it. His title, schoolmaster, would very
naturally seem derived from the name bestowed upon the harem itself,
but some have surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of
Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed
himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was
in his younger days, and what was the nature of those occult lessons he
inculcated into some of his pupils.
The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales.
Almost universally, a lone whale—as a solitary Leviathan is called—
proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he
will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in
the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so
many moody secrets.
The schools composing none but young and vigorous males,
previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For
while those female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or
forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of all
Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter; excepting
those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these
will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.
The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like
a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness,
tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent
underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at
Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence though, and when
about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately go about in quest of
settlements, that is, harems.
Another point of difference between the male and female schools is
still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a Forty-barrel-bull—
poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike a member of the harem
school, and her companions swim around her with every token of concern,
sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey.

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 CHAPTER 89.
Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.

The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale fishery,
of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.
It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company,
a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed
and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised
many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. For
example,—after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale, the
body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm; and drifting
far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly
tows it alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the most vexatious
and violent disputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there
not some written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all
cases.
Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative
enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in
A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling
law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and
lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse
comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian’s Pandects and the By-laws of
the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People’s
Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne’s farthing,
or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they.
I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound
it.
First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all
controllable by the occupant or occupants,—a mast, an oar, a nine-inch

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cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. Likewise a

fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any other recognised symbol
of possession; so long as the party waifing it plainly evince their ability at
any time to take it alongside, as well as their intention so to do.
These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the
whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder
knocks—the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright
and honorable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,
where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party. But
others are by no means so scrupulous.
Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated
in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of a
whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had
succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of their
lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat itself. Ultimately
the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up with the whale, struck,
killed, seized, and finally appropriated it before the very eyes of the
plaintiffs. And when those defendants were remonstrated with, their captain
snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs’ teeth, and assured them that by way
of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their line,
harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the whale at the time
of the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the
value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat.
Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough
was the judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on to
illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case, wherein a
gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife’s viciousness, had at last
abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in the course of years, repenting
of that step, he instituted an action to recover possession of her. Erskine
was on the other side; and he then supported it by saying, that though the
gentleman had originally harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast,
and only by reason of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at
last abandoned her; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-
fish; and therefore when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady
then became that subsequent gentleman’s property, along with whatever
harpoon might have been found sticking in her.
Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the
whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.

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These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the
very learned judge in set terms decided, to wit,—That as for the boat, he
awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save
their lives; but that with regard to the controverted whale, harpoons, and
line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-
Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and line because
when the fish made off with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those
articles; and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a right to
them. Now the defendants afterwards took the fish; ergo, the aforesaid
articles were theirs.
A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge,
might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the
matter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws
previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in the
above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say,
will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence;
for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the
Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two props to stand on.
Is it not a saying in every one’s mouth, Possession is half of the
law: that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But often
possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of
Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is
the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow’s last
mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villain’s marble mansion
with a door-plate for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the
ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone,
the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone’s family from starvation;
what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of
Savesoul’s income of £100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese
of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven
without any of Savesoul’s help) what is that globular £100,000 but a Fast-
Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder’s hereditary towns and hamlets but
Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland,
but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas
but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of
the law?
But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable,
the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is
internationally and universally applicable.

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 Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus

struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and
mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What
India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All
Loose-Fish.
What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What
is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the
ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-
Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you,
reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?

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 CHAPTER 90.
Heads or Tails.

“De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.” Bracton, l.
3, c. 3.
Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with
the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast
of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the
head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division
which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate
remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is to this day in
force in England; and as it offers in various respects a strange anomaly
touching the general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in a
separate chapter, on the same courteous principle that prompts the English
railways to be at the expense of a separate car, specially reserved for the
accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in curious proof of the fact
that the above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a
circumstance that happened within the last two years.
It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some
one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and
beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from
the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the
jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden.
Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal
emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment
his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so. Because the
Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his perquisites; which
are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of them.
Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their
trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their fat fish
high and dry, promising themselves a good £150 from the precious oil
and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good ale
with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up steps a
very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of

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Blackstone under his arm; and laying it upon the whale’s head, he says—
“Hands off! this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord
Warden’s.” Upon this the poor mariners in their respectful consternation—
so truly English—knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching
their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the
stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard
heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At length one
of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,
“Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?”
“The Duke.”
“But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?”
“It is his.”
“We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is all
that to go to the Duke’s benefit; we getting nothing at all for our pains but
our blisters?”
“It is his.”
“Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of
getting a livelihood?”
“It is his.”
“I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of
this whale.”
“It is his.”
“Won’t the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?”
“It is his.”
In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of
Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular
lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be
deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman
of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to take
the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To which
my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published) that he
had already done so, and received the money, and would be obliged to the
reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend gentleman) would
decline meddling with other people’s business. Is this the still militant old
man, standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing
alms of beggars?
It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to
the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire
then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that right.

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The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives us the reason
for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen,
“because of its superior excellence.” And by the soundest commentators
this has ever been held a cogent argument in such matters.
But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A
reason for that, ye lawyers!
In his treatise on “Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an old King’s
Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: “Ye tail is ye Queen’s,
that ye Queen’s wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this
was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right
whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this same bone is not in
the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer
like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An
allegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers—the
whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and
nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary revenue. I
know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by inference
it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the
whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that
fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded
upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in all
things, even in law.

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 CHAPTER 91.
The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.

“In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan,
insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.” Sir T. Browne, V.E.
It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when
we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory, mid-day sea, that the many
noses on the Pequod’s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the three
pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the
sea.
“I will bet something now,” said Stubb, “that somewhere hereabouts
are some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought they
would keel up before long.”
Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the distance
lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be
alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colours from
his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and
hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside
must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that has
died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It
may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a mass must exhale;
worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are incompetent
to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that no
cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are there those
who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from such
subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no means of the nature of attar-
of-rose.
Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the
Frenchman had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed
even more of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of
those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of
prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies almost
entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the proper place we
shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn up his nose at such a

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whale as this, however much he may shun blasted whales in general.

The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed
he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
knotted round the tail of one of these whales.
“There’s a pretty fellow, now,” he banteringly laughed, standing in
the ship’s bows, “there’s a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes
of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering their
boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes, and
sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of tallow
candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they will get won’t
be enough to dip the Captain’s wick into; aye, we all know these things;
but look ye, here’s a Crappo that is content with our leavings, the drugged
whale there, I mean; aye, and is content too with scraping the dry bones
of that other precious fish he has there. Poor devil! I say, pass round a hat,
some one, and let’s make him a present of a little oil for dear charity’s
sake. For what oil he’ll get from that drugged whale there, wouldn’t be fit
to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell. And as for the other whale,
why, I’ll agree to get more oil by chopping up and trying out these three
masts of ours, than he’ll get from that bundle of bones; though, now that
I think of it, it may contain something worth a good deal more than oil;
yes, ambergris. I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It’s worth
trying. Yes, I’m for it;” and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that whether
or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with no hope of
escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb
now called his boat’s crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing across
her bow, he perceived that in accordance with the fanciful French taste, the
upper part of her stem-piece was carved in the likeness of a huge drooping
stalk, was painted green, and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from
it here and there; the whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of
a bright red colour. Upon her head boards, in large gilt letters, he read
“Bouton de Rose,”—Rose-button, or Rose-bud; and this was the romantic
name of this aromatic ship.
Though Stubb did not understand the Bouton part of the inscription,
yet the word rose, and the bulbous figure-head put together, sufficiently
explained the whole to him.
“A wooden rose-bud, eh?” he cried with his hand to his nose, “that
will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!”
Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck,

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 The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.

he had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close to
the blasted whale; and so talk over it.
Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he bawled—
“Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that speak
English?”
“Yes,” rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to
be the chief-mate.
“Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White
Whale?”
“What whale?”
“The White Whale—a Sperm Whale—Moby Dick, have ye seen him?
“Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale—no.”
“Very good, then; good bye now, and I’ll call again in a minute.”
Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab
leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his
two hands into a trumpet and shouted—“No, Sir! No!” Upon which Ahab
retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman.
He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the
chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of bag.
“What’s the matter with your nose, there?” said Stubb. “Broke it?”
“I wish it was broken, or that I didn’t have any nose at all!” answered
the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very much.
“But what are you holding yours for?”
“Oh, nothing! It’s a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain’t
it? Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will ye,
Bouton-de-Rose?”
“What in the devil’s name do you want here?” roared the
Guernseyman, flying into a sudden passion.
“Oh! keep cool—cool? yes, that’s the word! why don’t you pack those
whales in ice while you’re working at ’em? But joking aside, though;
do you know, Rose-bud, that it’s all nonsense trying to get any oil out of
such whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn’t a gill in his whole
carcase.”
“I know that well enough; but, d’ye see, the Captain here won’t
believe it; this is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer before.
But come aboard, and mayhap he’ll believe you, if he won’t me; and so I’ll
get out of this dirty scrape.”
“Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow,” rejoined
Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene

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presented itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting
the heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow
and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor. All their
noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many jib-booms. Now
and then pairs of them would drop their work, and run up to the mast-
head to get some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch the plague,
dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to their nostrils. Others
having broken the stems of their pipes almost short off at the bowl,
were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled their
olfactories.
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding
from the Captain’s round-house abaft; and looking in that direction saw a
fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from within.
This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating against
the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself to the Captain’s round-
house (cabinet he called it) to avoid the pest; but still, could not help
yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times.
Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the
Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate
expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who
had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding
him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the
slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace
on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him,
so that the two quickly concocted a little plan for both circumventing
and satirizing the Captain, without his at all dreaming of distrusting their
sincerity. According to this little plan of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under
cover of an interpreter’s office, was to tell the Captain what he pleased, but
as coming from Stubb; and as for Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that
should come uppermost in him during the interview.
By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was
a small and dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain, with
large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton velvet vest
with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was now politely
introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put on the
aspect of interpreting between them.
“What shall I say to him first?” said he.
“Why,” said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals,
“you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to

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 The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.

me, though I don’t pretend to be a judge.”

“He says, Monsieur,” said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his
captain, “that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain and
chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a blasted
whale they had brought alongside.”
Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.
“What now?” said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.
“Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him
carefully, I’m quite certain that he’s no more fit to command a whale-ship
than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he’s a baboon.”
“He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one,
is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us,
as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish.”
Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his
crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose the
cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.
“What now?” said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned
to them.
“Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that—that—in
fact, tell him I’ve diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps somebody
else.”
“He says, Monsieur, that he’s very happy to have been of any service
to us.”
Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties
(meaning himself and mate) and concluded by inviting Stubb down into his
cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.
“He wants you to take a glass of wine with him,” said the interpreter.
“Thank him heartily; but tell him it’s against my principles to drink
with the man I’ve diddled. In fact, tell him I must go.”
“He says, Monsieur, that his principles won’t admit of his drinking;
but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur had
best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales, for it’s
so calm they won’t drift.”
By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed
the Guernsey-man to this effect,—that having a long tow-line in his boat,
he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out the lighter whale
of the two from the ship’s side. While the Frenchman’s boats, then, were
engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb benevolently towed away at
his whale the other way, ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually long

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tow-line.
Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the whale;
hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while the
Pequod slid in between him and Stubb’s whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly
pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of his
intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning.
Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the body, a
little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was digging
a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck against the
gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat
English loam. His boat’s crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping
their chief, and looking as anxious as gold-hunters.
And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and
screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning
to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when
suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint stream
of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells without being
absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then along with another,
without at all blending with it for a time.
“I have it, I have it,” cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in
the subterranean regions, “a purse! a purse!”
Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of
something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old cheese;
very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with your thumb;
it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this, good friends,
is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist. Some six
handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still
more, perhaps, might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab’s
loud command to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else the ship would
bid them good bye.

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 CHAPTER 92.
Ambergris.

Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an

article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin
was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject.
For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise
origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned.
Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber,
yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found
on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris
is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent,
brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and
ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy,
that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-
powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to
Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter’s in
Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should
regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a
sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause,
and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such
a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat
loads of Brandreth’s pills, and then running out of harm’s way, as laborers
do in blasting rocks.
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain
hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors’
trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more
than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should
be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that
saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how
that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind
that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also

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forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in
its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.
I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but
cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against
whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds,
might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of
the Frenchman’s two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous
aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout
a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They
hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma
originate?
I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland
whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those
whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the
Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small
bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in
that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden
and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course.
The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one
of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth
somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city grave-yard,
for the foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.
I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former
times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which
latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great
work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer,
fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place
for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being
taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces,
fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full operation
certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different
with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps,
after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty
days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked, the
oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently
treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor
can whalemen be recognised, as the people of the middle ages affected
to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale

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 Ambergris.

possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys

such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors;
though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm
Whale’s flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented
lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm
Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that
famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was
led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?

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 CHAPTER 93.
The Castaway.

It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew; an
event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes
madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying
prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some
few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work
the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these
ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats’ crews.
But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in
the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the
Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation.
Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine
on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony
and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour,
driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature
dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at
bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to
his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer,
freer relish than any other race. For blacks, the year’s calendar should show
naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year’s
Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for
even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in
king’s cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life’s peaceable securities; so
that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably
become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere
long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end
was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously
showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native
Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s

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frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had
turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the
clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered
diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would
show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a
gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural
gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then the
evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks
like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s after-oarsman
chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed; and,
temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;
but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and
therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing
him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to
the utmost, for he might often find it needful.
Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale;
and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap,
which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip’s seat. The
involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle
in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale
line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to
become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That instant
the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened;
and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat,
remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns
around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He
hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he
suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb,
exclaimed interrogatively, “Cut?” Meantime Pip’s blue, choked face
plainly looked, Do, for God’s sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half a
minute, this entire thing happened.
“Damn him, cut!” roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was
saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by
yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these irregular
cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still half

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humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave
him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never jump from a
boat, Pip, except—but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice
ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling;
but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still
better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted
conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a margin to
jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded
with a peremptory command, “Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I
won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales
by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would,
Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump any more.” Hereby
perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man
is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his
benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was
under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time
he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started to run,
Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller’s trunk. Alas! Stubb
was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day; the
spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away, all round, to the
horizon, like gold-beater’s skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing
up and down in that sea, Pip’s ebon head showed like a head of cloves.
No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb’s inexorable
back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged. In three minutes, a
whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the
centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun,
another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest.
Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful
lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle
of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when
sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea—mark how closely they hug
their ship and only coast along her sides.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No;
he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,
and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very
quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards
oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested

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 The Castaway.

by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not unfrequently
occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with
the same ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies.
But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and
Stubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon
his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably.
By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour
the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he
was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite
of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to
wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world
glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom,
revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile
eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that
out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s
foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates
called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from
all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to
reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,
indifferent as his God.
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like
abandonment befell myself.

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 CHAPTER 94.
A Squeeze of the Hand.

That whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the

Pequod’s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously
detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of the
Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed
in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and
when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated
ere going to the try-works, of which anon.
It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I found
it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid
part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet
and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a
favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such
a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes,
my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralise.
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent
sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those
soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour;
as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like
fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,—
literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for
the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath;
in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost
began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue
in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free
from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that
sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a
strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly

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 A Squeeze of the Hand.

squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle
globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this
avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and
looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear
fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know
the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round;
nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves
universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since
by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all
cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable
felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the
wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country;
now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In
thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise,
each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things
akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-works.
First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering
part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is
tough with congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—but still contains some
oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into
portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like blocks of
Berkshire marble.
Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of
the whale’s flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and
often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most
refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is
of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden
ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums
of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself
from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It
tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis
le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day
after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary
with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns
up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling
adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation original

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with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an

ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm,
after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the
wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing.
Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but
sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark,
glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right
whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who
hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale’s vocabulary.
But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman’s nipper is a short
firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan’s tail:
it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the
iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like
a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures
along with it all impurities.
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once
to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates.
This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-
pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper time
arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all
tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has
been left clear for the workmen. They generally go in pairs,—a pike-
and-gaffman and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate’s
boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is something like a boat-
hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives
to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile,
the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it
into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it;
the spademan’s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes
irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own
toes, or one of his assistants’, would you be very much astonished? Toes
are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.

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 CHAPTER 95.
The Cassock.

Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-
mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass,
pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a
very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying
along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the
whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the
miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as
half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is
tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony
idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its
likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen
Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did
depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the
brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of
Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and
assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners
call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a
grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the
forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as
an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out,
like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its
diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long,
it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the pointed
extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other end, he
lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands before you
invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order,
this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the
peculiar functions of his office.
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted

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endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into
which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator’s desk.
Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible
leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were
this mincer!*
*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates
to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin
slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the
oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides
perhaps improving it in quality.

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 CHAPTER 96.
The Try-Works.

Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished

by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid
masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship. It is
as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her planks.
The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast,
the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar
strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and
mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The foundation
does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured to the
surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all sides, and screwing
it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased with wood, and at top
completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removing
this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, and each of
several barrels’ capacity. When not in use, they are kept remarkably clean.
Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand, till they shine
within like silver punch-bowls. During the night-watches some cynical
old sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap.
While employed in polishing them—one man in each pot, side by side—
many confidential communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is
a place also for profound mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand
try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that
I was first indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all
bodies gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend
from any point in precisely the same time.
Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of the
furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy
doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating
itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the
entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this
reservoir is kept replenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There are

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no external chimneys; they open direct from the rear wall. And here let us
go back for a moment.
It was about nine o’clock at night that the Pequod’s try-works were
first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee the
business.
“All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the
works.” This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his
shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said that in a
whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with
wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to
the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber,
now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous
properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr,
or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his
own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own
smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not
only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild,
Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It
smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the
pit.
By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from
the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean
darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames,
which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every
lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship
drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the
pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing
from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore
down upon the Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.
The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide
hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the
pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged
poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or
stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the
doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To
every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed
all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on
the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served
for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed,

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looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their
heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their
matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all
these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works.
As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror
told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out
of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the
harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers;
as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived,
and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness
of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her
mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod,
freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and
plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart
of her monomaniac commander’s soul.
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently
guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval,
in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the
ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me,
capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions
in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness
which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)
thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly
conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote my side,
which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning
to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were open; I was half conscious
of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically stretching them still
further apart. But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to
steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card,
by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but
a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost
was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not
so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A
stark, bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my
hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was,
somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter
with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and
was fronting the ship’s stern, with my back to her prow and the compass.

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In an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up
into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful
the relief from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal
contingency of being brought by the lee!
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy
hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of
the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all
things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright;
those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in
far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true
lamp—all others but liars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome’s
accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles
of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth.
So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him,
that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With books the
same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all
books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.
“All is vanity.” ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian
Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and
walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell;
calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and
throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and
therefore jolly;—not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and
break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain” (i.e., even while living) “in the congregation
of the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden
thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is
a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can
alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and
become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within
the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop
the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even
though they soar.

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 CHAPTER 97.
The Lamp.

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

forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment
you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated
shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular
oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing
upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness
to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he seeks the food
of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin’s lamp, and
lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still
houses an illumination.
See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of
lamps—often but old bottles and vials, though—to the copper cooler at the
try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns,
too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state;
a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as
early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of
its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up
his own supper of game.

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 CHAPTER 98.
Stowing Down and Clearing Up.

Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off descried from
the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors, and slaughtered in
the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded; and
how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments
in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the
property of his executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots,
and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone
pass unscathed through the fire;—but now it remains to conclude the last
chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing—singing, if I may—
the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking
them down into the hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native
profundities, sliding along beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never
more to rise and blow.
While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the six-barrel
casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this way and that
in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over,
end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery deck, like
so many land slides, till at last man-handled and stayed in their course; and
all round the hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them,
for now, ex officio, every sailor is a cooper.
At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great
hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and
down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are
replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.
In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream with
freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of
the whale’s head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a
brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks;
the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems
great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening.

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 Stowing Down and Clearing Up.

But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this
self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works, you
would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most
scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a
singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks never look so
white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of
the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever
any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side,
that lye quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks,
and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The
soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements
which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The
great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely hiding
the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks;
and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of almost the entire
ship’s company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded,
then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves
from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all
aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.
Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and
humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; propose
to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not to taking
tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked
mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They
know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins!
But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent
on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil the
old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere.
Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors,
which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours;
when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day
rowing on the Line,—they only step to the deck to carry vast chains,
and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very
sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the
equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this,
they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a
spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning
the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of “There she
blows!” and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole

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weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.
For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s
vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience,
cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean
tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when—There she blows!—the
ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go
through young life’s old routine again.
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two
thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee
along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a
green simple boy, how to splice a rope!

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 CHAPTER 99.
The Doubloon.

Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck,
taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in the
multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been added how
that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood, he was
wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely eyeing the
particular object before him. When he halted before the binnacle, with his
glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like
a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming
his walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted
glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same
aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not
hopefulness.
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be
newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some
monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some
certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and
the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as
they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.
Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out
of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands,
the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst
all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet,
untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its Quito
glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed
by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick
darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every
sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart
and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor
ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale’s talisman.
Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering

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whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the
sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s
disks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are
in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to
derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through
those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy
example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,
REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a
country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator,
and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the
unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the
likeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower on another;
on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the
partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the
keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now
pausing.
“There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers,
and all other grand and lofty things; look here,—three peaks as proud
as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the
courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are
Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which,
like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his
own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world
to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears
a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and
but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From
storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, ’tis fit that man should live
in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here’s stout stuff for woe to work
on. So be it, then.”
“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must
have left their mouldings there since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck
to himself, leaning against the bulwarks. “The old man seems to read
Belshazzar’s awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.
He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty, heaven-
abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint earthly symbol.
So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom, the

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sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If we bend down our
eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil; but if we lift them, the bright
sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture;
and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we
gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly
to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.”
“There now’s the old Mogul,” soliloquized Stubb by the try-works,
“he’s been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both
with faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms
long. And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on
Negro Hill or in Corlaer’s Hook, I’d not look at it very long ere spending
it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I regard this as queer. I
have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your doubloons of old
Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your doubloons
of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores
and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What then should
there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? By
Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa! here’s signs and wonders truly!
That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what
my almanac below calls ditto. I’ll get the almanac and as I have heard
devils can be raised with Daboll’s arithmetic, I’ll try my hand at raising
a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts
calendar. Here’s the book. Let’s see now. Signs and wonders; and the
sun, he’s always among ’em. Hem, hem, hem; here they are—here they
go—all alive:—Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull and Jimimi! here’s
Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels among ’em. Aye,
here on the coin he’s just crossing the threshold between two of twelve
sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must
know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we
come in to supply the thoughts. That’s my small experience, so far as the
Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch’s navigator, and Daboll’s arithmetic
go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs,
and significant in wonders! There’s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist—
hark! By Jove, I have it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life
of man in one round chapter; and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the
book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there’s Aries, or the Ram—lecherous
dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull—he bumps us the first thing;
then Gemini, or the Twins—that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue,
when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from

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Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path—he gives a few fierce bites
and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that’s
our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes
Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while
we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio,
or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when
whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing
himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram,
Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are
tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and
drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There’s a
sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year,
and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels
through toil and trouble; and so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly’s
the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But stop; here comes little King-
Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and let’s hear what he’ll have to
say. There; he’s before it; he’ll out with something presently. So, so; he’s
beginning.”
“I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever
raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what’s all this
staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that’s true; and at two cents
the cigar, that’s nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won’t smoke dirty pipes
like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here’s nine hundred and sixty of them; so
here goes Flask aloft to spy ’em out.”
“Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a
foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish
look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman—the old hearse-driver,
he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He luffs up before
the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other side of the mast; why,
there’s a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now he’s back again; what
does that mean? Hark! he’s muttering—voice like an old worn-out coffee-
mill. Prick ears, and listen!”
“If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when
the sun stands in some one of these signs. I’ve studied signs, and know
their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch in
Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign;
for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what’s the horse-shoe sign? The
lion is the horse-shoe sign—the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship!
my old head shakes to think of thee.”

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 The Doubloon.

“There’s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—all
tattooing—looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the
Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks
the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as the old
women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the back country. And by Jove, he’s
found something there in the vicinity of his thigh—I guess it’s Sagittarius,
or the Archer. No: he don’t know what to make of the doubloon; he takes
it for an old button off some king’s trowsers. But, aside again! here comes
that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the
toes of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of his? Ah,
only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the
coin—fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way
comes Pip—poor boy! would he had died, or I; he’s half horrible to me. He
too has been watching all of these interpreters—myself included—and look
now, he comes to read, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and
hear him. Hark!”
“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Upon my soul, he’s been studying Murray’s Grammar! Improving his
mind, poor fellow! But what’s that he says now—hist!”
“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Why, he’s getting it by heart—hist! again.”
“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Well, that’s funny.”
“And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I’m a crow,
especially when I stand a’top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw!
caw! caw! Ain’t I a crow? And where’s the scare-crow? There he stands;
two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the
sleeves of an old jacket.”
“Wonder if he means me?—complimentary!—poor lad!—I could go
hang myself. Any way, for the present, I’ll quit Pip’s vicinity. I can stand
the rest, for they have plain wits; but he’s too crazy-witty for my sanity. So,
so, I leave him muttering.”
“Here’s the ship’s navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire
to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what’s the consequence?
Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught’s nailed to the
mast it’s a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the White
Whale; he’ll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county,
cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver ring grown over in it; some

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old darkey’s wedding ring. How did it get there? And so they’ll say in the
resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon
lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the
precious, precious, gold! the green miser’ll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God
goes ’mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny!
hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!”

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 CHAPTER 100.
Leg and Arm.

The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.

“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”
So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours,
bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was
standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the
stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s bow. He
was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or
thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in
festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed
behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,
he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head
like a mallet.
“Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars
near him—“Stand by to lower!”
In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his crew
were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger. But
here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the moment,
Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once stepped
on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by an
ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod,
and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment’s
warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody—except those who
are almost hourly used to it, like whalemen—to clamber up a ship’s side
from a boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up
towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down to
the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being
altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself
abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the
uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.

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Moby Dick

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward

circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless
mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in the present
instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the two officers of the
strange ship, leaning over the side, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed
cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented
man-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink them that a one-legged
man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea bannisters. But this
awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange captain, observing
at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, “I see, I see!—avast heaving there!
Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle.”
As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day
or two previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive
curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This
was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his
solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of
an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held
himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by
pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon
he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon
the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the
other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, and crossing
the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way,
“Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!—an arm and a leg!—an
arm that never can shrink, d’ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where
did’st thou see the White Whale?—how long ago?”
“The White Whale,” said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm
towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a
telescope; “there I saw him, on the Line, last season.”
“And he took that arm off, did he?” asked Ahab, now sliding down
from the capstan, and resting on the Englishman’s shoulder, as he did so.
“Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?”
“Spin me the yarn,” said Ahab; “how was it?”
“It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,” began
the Englishman. “I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well,
one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened
to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and
milling round so, that my boat’s crew could only trim dish, by sitting all
their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom

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of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all
crows’ feet and wrinkles.”
“It was he, it was he!” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended
breath.
“And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.”
“Aye, aye—they were mine—my irons,” cried Ahab, exultingly—“but
on!”
“Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good-humoredly.
“Well, this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all
afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!
“Aye, I see!—wanted to part it; free the fast-fish—an old trick—I
know him.”
“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do not
know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
but we didn’t know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the line,
bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale’s; that
went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and what a
noble great whale it was—the noblest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my
life—I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be
in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or the tooth it was
tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat’s crew for a pull on
a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped into my first mate’s boat—
Mr. Mounttop’s here (by the way, Captain—Mounttop; Mounttop—the
captain);—as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop’s boat, which, d’ye
see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first
harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir—
hearts and souls alive, man—the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a
bat—both eyes out—all befogged and bedeadened with black foam—the
whale’s tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a
marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday,
with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the
second iron, to toss it overboard—down comes the tail like a Lima tower,
cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukes first, the
white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips. We all
struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-
pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish.
But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish, taking
one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb of that cursed
second iron towing along near me caught me here” (clapping his hand just

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below his shoulder); “yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down
to Hell’s flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the
good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh—clear along the whole
length of my arm—came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;—and that
gentleman there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain—Dr. Bunger,
ship’s surgeon: Bunger, my lad,—the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your
part of the yarn.”
The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been
all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote
his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but
sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and
patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between
a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,
occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two crippled
captains. But, at his superior’s introduction of him to Ahab, he politely
bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain’s bidding.
“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale-surgeon; “and, taking
my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy—”
“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted the one-armed
captain, addressing Ahab; “go on, boy.”
“Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing
hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use—I did all I could; sat up
with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet—”
“Oh, very severe!” chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly
altering his voice, “Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he
couldn’t see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas over,
about three o’clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed,
and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very dietetically
severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don’t ye? You
know you’re a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I’d rather be
killed by you than kept alive by any other man.”
“My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir”—said
the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab—“is
apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort.
But I may as well say—en passant, as the French remark—that I myself—
that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy—am a strict total
abstinence man; I never drink—”
“Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s a sort of fits to him;
fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on—go on with the

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arm story.”
“Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon, coolly. “I was about observing,
sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite of my best
and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth
was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two
feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it
grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came. But I had no
hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against all rule”—
pointing at it with the marlingspike—“that is the captain’s work, not mine;
he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to
the end, to knock some one’s brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine
once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent,
sir”—removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-
like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any
token of ever having been a wound—“Well, the captain there will tell you
how that came here; he knows.”
“No, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he was born with
it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you—you Bunger! was there ever such another
Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in
pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.”
“What became of the White Whale?” now cried Ahab, who thus far
had been impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.
“Oh!” cried the one-armed captain, “oh, yes! Well; after he sounded,
we didn’t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I didn’t
then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some
time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby
Dick—as some call him—and then I knew it was he.”
“Did’st thou cross his wake again?”
“Twice.”
“But could not fasten?”
“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do
without this other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much
as he swallows.”
“Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left arm for bait to
get the right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically
bowing to each Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that
the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine
Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest even
a man’s arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White

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Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow

a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like
the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making
believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in
good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave
him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d’ye see. No possible
way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his
general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about
it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving
decent burial to the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the
whale have another chance at you shortly, that’s all.”
“No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome to
the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to
another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once,
and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know
that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s
best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?”—glancing at the ivory leg.
“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone,
that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet! How
long since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”
“Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly
walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; “this man’s
blood—bring the thermometer!—it’s at the boiling point!—his pulse
makes these planks beat!—sir!”—taking a lancet from his pocket, and
drawing near to Ahab’s arm.
“Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks—“Man the
boat! Which way heading?”
“Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was
put. “What’s the matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain
crazy?” whispering Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take
the boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle towards him,
commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.
In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men
were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With
back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood
upright till alongside of the Pequod.

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 CHAPTER 101.
The Decanter.

Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she hailed
from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby, merchant of
that city, the original of the famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a
house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not far behind the
united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of real historical
interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 1775, this great whaling
house was in existence, my numerous fish-documents do not make plain;
but in that year (1775) it fitted out the first English ships that ever regularly
hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous
(ever since 1726) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the
Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North
and South Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the
Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized
steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him.
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,
and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape
Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any
sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and
returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, the Amelia’s
example was soon followed by other ships, English and American, and thus
the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But not
content with this good deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred itself:
Samuel and all his Sons—how many, their mother only knows—and under
their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense, the British
government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling
voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-
Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service;
how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same house
fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to
the remote waters of Japan. That ship—well called the “Syren”—made a

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noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great Japanese Whaling
Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this famous voyage
was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer.
All honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to
the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have
slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.
The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very
fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight
somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the
forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps—every
soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine gam
I had—long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivory
heel—it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that ship; and
may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose sight
of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten
gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it’s squally off there by
Patagonia), and all hands—visitors and all—were called to reef topsails,
we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines;
and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that
we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all
drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by and by
we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, though
the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much
diluted and pickled it to my taste.
The beef was fine—tough, but with body in it. They said it was
bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for
certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,
symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that you
could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were swallowed. If
you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching out of you like
billiard-balls. The bread—but that couldn’t be helped; besides, it was an
anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the only fresh fare they had.
But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very easy to step over into
a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm,
considering the dimensions of the cook’s boilers, including his own live
parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship;
of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and capital
from boot heels to hat-band.
But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other

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English whalers I know of—not all though—were such famous, hospitable

ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke;
and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will
tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is matter
for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of historical whale
research, when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,
Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant
in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty
to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps
her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of
whaling good cheer is not normal and natural, but incidental and particular;
and, therefore, must have some special origin, which is here pointed out,
and will be still further elucidated.
During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon
an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I
knew must be about whalers. The title was, “Dan Coopman,” wherefore
I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam
cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was
reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one
“Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man,
professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus
and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a
box of sperm candles for his trouble—this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon
as he spied the book, assured me that “Dan Coopman” did not mean
“The Cooper,” but “The Merchant.” In short, this ancient and learned
Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other
subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in
this chapter it was, headed, “Smeer,” or “Fat,” that I found a long detailed
list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen;
from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:
400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock
fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of
butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably
an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer.
Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in
the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes,
barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all

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this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were
incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic
application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own,
touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low
Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery.
In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese
consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous
natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation,
and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on
the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives
pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.
The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as
those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of
that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen,
including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much
exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of
180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I say, we
have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks’ allowance,
exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whether
these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might fancy them to
have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat’s head, and
take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat improbable.
Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very far North,
be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution; upon the
Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer
sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might
ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.
But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers
of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English whalers
have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when cruising
in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good
dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the decanter.

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 CHAPTER 102.
A Bower in the Arsacides.

Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt

upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some
few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough sweeping
comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still further,
and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting
loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him
before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.
But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the
fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale?
Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures on the
anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a specimen
rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a full-grown
whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely
not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care
how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the privilege of discoursing
upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-
pinnings, making up the frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-
vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his bowels.
I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed with
an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small
cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag,
to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the
lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and
jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young
cub?
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted
to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides.
For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey
of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the

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lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very
far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.
Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being
gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought
together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people
could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices, chiselled shells,
inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and all these distributed
among whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering
waves had cast upon his shores.
Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after
an unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with
his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings
seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped of its
fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then
the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand
temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.
The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebræ were carved with
Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept up
an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth
its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw
vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted
Damocles.
It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy
Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the
industrious earth beneath was as a weaver’s loom, with a gorgeous carpet
on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and
the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches;
all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these
unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great
sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy
weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the fabric?
what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak,
weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single word with thee! Nay—the shuttle
flies—the figures float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for
ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he
deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too,
who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall
we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all
material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying

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 A Bower in the Arsacides.

spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting
from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah,
mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world’s loom,
thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging—a gigantic idler! Yet, as
the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around
him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over
with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but himself
a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived
with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.
Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and
saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the
real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an
object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests should
swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this
skeleton—brushed the vines aside—broke through the ribs—and with a
ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many winding,
shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was out; and following
it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no living thing
within; naught was there but bones.
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the
skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me
taking the altitude of the final rib, “How now!” they shouted; “Dar’st
thou measure this our god! That’s for us.” “Aye, priests—well, how long
do ye make him, then?” But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them,
concerning feet and inches; they cracked each other’s sconces with their
yard-sticks—the great skull echoed—and seizing that lucky chance, I
quickly concluded my own admeasurements.
These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first,
be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied
measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can refer
to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in
Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have
some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I have heard
that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the
proprietors call “the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale
in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton
Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his possession

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the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the

full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo’s.
In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons
belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford,
because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford’s whale
has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great chest of drawers,
you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities—spread out his ribs
like a gigantic fan—and swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to
be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show
round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks
of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal
column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and
sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied
verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild
wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving
such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the
other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then
composing—at least, what untattooed parts might remain—I did not
trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter
into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.

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 CHAPTER 103.
Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.

In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain statement,
touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to
exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.
According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly
base upon Captain Scoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest
sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful
calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between
eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet
in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons;
so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh
the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred
inhabitants.
Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this
leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman’s imagination?
Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,
jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now simply
point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his unobstructed
bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a proportion of the
entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the most complicated part; and
as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail
to carry it in your mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you
will not gain a complete notion of the general structure we are about to
view.
In length, the Sperm Whale’s skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-
two feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have
been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth
in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, his
skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain
back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a third of
its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his
vitals.

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Moby Dick

To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,

extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull
of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her
naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a
long, disconnected timber.
The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was
nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each successively
longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs,
which measured eight feet and some inches. From that part, the remaining
ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some
inches. In general thickness, they all bore a seemly correspondence to their
length. The middle ribs were the most arched. In some of the Arsacides
they are used for beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small
streams.
In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the
whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of the
Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish which,
in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the invested body
of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the
corresponding rib measured but little more than eight feet. So that this rib
only conveyed half of the true notion of the living magnitude of that part.
Besides, for some way, where I now saw but a naked spine, all that had
been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood,
and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered
joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an
utter blank!
How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try
to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead
attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart
of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only
on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and
livingly found out.
But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a
crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now it’s
done, it looks much like Pompey’s Pillar.
There are forty and odd vertebræ in all, which in the skeleton are not
locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic
spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one,

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 Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.

is in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The
smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in
width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there
were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal
urchins, the priest’s children, who had stolen them to play marbles with.
Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers
off at last into simple child’s play.

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 CHAPTER 104.
The Fossil Whale.

From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon
to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not
compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial
folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards
he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his
intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away
in the subterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.
Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves
me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not
overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him
out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him in
most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains
to magnify him in an archæological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian
point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an
ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably
grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I
to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And
here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the
course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition
of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous
lexicographer’s uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a
lexicon to be used by a whale author like me.
One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though
it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this
Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals.
Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand!
Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of
this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outreaching
comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the
sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past,
present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth,

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 The Fossil Whale.

and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and
so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its
bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No
great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many
there be who have tried it.
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my
credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I
have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and
wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way
of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier
geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now almost
completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are called the
Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted links,
between the antichronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are
said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales hitherto discovered
belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last preceding the superficial
formations. And though none of them precisely answer to any known
species of the present time, they are yet sufficiently akin to them in general
respects, to justify their taking rank as Cetacean fossils.
Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their
bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals,
been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in
Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among
the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the year
1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening
almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred
in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon’s time. Cuvier
pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown
Leviathanic species.
But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost
complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on
the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous
slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The
Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name
of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the
sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile
was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant illustration of the
fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale
furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen

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Moby Dick

rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the
London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most
extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out
of existence.
When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,
jaws, ribs, and vertebræ, all characterized by partial resemblances to the
existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other
hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their
incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period,
ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here
Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses
into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard
upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s
circumference, not an inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then
the whole world was the whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his wake
along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show
a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the
Pharaoh’s. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands
with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of
the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time,
must needs exist after all humane ages are over.
But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim
for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable print
of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some fifty
years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a sculptured and
painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar
to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the moderns. Gliding
among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there swimming in that
planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity
of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by the
venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.
“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams
of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are
oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine,
that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whale
can pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that

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 The Fossil Whale.

on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into
the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon ’em. They keep a
Whale’s Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the
Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of
which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel’s Back. This Rib (says
John Leo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their
Historians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy’d of Mahomet, came from
this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was
cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the Temple.”
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a
Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.

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

Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from

the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the
long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original
bulk of his sires.
But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the
present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found
in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period prior to
man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those belonging to
its latter formations exceed in size those of its earlier ones.
Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the
Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than seventy
feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen, that the tape-
measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large sized modern
whale. And I have heard, on whalemen’s authority, that Sperm Whales
have been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of capture.
But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may it
not be, that since Adam’s time they have degenerated?
Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of
such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny
tells us of whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus
of others which measured eight hundred feet in length—Rope Walks and
Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks and Solander,
Cooke’s naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy of Sciences
setting down certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies)
at one hundred and twenty yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And
Lacépède, the French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the
very beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one
hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work was
published so late as A.D. 1825.

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

But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day
is as big as his ancestors in Pliny’s time. And if ever I go where Pliny is, I,
a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him so. Because I
cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies that were
buried thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not measure so
much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks; and while the
cattle and other animals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh
tablets, by the relative proportions in which they are drawn, just as plainly
prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only
equal, but far exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh’s fat kine; in the
face of all this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone should
have degenerated.
But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-
outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even through
Behring’s straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the
world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental
coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide
a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be
exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke
his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.
Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of
buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the
prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled
with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals,
where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such a
comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to show that
the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.
But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a
period ago—not a good lifetime—the census of the buffalo in Illinois
exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present day
not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the
cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far
different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an
end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales for
forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and thank God, if
at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old
Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west
(in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same

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number of moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted

on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but forty
thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be statistically
stated.
Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former years
(the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in small pods,
were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in consequence, the
voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more remunerative.
Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales, influenced by some
views to safety, now swim the seas in immense caravans, so that to a large
degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days
are now aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies.
That is all. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that because the so-
called whale-bone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former years
abounding with them, hence that species also is declining. For they are
only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longer
enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has
been very recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.
Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have
two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain
impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss
have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas and glades
of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at last resort to their Polar
citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers and walls there,
come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed circle of everlasting
December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man.
But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for
one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this
positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions. But
though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than 13,000,
have been annually slain on the nor’ west coast by the Americans alone;
yet there are considerations which render even this circumstance of little or
no account as an opposing argument in this matter.
Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the
populousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall
we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting
the King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are
numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems

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

no reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have now been hunted
for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all
the successive monarchs of the East—if they still survive there in great
numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all hunting, since he has
a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both
Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea
combined.
Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity
of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more, therefore
at any one period of time, several distinct adult generations must be
contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some idea of, by
imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family vaults of creation
yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and children who were
alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this countless host to the present
human population of the globe.
Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his
species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before
the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and
Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s flood he despised Noah’s Ark;
and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill
off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the
topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

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 CHAPTER 106.
Ahab’s Leg.

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel
Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence
to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his
boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when
after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently
wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it was, as ever,
something about his not steering inflexibly enough); then, the already
shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench, that though it
still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it
entirely trustworthy.
And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his
pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the
condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not been
very long prior to the Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he had been
found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some
unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory
limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten,
and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the
agonizing wound was entirely cured.
Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that
all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a
former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous
reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest
songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events
do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since
both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and
posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain
canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have
no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall
be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell’s despair; whereas, some
guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally

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 Ahab’s Leg.

progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this,
there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For,
thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain
unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes,
a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do
their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the
genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the
sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad,
hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must
needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The
ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow
in the signers.
Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might
more properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other
particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some,
why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the sailing of
the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such Grand-Lama-like
exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought speechless refuge, as it
were, among the marble senate of the dead. Captain Peleg’s bruited reason
for this thing appeared by no means adequate; though, indeed, as touching
all Ahab’s deeper part, every revelation partook more of significant
darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the end, it all came out; this one
matter did, at least. That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary
recluseness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping circle
ashore, who, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned
approach to him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty—remaining,
as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested itself with terrors,
not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that,
through their zeal for him, they had all conspired, so far as in them lay,
to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it was,
that not till a considerable interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the
Pequod’s decks.
But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air,
or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with
earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical
procedures;—he called the carpenter.
And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without
delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him
supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which

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had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful
selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This
done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that night;
and to provide all the fittings for it, independent of those pertaining to the
distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship’s forge was ordered to be hoisted
out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate the affair, the
blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the forging of whatever
iron contrivances might be needed.

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 CHAPTER 107.
The Carpenter.

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But
from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they
seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the
high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate; hence,
he now comes in person on this stage.
Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those
belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical
extent, alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his
own; the carpenter’s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of
all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood
as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of the generic
remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those
thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a
large ship, upon a three or four years’ voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant
seas. For not to speak of his readiness in ordinary duties:—repairing stove
boats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting
bull’s eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, and other
miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special business; he
was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes,
both useful and capricious.
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so
manifold, was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished
with several vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all
times except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed
athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.
A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole: the
carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway files it
smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board, and is made a
captive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, and cross-beams of

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sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An
oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb
longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar;
screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically
supplies the constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-
rings: the carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter
out pincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated
there; but the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded
operation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter
signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent
and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he
deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But
while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such
liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue some
uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing was
this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it
were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite
of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the
whole visible world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes,
still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations
for cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too,
as it appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;—yet was it oddly dashed at
times, with an old, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not
unstreaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might
have served to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded
forecastle of Noah’s ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long
wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss;
but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might
have originally pertained to him? He was a stript abstract; an unfractioned
integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living without premeditated
reference to this world or the next. You might almost say, that this strange
uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his
numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct,
or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all
these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous
literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had
one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was
like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo,

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Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior—though a little swelled—of

a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes,
but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers,
countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to use the carpenter for a screw-
driver, all they had to do was to open that part of him, and the screw was
fast: or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have
a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow
anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver,
or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there
it had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same
unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept him a
great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning wheel,
which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a sentry-
box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep
himself awake.

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 CHAPTER 108.
Ahab and the Carpenter.

The Deck—First Night Watch.

(Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by the light of two
lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is firmly fixed in
the vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of
all sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forge is seen,
where the blacksmith is at work.)
Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft,
and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and
shinbones. Let’s try another. Aye, now, this works better (sneezes). Halloa,
this bone dust is (sneezes)—why it’s (sneezes)—yes it’s (sneezes)—bless
my soul, it won’t let me speak! This is what an old fellow gets now for
working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and you don’t get this dust;
amputate a live bone, and you don’t get it (sneezes). Come, come, you old
Smut, there, bear a hand, and let’s have that ferule and buckle-screw; I’ll
be ready for them presently. Lucky now (sneezes) there’s no knee-joint
to make; that might puzzle a little; but a mere shinbone—why it’s easy as
making hop-poles; only I should like to put a good finish on. Time, time;
if I but only had the time, I could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever
(sneezes) scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those buckskin legs and calves of
legs I’ve seen in shop windows wouldn’t compare at all. They soak water,
they do; and of course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (sneezes)
with washes and lotions, just like live legs. There; before I saw it off, now,
I must call his old Mogulship, and see whether the length will be all right;
too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that’s the heel; we are in luck; here he
comes, or it’s somebody else, that’s certain.
AHAB (advancing). (During the ensuing scene, the carpenter
continues sneezing at times.)
Well, manmaker!
Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length. Let
me measure, sir.
Measured for a leg! good. Well, it’s not the first time. About it! There;

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keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here, carpenter; let me
feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.
Oh, sir, it will break bones—beware, beware!
No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery
world that can hold, man. What’s Prometheus about there?—the
blacksmith, I mean—what’s he about?
He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.
Right. It’s a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a fierce
red flame there!
Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.
Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that
that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been
a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what’s made in fire must
properly belong to fire; and so hell’s probable. How the soot flies! This
must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter, when
he’s through with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel shoulder-
blades; there’s a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack.
Sir?
Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I’ll order a complete man after
a desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest
modelled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to ’em, to stay
in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all, brass
forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let me see—
shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on top of his
head to illuminate inwards. There, take the order, and away.
Now, what’s he speaking about, and who’s he speaking to, I should
like to know? Shall I keep standing here? (aside).
’Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here’s one. No,
no, no; I must have a lantern.
Ho, ho! That’s it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.
What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?
Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.
I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.
Carpenter? why that’s—but no;—a very tidy, and, I may say, an
extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpenter;—or
would’st thou rather work in clay?
Sir?—Clay? clay, sir? That’s mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.
The fellow’s impious! What art thou sneezing about?
Bone is rather dusty, sir.

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Moby Dick

Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself under
living people’s noses.
Sir?—oh! ah!—I guess so;—yes—oh, dear!
Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good
workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well
for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall
nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is,
carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not
drive that old Adam away?
Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard
something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never
entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still pricking him at
times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?
It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once
was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul.
Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I.
Is’t a riddle?
I should humbly call it a poser, sir.
Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing
may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where
thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary
hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold, don’t speak! And if I
still feel the smart of my crushed leg, though it be now so long dissolved;
then, why mayst not thou, carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever,
and without a body? Hah!
Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over again; I
think I didn’t carry a small figure, sir.
Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.—How long
before the leg is done?
Perhaps an hour, sir.
Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (turns to go). Oh, Life! Here
I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for
a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will
not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I’m down in the
whole world’s books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the
wealthiest Prætorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was the
world’s); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens!
I’ll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small,
compendious vertebra. So.

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CARPENTER (resuming his work).

Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always
says he’s queer; says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer;
he’s queer, says Stubb; he’s queer—queer, queer; and keeps dinning it
into Mr. Starbuck all the time—queer—sir—queer, queer, very queer.
And here’s his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here’s his bedfellow! has
a stick of whale’s jaw-bone for a wife! And this is his leg; he’ll stand on
this. What was that now about one leg standing in three places, and all
three places standing in one hell—how was that? Oh! I don’t wonder he
looked so scornful at me! I’m a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes, they
say; but that’s only haphazard-like. Then, a short, little old body like me,
should never undertake to wade out into deep waters with tall, heron-built
captains; the water chucks you under the chin pretty quick, and there’s
a great cry for life-boats. And here’s the heron’s leg! long and slim, sure
enough! Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts a lifetime, and that must
be because they use them mercifully, as a tender-hearted old lady uses her
roly-poly old coach-horses. But Ahab; oh he’s a hard driver. Look, driven
one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and now wears out bone
legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a hand there with those
screws, and let’s finish it before the resurrection fellow comes a-calling
with his horn for all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go round collecting
old beer barrels, to fill ’em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a real
live leg, filed down to nothing but the core; he’ll be standing on this to-
morrow; he’ll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost forgot the little
oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. So, so; chisel,
file, and sand-paper, now!

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 CHAPTER 109.
Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.

According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo!
no inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have
sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into
the cabin to report this unfavourable affair.*
*In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board,
it is a regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and
drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals,
is removed by the ship’s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept
damply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the
mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo.
Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to
Formosa and the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical
outlets from the China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab
with a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and
another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the Japanese
islands—Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snow-white new ivory
leg braced against the screwed leg of his table, and with a long pruning-
hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to
the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old courses
again.
“Who’s there?” hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round
to it. “On deck! Begone!”
“Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We
must up Burtons and break out.”
“Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to
here for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?”
“Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make
good in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth
saving, sir.”
“So it is, so it is; if we get it.”
“I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.”

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 Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.

“And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak!
I’m all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks, but
those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that’s a far worse plight than
the Pequod’s, man. Yet I don’t stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in
the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life’s
howling gale? Starbuck! I’ll not have the Burtons hoisted.”
“What will the owners say, sir?”
“Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons.
What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me,
Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my
conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander;
and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship’s keel.—On deck!”
“Captain Ahab,” said the reddening mate, moving further into the
cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost
seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward
manifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful
of itself; “A better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would
quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in a happier, Captain
Ahab.”
“Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?—
On deck!”
“Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir—to be forbearing!
Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?”
Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most
South-Sea-men’s cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,
exclaimed: “There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain
that is lord over the Pequod.—On deck!”
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks,
you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of
the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as
he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: “Thou hast outraged,
not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou
wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old
man.”
“He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!”
murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. “What’s that he said—Ahab
beware of Ahab—there’s something there!” Then unconsciously using the
musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin;
but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and returning the gun

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to the rack, he went to the deck.

“Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck,” he said lowly to the mate;
then raising his voice to the crew: “Furl the t’gallant-sails, and close-reef
the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton, and break out in
the main-hold.”
It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting
Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him;
or mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously
forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient, in
the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his orders were
executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.

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 CHAPTER 110.
Queequeg in His Coffin.

Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were
perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm
weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of
the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those
gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient,
and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that
you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing
coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warning
the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of water,
and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoops,
were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and
the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty
catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn.
Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his
head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.
Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh
to his endless end.
Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;
dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the
higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as
harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but—as
we have elsewhere seen—mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and finally
descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in that
subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and
see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are
the holders, so called.
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled,
you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him
there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was
crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard

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at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved

to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings,
he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some
days’ suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door
of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few long-lingering
days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing.
But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes,
nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange
softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his
sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could
not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow
fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings
of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat
by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face,
as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is
truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all
with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately
tell. So that—let us say it again—no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher
and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping
over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock,
and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the
ocean’s invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards his
destined heaven.
Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,
what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he
asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was
just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had
chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood
of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who
died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy
of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of
his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in
his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes;
for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all
visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the
blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added,
that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according
to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring

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 Queequeg in His Coffin.

sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more
congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-
canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering,
and much lee-way adown the dim ages.
Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the
carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg’s bidding, whatever
it might include. There was some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber
aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the
aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the
coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised
of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent
promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took
Queequeg’s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s
person as he shifted the rule.
“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Island
sailor.
Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and
general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the
coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two
notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his
tools, and to work.
When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he
lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether
they were ready for it yet in that direction.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s
consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to
him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying
men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble
us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin
with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden
stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along
with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits
were then ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh water was placed
at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the
foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now
entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its
comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told

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one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his
arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he
called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a leather
hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed
countenance in view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last,
and signed to be replaced in his hammock.
But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all this
while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him by
the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.
“Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving?
where go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles
where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little
errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who’s now been missing long: I think
he’s in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he must be
very sad; for look! he’s left his tambourine behind;—I found it. Rig-a-dig,
dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I’ll beat ye your dying march.”
“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that
in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and
that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly
forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in
their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in
this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our
heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?—Hark! he speaks
again: but more wildly now.”
“Form two and two! Let’s make a General of him! Ho, where’s his
harpoon? Lay it across here.—Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game
cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!—mind ye
that; Queequeg dies game!—take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies
game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; died
all a’shiver;—out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles
he’s a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped
from a whale-boat! I’d never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail
him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all
cowards—shame upon them! Let ’em go drown like Pip, that jumped from
a whale-boat. Shame! shame!”
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip
was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death;
now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon

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 Queequeg in His Coffin.

there seemed no need of the carpenter’s box: and thereupon, when some
expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause
of his sudden convalescence was this;—at a critical moment, he had just
recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore
had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They
asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign
will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg’s
conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not
kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,
unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally
speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good
time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the
windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he
suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a
good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his
hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many
spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque
figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his
rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this
tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island,
who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete
theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of
attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to
unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even
himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these
mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the
living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the
last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild
exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor
Queequeg—“Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”

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 CHAPTER 111.
The Pacific.

When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South
Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific
with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was
answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues
of blue.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose
gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like
those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist
St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery
prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and
fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and
shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives
and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their
beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld,
must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of
the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same
waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday
planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous
skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-
ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and
impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world’s
whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating
heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the
seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain, as standing like an iron
statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one nostril
he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose
sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously
inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated
White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at length upon these

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almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese cruising-ground, the
old man’s purpose intensified itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vice;
the Delta of his forehead’s veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very
sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, “Stern all! the White
Whale spouts thick blood!”

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 CHAPTER 112.
The Blacksmith.

Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned

in these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits
shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith,
had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after concluding his
contributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it on deck, fast lashed
to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost incessantly invoked by the
headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do some little job for them;
altering, or repairing, or new shaping their various weapons and boat
furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting
to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, harpoons, and lances, and
jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless,
this old man’s was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur,
no impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn;
bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if
toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating
of his heart. And so it was.—Most miserable!
A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing
yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the
curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted
questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every one
now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.
Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter’s midnight, on the road
running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt
the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning,
dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet.
Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts of the
gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief
of his life’s drama.
He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly
encountered that thing in sorrow’s technicals called ruin. He had been an
artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house and

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garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three blithe,

ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church, planted
in a grove. But one night, under cover of darkness, and further concealed
in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy
home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to tell, the
blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family’s
heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that fatal cork, forth
flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for prudent, most wise,
and economic reasons, the blacksmith’s shop was in the basement of his
dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so that always had the young
and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but with
vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed old husband’s
hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors
and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stout
Labor’s iron lullaby, the blacksmith’s infants were rocked to slumber.
Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely?
Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon
him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a
truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of
them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous
elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities
of some other family, and left the worse than useless old man standing, till
the hideous rot of life should make him easier to harvest.
Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day
grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than
the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly
gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forge
choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived down into
the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her thither; and the
houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every
woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to flaxen curls!
Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death
is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first
salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery,
the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still
have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-
contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain
of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and
from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—

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“Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of

intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them.
Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred
and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither!
put up thy gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we
marry thee!”
Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by
fall of eve, the blacksmith’s soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth
went a-whaling.

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 CHAPTER 113.
The Forge.

With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about mid-
day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon
an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with
the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in
his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from
the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from
the fire, began hammering it upon the anvil—the red mass sending off the
sparks in thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.
“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they are always flying
in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;—look here, they burn;
but thou—thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”
“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth,
resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily
can’st thou scorch a scar.”
“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely
woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others
that is not mad. Thou should’st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not
go mad? How can’st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet
hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad?—What wert thou making there?”
“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.”
“And can’st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard
usage as it had?”
“I think so, sir.”
“And I suppose thou can’st smoothe almost any seams and dents;
never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”
“Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”
“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and
leaning with both hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here—here—can
ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across
his ribbed brow; “if thou could’st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay
my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes.

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Moby Dick

Answer! Can’st thou smoothe this seam?”

“Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?”
“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for
though thou only see’st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the
bone of my skull—that is all wrinkles! But, away with child’s play; no
more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!” jingling the leathern bag,
as if it were full of gold coins. “I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a
thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will stick in a
whale like his own fin-bone. There’s the stuff,” flinging the pouch upon the
anvil. “Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel
shoes of racing horses.”
“Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the
best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work.”
“I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from
the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge
me first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these
twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I’ll blow
the fire.”
When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one,
by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. “A
flaw!” rejecting the last one. “Work that over again, Perth.”
This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when
Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then, with
regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him the
glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge shooting up its
intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and bowing over his head
towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or some blessing on the toil.
But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside.
“What’s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?” muttered
Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. “That Parsee smells fire like a fusee;
and smells of it himself, like a hot musket’s powder-pan.”
At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as
Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near by, the
scalding steam shot up into Ahab’s bent face.
“Would’st thou brand me, Perth?” wincing for a moment with the pain;
“have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?”
“Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this
harpoon for the White Whale?”
“For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them

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 The Forge.

thyself, man. Here are my razors—the best of steel; here, and make the
barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea.”
For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would
fain not use them.
“Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave,
sup, nor pray till—but here—to work!”
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the
shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was
about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to
Ahab to place the water-cask near.
“No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy,
there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me
as much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of
dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh,
and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.
“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!”
deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the
baptismal blood.
Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of
hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket
of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms
of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his
foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending
over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, “Good! and now for the
seizings.”
At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread
yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the
pole was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope
was traced half-way along the pole’s length, and firmly secured so, with
intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope—like the Three
Fates—remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the
weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both
hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin, light,
unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip! thy
wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not
unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and
mocked it!

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 CHAPTER 114.
The Gilder.

Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising
ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild,
pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the
stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing, or
paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes
calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success for their
pains.
At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow
heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably
mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they
purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when
beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets
the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that
this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he regards
it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing only the tops of
her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but
through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when the western emigrants’
horses only show their erected ears, while their hidden bodies widely wade
through the amazing verdure.
The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these
there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied children
lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when the flowers
of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most mystic mood;
so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one
seamless whole.
Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as
temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem to
open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them
prove but tarnishing.

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 The Gilder.

Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in
ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,—in
ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for
some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on
them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled,
mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by
storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in
this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one
pause:—through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith,
adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief,
resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through,
we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.
Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt
ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where
is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose
unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in
their grave, and we must there to learn it.
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into that
same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:—
“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s
eye!—Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal
ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do
believe.”
And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same
golden light:—
“I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that
he has always been jolly!”

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 CHAPTER 115.
The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.

And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down
before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab’s harpoon had been welded.
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her
last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad
holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing
round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to
pointing her prow for home.
The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red
bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom
down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw
of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours
were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her
three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-
mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and
nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.
As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most
surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the
same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing
a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to
make room for the far more valuable sperm, but additional supplemental
casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had met; and these were
stowed along the deck, and in the captain’s and officers’ state-rooms. Even
the cabin table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin
mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a
centrepiece. In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitched
their chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that the cook had
clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had
plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed
the sockets of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was
filled with sperm, except the captain’s pantaloons pockets, and those he
reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire

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 The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.

satisfaction.
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the
barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing
still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge try-pots,
which, covered with the parchment-like poke or stomach skin of the black
fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the clenched hands of the
crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were dancing with
the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles;
while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured aloft between the
foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-
bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile,
others of the ship’s company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the
try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed. You would have
almost thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries
they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the
sea.
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the
ship’s elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was full
before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual diversion.
And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,
with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other’s wakes—
one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings as to things
to come—their two captains in themselves impersonated the whole striking
contrast of the scene.
“Come aboard, come aboard!” cried the gay Bachelor’s commander,
lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.
“Hast seen the White Whale?” gritted Ahab in reply.
“No; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,” said the other
good-humoredly. “Come aboard!”
“Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?”
“Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that’s all;—but come aboard,
old hearty, come along. I’ll soon take that black from your brow. Come
along, will ye (merry’s the play); a full ship and homeward-bound.”
“How wondrous familiar is a fool!” muttered Ahab; then aloud, “Thou
art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an
empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward
there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!”
And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the
other stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew

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Moby Dick

of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the receding
Bachelor; but the Bachelor’s men never heeding their gaze for the lively
revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, eyed the
homeward-bound craft, he took from his pocket a small vial of sand, and
then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed thereby bringing two remote
associations together, for that vial was filled with Nantucket soundings.

468
 CHAPTER 116.
The Dying Whale.

Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favourites sail
close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing
breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the
Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were
seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.
It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the
crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky,
sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such
plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it
almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the
Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to
sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had
sterned off from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from
the now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm
whales dying—the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring—that
strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab
conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.
“He turns and turns him to it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too
worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!—Oh that
these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights. Look! here,
far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most
candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets;
where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and
unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the Niger’s unknown source; here,
too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death
whirls round the corpse, and it heads some other way.
“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast
builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured
seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the

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Moby Dick

wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round
again, without a lesson to me.
“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,
rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh
whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only
calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me
with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings float
beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as
air, but water now.
“Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill
and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!”

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 CHAPTER 117.
The Whale Watch.

The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to
windward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These last
three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one could not
be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay by its side all
night; and that boat was Ahab’s.
The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s spout-hole;
and the lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon
the black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which gently
chafed the whale’s broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.
Ahab and all his boat’s crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who
crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played round
the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A sound
like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of
Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.
Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and
hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a
flooded world. “I have dreamed it again,” said he.
“Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor
coffin can be thine?”
“And who are hearsed that die on the sea?”
“But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two
hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by mortal
hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in America.”
“Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:—a hearse and its plumes
floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a
sight we shall not soon see.”
“Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man.”
“And what was that saying about thyself?”
“Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot.”
“And when thou art so gone before—if that ever befall—then ere I can
follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?—Was it not so? Well,

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Moby Dick

then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two pledges that I
shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it.”
“Take another pledge, old man,” said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up
like fire-flies in the gloom—“Hemp only can kill thee.”
“The gallows, ye mean.—I am immortal then, on land and on sea,”
cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;—“Immortal on land and on sea!”
Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and
the slumbering crew arose from the boat’s bottom, and ere noon the dead
whale was brought to the ship.

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 CHAPTER 118.
The Quadrant.

The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab,
coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would
ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to
the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the
nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship’s prow for the
equator. In good time the order came. It was hard upon high noon; and
Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his
wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his latitude.
Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing
focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks
lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness
of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God’s throne.
Well that Ahab’s quadrant was furnished with coloured glasses, through
which to take sight of that solar fire. So, swinging his seated form to the
roll of the ship, and with his astrological-looking instrument placed to his
eye, he remained in that posture for some moments to catch the precise
instant when the sun should gain its precise meridian. Meantime while
his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling beneath him
on the ship’s deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab’s, was eyeing the
same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his
wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length the desired
observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg, Ahab soon
calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant. Then falling into
a moment’s revery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to
himself: “Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly
where I am—but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall be? Or canst
thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living? Where
is Moby Dick? This instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine
look into the very eye that is even now beholding him; aye, and into the
eye that is even now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither

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Moby Dick

side of thee, thou sun!”

Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its
numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered:
“Foolish toy! babies’ plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores,
and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what
after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself
happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not
one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of
sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest
the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things
that cast man’s eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches
him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun!
Level by nature to this earth’s horizon are the glances of man’s eyes; not
shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his
firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!” dashing it to the deck, “no longer
will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the
level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show
me my place on the sea. Aye,” lighting from the boat to the deck, “thus I
trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split
and destroy thee!”
As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live and
dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a fatalistic
despair that seemed meant for himself—these passed over the mute,
motionless Parsee’s face. Unobserved he rose and glided away; while,
awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen clustered together
on the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing the deck, shouted out—“To
the braces! Up helm!—square in!”
In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon
her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon her long,
ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed.
Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod’s
tumultuous way, and Ahab’s also, as he went lurching along the deck.
“I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of
its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to
dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at
length remain but one little heap of ashes!”
“Aye,” cried Stubb, “but sea-coal ashes—mind ye that, Mr. Starbuck—
sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well; I heard Ahab mutter,
‘Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears

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 The Quadrant.

that I must play them, and no others.’ And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest
right; live in the game, and die in it!”

475
 CHAPTER 119.
The Candles.

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches
in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket
the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept
tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese
seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will
sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon
a dazed and sleepy town.
Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and
bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly ahead.
When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the thunder, and
blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts fluttering here
and there with the rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for its
after sport.
Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at
every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster
might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb and Flask were
directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the boats.
But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted to the very top of the
cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab’s) did not escape. A great rolling
sea, dashing high up against the reeling ship’s high teetering side, stove in
the boat’s bottom at the stern, and left it again, all dripping through like a
sieve.
“Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,” said Stubb, regarding the wreck,
“but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can’t fight it. You see, Mr.
Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps, all round the
world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me, all the start I have
to meet it, is just across the deck here. But never mind; it’s all in fun: so the
old song says;”—(sings.)

Oh! jolly is the gale,

And a joker is the whale,

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 The Candles.

A’ flourishin’ his tail,—

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

The scud all a flyin’,

That’s his flip only foamin’;
When he stirs in the spicin’,—
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

Thunder splits the ships,

But he only smacks his lips,
A tastin’ of this flip,—
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

“Avast Stubb,” cried Starbuck, “let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp
here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace.”
“But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a
coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr.
Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my
throat. And when that’s done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-
up.”
“Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.”
“What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else,
never mind how foolish?”
“Here!” cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing
his hand towards the weather bow, “markest thou not that the gale comes
from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby Dick? the very
course he swung to this day noon? now mark his boat there; where is that
stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is wont to stand—his stand-point
is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and sing away, if thou must!
“I don’t half understand ye: what’s in the wind?”
“Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to
Nantucket,” soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb’s question.
“The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it into a fair
wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all is
blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward—I see it lightens up there;
but not with the lightning.”
At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following

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the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same instant a
volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.
“Who’s there?”
“Old Thunder!” said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his
pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed
lances of fire.
Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off
the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea some ships
carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But as this
conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end may avoid all
contact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept constantly towing there, it
would be liable to many mishaps, besides interfering not a little with some
of the rigging, and more or less impeding the vessel’s way in the water;
because of all this, the lower parts of a ship’s lightning-rods are not always
overboard; but are generally made in long slender links, so as to be the
more readily hauled up into the chains outside, or thrown down into the
sea, as occasion may require.
“The rods! the rods!” cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished
to vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux, to
light Ahab to his post. “Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and aft.
Quick!”
“Avast!” cried Ahab; “let’s have fair play here, though we be the
weaker side. Yet I’ll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes,
that all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir.”
“Look aloft!” cried Starbuck. “The corpusants! the corpusants!”
All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each
tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of
the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three
gigantic wax tapers before an altar.
“Blast the boat! let it go!” cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing sea
heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently jammed
his hand, as he was passing a lashing. “Blast it!”—but slipping backward
on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and immediately shifting
his tone he cried—“The corpusants have mercy on us all!”
To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance
of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses
from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea;
but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God’s
burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His “Mene, Mene, Tekel

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 The Candles.

Upharsin” has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage.
While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from
the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle,
all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away
constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic jet
negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed the black
cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of Tashtego
revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely gleamed as if they too
had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by the preternatural light,
Queequeg’s tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on his body.
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more
the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment
or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It
was Stubb. “What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not the
same in the song.”
“No, no, it wasn’t; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I
hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?—have
they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck—but it’s too dark
to look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign of
good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be chock a’
block with sperm-oil, d’ye see; and so, all that sperm will work up into the
masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will yet be as three spermaceti
candles—that’s the good promise we saw.”
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face slowly
beginning to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: “See! see!”
and once more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed
redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor.
“The corpusants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb, again.
At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the
flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but with his head bowed
away from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging,
where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the
seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous,
like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various
enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running skeletons in
Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all their eyes upcast.
“Aye, aye, men!” cried Ahab. “Look up at it; mark it well; the white
flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast
links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood

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against fire! So.”

Then turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot
upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he
stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.
“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian
once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this
hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know
that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou
be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless
fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the
last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral
mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality
stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er
I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels
her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form
of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere
supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds,
there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy
fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”
[Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap lengthwise
to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes his eyes, his right
hand pressed hard upon them.]
“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it
wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can
then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage
of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning
flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten
brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh!
Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out
of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!
The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh,
thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my
fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done
with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not
how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy
beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou
knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing
thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all
thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched

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 The Candles.

eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou
too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again
with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap
with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I
worship thee!”
“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”
Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly lashed
in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat’s bow;
but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to
drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of
pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent’s tongue,
Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm—“God, God is against thee, old man;
forbear! ’tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards,
while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a
better voyage than this.”
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces—though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast
mate’s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing
the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon,
Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it the
first sailor that but cast loose a rope’s end. Petrified by his aspect, and
still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in
dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—
“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and
heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may
know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last
fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood
of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so
much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts;
so at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did run from him in
a terror of dismay.

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

Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him.

“We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working
loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?”
“Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway them up now.”
“Sir!—in God’s name!—sir?”
“Well.”
“The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?”
“Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises,
but it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.—By masts
and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some coasting
smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest trucks
were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid
the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards send down their
brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft there! I would e’en
take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take
medicine, take medicine!”

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 CHAPTER 121.
Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.

Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over
the anchors there hanging.
“No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but
you will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how
long ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn’t you once say that
whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its
insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and
boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn’t you say so?”
“Well, suppose I did? What then? I’ve part changed my flesh since that
time, why not my mind? Besides, supposing we are loaded with powder
barrels aft and lucifers forward; how the devil could the lucifers get afire
in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man, you have pretty red hair,
but you couldn’t get afire now. Shake yourself; you’re Aquarius, or the
water-bearer, Flask; might fill pitchers at your coat collar. Don’t you see,
then, that for these extra risks the Marine Insurance companies have extra
guarantees? Here are hydrants, Flask. But hark, again, and I’ll answer ye
the other thing. First take your leg off from the crown of the anchor here,
though, so I can pass the rope; now listen. What’s the mighty difference
between holding a mast’s lightning-rod in the storm, and standing close by
a mast that hasn’t got any lightning-rod at all in a storm? Don’t you see,
you timber-head, that no harm can come to the holder of the rod, unless
the mast is first struck? What are you talking about, then? Not one ship in
a hundred carries rods, and Ahab,—aye, man, and all of us,—were in no
more danger then, in my poor opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand
ships now sailing the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would
have every man in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running
up the corner of his hat, like a militia officer’s skewered feather, and
trailing behind like his sash. Why don’t ye be sensible, Flask? it’s easy to
be sensible; why don’t ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.”
“I don’t know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.”
“Yes, when a fellow’s soaked through, it’s hard to be sensible, that’s a

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fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind; catch the turn
there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as
if they were never going to be used again. Tying these two anchors here,
Flask, seems like tying a man’s hands behind him. And what big generous
hands they are, to be sure. These are your iron fists, hey? What a hold they
have, too! I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she
is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though. There, hammer that
knot down, and we’ve done. So; next to touching land, lighting on deck is
the most satisfactory. I say, just wring out my jacket skirts, will ye? Thank
ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask; but seems to me, a long tailed coat
ought always to be worn in all storms afloat. The tails tapering down that
way, serve to carry off the water, d’ye see. Same with cocked hats; the
cocks form gable-end eave-troughs, Flask. No more monkey-jackets and
tarpaulins for me; I must mount a swallow-tail, and drive down a beaver;
so. Halloa! whew! there goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the
winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty
night, lad.”

484
 CHAPTER 122.
Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.

The main-top-sail yard.—Tashtego passing new lashings around it.

“Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here.
What’s the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don’t want thunder; we want
rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!”

485
 CHAPTER 123.
The Musket.

During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod’s
jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its
spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached to
it—for they were slack—because some play to the tiller was indispensable.
In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock to
the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses,
at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the Pequod’s; at almost
every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice the whirling velocity
with which they revolved upon the cards; it is a sight that hardly anyone
can behold without some sort of unwonted emotion.
Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through
the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb—one engaged forward and
the other aft—the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails
were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the
feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that
storm-tossed bird is on the wing.
The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a
storm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went through the
water with some precision again; and the course—for the present, East-
south-east—which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more given
to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had only steered
according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing the ship as near
her course as possible, watching the compass meanwhile, lo! a good sign!
the wind seemed coming round astern; aye, the foul breeze became fair!
Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of “Ho! the fair
wind! oh-ye-ho, cheerly men!” the crew singing for joy, that so promising
an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.
In compliance with the standing order of his commander—to report
immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided change
in the affairs of the deck,—Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to
the breeze—however reluctantly and gloomily,—than he mechanically

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 The Musket.

went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.

Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it
a moment. The cabin lamp—taking long swings this way and that—was
burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man’s bolted
door,—a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels. The
isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming silence to
reign there, though it was hooped round by all the roar of the elements. The
loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as they stood upright
against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but
out of Starbuck’s heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there
strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good
accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.
“He would have shot me once,” he murmured, “yes, there’s the very
musket that he pointed at me;—that one with the studded stock; let me
touch it—lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly lances,
strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and
powder in the pan;—that’s not good. Best spill it?—wait. I’ll cure myself
of this. I’ll hold the musket boldly while I think.—I come to report a fair
wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and doom,—that’s fair for Moby
Dick. It’s a fair wind that’s only fair for that accursed fish.—The very tube
he pointed at me!—the very one; this one—I hold it here; he would have
killed me with the very thing I handle now.—Aye and he would fain kill all
his crew. Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he
not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes
he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in
this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods?
But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s
company down to doom with him?—Yes, it would make him the wilful
murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to any deadly harm;
and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his
way. If, then, he were this instant—put aside, that crime would not be his.
Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there,—in there, he’s sleeping.
Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake again. I can’t withstand thee,
then, old man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou
hearken to; all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands,
this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say’st the men have vow’d thy vow;
say’st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!—But is there no other way?
no lawful way?—Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope
to wrest this old man’s living power from his own living hands? Only a

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fool would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes
and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be
more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could
not possibly fly his howlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason
would leave me on the long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The
land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand
alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent
between me and law.—Aye, aye, ’tis so.—Is heaven a murderer when its
lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin
together?—And would I be a murderer, then, if”—and slowly, stealthily,
and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket’s end against the
door.
“On this level, Ahab’s hammock swings within; his head this way.
A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.—Oh
Mary! Mary!—boy! boy! boy!—But if I wake thee not to death, old man,
who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck’s body this day week may
sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall I?—The
wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed
and set; she heads her course.”
“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”
Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man’s
tormented sleep, as if Starbuck’s voice had caused the long dumb dream to
speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard’s arm against the panel;
Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he
placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
“He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and
tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know’st what to say.”

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 CHAPTER 124.
The Needle.

Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of

mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on
like giants’ palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded
so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed
before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was
only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays
moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and
queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold,
that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every
time the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to
eye the bright sun’s rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled
by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun’s rearward place, and how
the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake.
“Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot
of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye!
Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!”
But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
“East-sou-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman.
“Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. “Heading East at this
hour in the morning, and the sun astern?”
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very
blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one
glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he
almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo!
the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going
West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the

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Moby Dick

old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened before.
Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses—that’s all. Thou
hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”
“Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate,
gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than
one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as
developed in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one with the
electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that
such things should be. Instances where the lightning has actually struck the
vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon
the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue being
annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an
old wife’s knitting needle. But in either case, the needle never again, of
itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle
compasses be affected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in
the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed
compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took
the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were exactly
inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship’s course to be changed
accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod thrust her
undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair one had only
been juggling her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said
nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask—
who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings—likewise
unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly
rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. But as ever
before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if
impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial
hearts from inflexible Ahab’s.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper sight-tubes
of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
“Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun’s pilot! yesterday I wrecked
thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But
Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without a
pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles. Quick!”

490
 The Needle.

Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now

about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been
to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter
so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old man well
knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily practicable,
was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors, without some
shudderings and evil portents.
“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s
needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will
point as true as any.”
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as
this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might
follow. But Starbuck looked away.
With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head
of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining,
bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the
maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed
the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered
that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going
through some small strange motions with it—whether indispensable to
the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the
crew, is uncertain—he called for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle,
slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the
sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel
went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last it
settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this
result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched
arm towards it, exclaimed,—“Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord
of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!”
One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could
persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
fatal pride.

491
 CHAPTER 125.
The Log and Line.

While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the log
and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance
upon other means of determining the vessel’s place, some merchantmen,
and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave
the log; though at the same time, and frequently more for form’s sake than
anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the course
steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of progression
every hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden reel and angular
log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the railing of the after
bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun and wind had warped it; all
the elements had combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. But heedless of
all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance upon the reel, not
many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered how his quadrant
was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level log and line. The
ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows rolled in riots.
“Forward, there! Heave the log!”
Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly
Manxman. “Take the reel, one of ye, I’ll heave.”
They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship’s lee side, where the
deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into the
creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.
The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting
handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so
stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.
Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or
forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old
Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to
speak.
“Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have
spoiled it.”
“’Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled

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thee? Thou seem’st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it.”
“I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey
hairs of mine ’tis not worth while disputing, ’specially with a superior,
who’ll ne’er confess.”
“What’s that? There now’s a patched professor in Queen Nature’s
granite-founded College; but methinks he’s too subservient. Where wert
thou born?”
“In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.”
“Excellent! Thou’st hit the world by that.”
“I know not, sir, but I was born there.”
“In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it’s good. Here’s a man
from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of
Man; which is sucked in—by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall
butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So.”
The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long
dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In turn,
jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing resistance
of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.
“Hold hard!”
Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the
tugging log was gone.
“I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad
sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian; reel
up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend
thou the line. See to it.”
“There he goes now; to him nothing’s happened; but to me, the skewer
seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in, Tahitian!
These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and dragging
slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?”
“Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip’s
missing. Let’s see now if ye haven’t fished him up here, fisherman. It drags
hard; I guess he’s holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul in no
cowards here. Ho! there’s his arm just breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet!
cut it off—we haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here’s Pip,
trying to get on board again.”
“Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.
“Away from the quarter-deck!”
“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahab, advancing.
“Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?

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“Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!”

“And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of
thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve
through! Who art thou, boy?”
“Bell-boy, sir; ship’s-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One
hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high—looks cowardly—
quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip the coward?”
“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens!
look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned
him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s home
henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou
art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let’s down.”
“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s
hand, and feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as
this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope;
something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come
and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will
not let this go.”
“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all
goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of
suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet
full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading
thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor’s!”
“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft
with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end of the rotten
line—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line
altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”

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 CHAPTER 126.
The Life-Buoy.

Steering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress

solely determined by Ahab’s level log and line; the Pequod held on
her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such
unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled
by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these
seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate
scene.
At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the
dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch—then headed by
Flask—was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly—like half-
articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s murdered Innocents—that
one and all, they started from their reveries, and for the space of some
moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly listening, like the carved
Roman slave, while that wild cry remained within hearing. The Christian
or civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the
pagan harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman—the
oldest mariner of all—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were
heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.
Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn,
when he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not
unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus
explained the wonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great
numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or some
dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept
company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail. But
this only the more affected some of them, because most mariners cherish a
very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not only from their peculiar
tones when in distress, but also from the human look of their round
heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from the water

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alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have more than
once been mistaken for men.
But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At sun-rise
this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore; and whether
it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for sailors sometimes
go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus with the man, there is
now no telling; but, be that as it may, he had not been long at his perch,
when a cry was heard—a cry and a rushing—and looking up, they saw a
falling phantom in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white
bubbles in the blue of the sea.
The life-buoy—a long slender cask—was dropped from the stern,
where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to
seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so
that it slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and
the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to yield
him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.
And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look
out for the White Whale, on the White Whale’s own peculiar ground; that
man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the
time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at least as a
portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future,
but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged. They declared that now
they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they had heard the night before.
But again the old Manxman said nay.
The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to
see to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in the
feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage,
all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with
its final end, whatever that might prove to be; therefore, they were going
to leave the ship’s stern unprovided with a buoy, when by certain strange
signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint concerning his coffin.
“A life-buoy of a coffin!” cried Starbuck, starting.
“Rather queer, that, I should say,” said Stubb.
“It will make a good enough one,” said Flask, “the carpenter here can
arrange it easily.”
“Bring it up; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, after a
melancholy pause. “Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so—the coffin, I
mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it.”

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 The Life-Buoy.

“And shall I nail down the lid, sir?” moving his hand as with a
hammer.
“Aye.”
“And shall I caulk the seams, sir?” moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron.
“Aye.”
“And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?” moving his hand
as with a pitch-pot.
“Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin,
and no more.—Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me.”
“He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks.
Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it
like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he won’t put
his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin? And
now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like turning an old coat;
going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I don’t like this cobbling
sort of business—I don’t like it at all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place.
Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand
none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that
regularly begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and
comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in
the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It’s the old woman’s tricks
to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all old women have
for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who ran away with a bald-
headed young tinker once. And that’s the reason I never would work for
lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the Vineyard;
they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run off with me. But
heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down
the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down
tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship’s stern. Were ever such
things done before with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now,
would be tied up in the rigging, ere they would do the job. But I’m made of
knotty Aroostook hemlock; I don’t budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing
about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make
bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work
by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and
wherefore of our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling, and then we
stash it if we can. Hem! I’ll do the job, now, tenderly. I’ll have me—let’s
see—how many in the ship’s company, all told? But I’ve forgotten. Any

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way, I’ll have me thirty separate, Turk’s-headed life-lines, each three feet
long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there’ll be
thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often
beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-
spike! Let’s to it.”

498
 CHAPTER 127.
The Deck.

The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open
hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted oakum
slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.—
Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him.
“Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand
complies with my humor more genially than that boy.—Middle aisle of a
church! What’s here?”
“Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
hatchway!”
“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.”
“Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.”
“Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
shop?”
“I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?”
“Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?”
“Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
they’ve set me now to turning it into something else.”
“Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same
coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-
trades.”
“But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.”
“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand.
Dost thou never?”
“Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but the
reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there
was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it.”
“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding-board; and what

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Moby Dick

in all things makes the sounding-board is this—there’s naught beneath.

And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against the
churchyard gate, going in?
“Faith, sir, I’ve——”
“Faith? What’s that?”
“Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like—that’s all, sir.”
“Um, um; go on.”
“I was about to say, sir, that——”
“Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.”
“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I’ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is
cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator
cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He’s always under the Line—
fiery hot, I tell ye! He’s looking this way—come, oakum; quick. Here we
go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I’m the professor of musical
glasses—tap, tap!”
(Ahab to himself.)
“There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded woodpecker
tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See!
that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,
that fellow. Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all
materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here
now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the
expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy
of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the
coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! I’ll think of that. But no.
So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic
bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done,
Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thing
here when I return again. Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I do suck
most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the
unknown worlds must empty into thee!”

500
 CHAPTER 128.
The Pequod Meets The Rachel.

Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down
upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time
the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-
winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell
together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten
hull.
“Bad news; she brings bad news,” muttered the old Manxman. But ere
her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he
could hopefully hail, Ahab’s voice was heard.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?”
Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question;
and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger captain
himself, having stopped his vessel’s way, was seen descending her side. A
few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequod’s main-chains,
and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was recognised by Ahab for a
Nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged.
“Where was he?—not killed!—not killed!” cried Ahab, closely
advancing. “How was it?”
It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous,
while three of the stranger’s boats were engaged with a shoal of whales,
which had led them some four or five miles from the ship; and while they
were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby
Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very far to leeward;
whereupon, the fourth rigged boat—a reserved one—had been instantly
lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this fourth boat—
the swiftest keeled of all—seemed to have succeeded in fastening—at
least, as well as the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it. In
the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and then a swift gleam
of bubbling white water; and after that nothing more; whence it was
concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with his

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Moby Dick

pursuers, as often happens. There was some apprehension, but no positive

alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came
on; and forced to pick up her three far to windward boats—ere going in
quest of the fourth one in the precisely opposite direction—the ship had not
only been necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight, but,
for the time, to increase her distance from it. But the rest of her crew being
at last safe aboard, she crowded all sail—stunsail on stunsail—after the
missing boat; kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other
man aloft on the look-out. But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient
distance to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen;
though she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and
not finding anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her
boats; and though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet not the
least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.
The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his
object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with his own in
the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles apart, on parallel
lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were.
“I will wager something now,” whispered Stubb to Flask, “that some
one in that missing boat wore off that Captain’s best coat; mayhap, his
watch—he’s so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two pious
whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height of the
whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale he looks—pale in the very
buttons of his eyes—look—it wasn’t the coat—it must have been the—”
“My boy, my own boy is among them. For God’s sake—I beg, I
conjure”—here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far had
but icily received his petition. “For eight-and-forty hours let me charter
your ship—I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it—if there be no
other way—for eight-and-forty hours only—only that—you must, oh, you
must, and you shall do this thing.”
“His son!” cried Stubb, “oh, it’s his son he’s lost! I take back the coat
and watch—what says Ahab? We must save that boy.”
“He’s drowned with the rest on ’em, last night,” said the old Manx
sailor standing behind them; “I heard; all of ye heard their spirits.”
Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel’s
the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the
Captain’s sons among the number of the missing boat’s crew; but among
the number of the other boat’s crews, at the same time, but on the other
hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase,

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 The Pequod Meets The Rachel.

there had been still another son; as that for a time, the wretched father was
plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity; which was only solved
for him by his chief mate’s instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure
of a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is, when placed between
jeopardized but divided boats, always to pick up the majority first. But
the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from
mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by Ahab’s iciness did he allude
to his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father
with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer’s paternal
love, had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils and wonders of a
vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor does it
unfrequently occur, that Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender
age away from them, for a protracted three or four years’ voyage in some
other ship than their own; so that their first knowledge of a whaleman’s
career shall be unenervated by any chance display of a father’s natural but
untimely partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and concern.
Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of
Ahab; and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without
the least quivering of his own.
“I will not go,” said the stranger, “till you say aye to me. Do to me
as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a boy,
Captain Ahab—though but a child, and nestling safely at home now—a
child of your old age too—Yes, yes, you relent; I see it—run, run, men,
now, and stand by to square in the yards.”
“Avast,” cried Ahab—“touch not a rope-yarn”; then in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word—“Captain Gardiner, I will not do it.
Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may
I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch,
and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers: then
brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.”
Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,
leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter
rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment, Gardiner
silently hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his boat, and
returned to his ship.
Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange
vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark
spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung
round; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against

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Moby Dick

a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the while, her masts
and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, when
the boys are cherrying among the boughs.
But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly
saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort.
She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.

504
 CHAPTER 129.
The Cabin.

(Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)

“Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is
coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have
thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my
malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most
desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee, as
if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in my own screwed
chair; another screw to it, thou must be.”
“No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for
your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain a part
of ye.”
“Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
fidelity of man!—and a black! and crazy!—but methinks like-cures-like
applies to him too; he grows so sane again.”
“They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, whose
drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin.
But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with ye.”
“If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab’s purpose keels up in
him. I tell thee no; it cannot be.”
“Oh good master, master, master!
“Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad.
Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still
know that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!—Met! True art thou,
lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless thee; and if it
come to that,—God for ever save thee, let what will befall.”
(Ahab goes; Pip steps one step forward.)
“Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,—but I’m alone. Now
were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he’s missing. Pip! Pip! Ding,
dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip? He must be up here; let’s try the door. What?
neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there’s no opening it. It must be
the spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and told me this screwed chair was

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Moby Dick

mine. Here, then, I’ll seat me, against the transom, in the ship’s full middle,
all her keel and her three masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in
their black seventy-fours great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it
over rows of captains and lieutenants. Ha! what’s this? epaulets! epaulets!
the epaulets all come crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye;
fill up, monsieurs! What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy’s host
to white men with gold lace upon their coats!—Monsieurs, have ye seen
one Pip?—a little negro lad, five feet high, hang-dog look, and cowardly!
Jumped from a whale-boat once;—seen him? No! Well then, fill up again,
captains, and let’s drink shame upon all cowards! I name no names. Shame
upon them! Put one foot upon the table. Shame upon all cowards.—Hist!
above there, I hear ivory—Oh, master! master! I am indeed down-hearted
when you walk over me. But here I’ll stay, though this stern strikes rocks;
and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me.”

506
 CHAPTER 130.
The Hat.

And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab,—all other whaling waters swept—seemed
to have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely
there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude
where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had
been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered
Moby Dick;—and now that all his successive meetings with various ships
contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which the
white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against; now it was
that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes, which it was hardly
sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting polar star, which through
the livelong, arctic, six months’ night sustains its piercing, steady, central
gaze; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant
midnight of the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so, that all their
bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls,
and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.
In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural,
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more strove
to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest
dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab’s iron
soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever conscious
that the old man’s despot eye was on them.
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours;
when he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have
seen that even as Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Parsee’s
glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected
it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah
now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious
at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal
substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen
being’s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by

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night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go

below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan but
wondrous eyes did plainly say—We two watchmen never rest.
Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the
deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole, or
exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,—the main-mast
and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle,—his
living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step; his hat slouched heavily
over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood, however the days and
nights were added on, that he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden
beneath that slouching hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all
this, his eyes were really closed at times; or whether he was still intently
scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a whole
hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew
upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the
next day’s sunshine dried upon him; and so, day after day, and night after
night; he went no more beneath the planks; whatever he wanted from the
cabin that thing he sent for.
He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,—breakfast
and dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly
grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow
idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure. But though his
whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the Parsee’s
mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these two never
seemed to speak—one man to the other—unless at long intervals some
passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent
spell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew,
they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word;
by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal
interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood
far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast;
but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his
forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.
And yet, somehow, did Ahab—in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,
and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,—Ahab
seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both
seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade
siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel was
solid Ahab.

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 The Hat.

At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard
from aft,—“Man the mast-heads!”—and all through the day, till after
sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking of the
helmsman’s bell, was heard—“What d’ye see?—sharp! sharp!”
But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the children-
seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac old man
seemed distrustful of his crew’s fidelity; at least, of nearly all except the
Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask
might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if these suspicions
were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them,
however his actions might seem to hint them.
“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,”—he said. “Aye!
Ahab must have the doubloon!” and with his own hands he rigged a nest
of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved
block, to secure to the main-mast head, he received the two ends of the
downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for
the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done, with that end yet
in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked round upon his crew,
sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long upon Daggoo,
Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his firm
relying eye upon the chief mate, said,—“Take the rope, sir—I give it into
thy hands, Starbuck.” Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave
the word for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who
secured the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one
hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for
miles and miles,—ahead, astern, this side, and that,—within the wide
expanded circle commanded at so great a height.
When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in
the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted
up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these circumstances,
its fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge to some one man
who has the special watch of it. Because in such a wilderness of running
rigging, whose various different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly
discerned by what is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of
these ropes are being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it
would be but a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman,
the hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift
and fall all swooping to the sea. So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter were
not unusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck,

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almost the one only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with
anything in the slightest degree approaching to decision—one of those too,
whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt somewhat;—it
was strange, that this was the very man he should select for his watchman;
freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person’s
hands.
Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there
ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly
incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these
latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head
in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet
straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and went eddying again
round his head.
But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab
seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have
marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the
least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost
every sight.
“Your hat, your hat, sir!” suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though
somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them.
But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long
hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his
prize.
An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace
it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of
Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good.
Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in
advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that
disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that
vast height into the sea.

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 CHAPTER 131.
The Pequod Meets The Delight.

The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the life-
buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably misnamed
the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon
her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the
quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare,
unrigged, or disabled boats.
Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and
some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you
now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-
unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with
his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.
“Hast killed him?”
“The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,” answered
the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose
gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.
“Not forged!” and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from the crotch,
Ahab held it out, exclaiming—“Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand
I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these
barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin,
where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!”
“Then God keep thee, old man—see’st thou that”—pointing to
the hammock—“I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only
yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest were
buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb.” Then turning to his
crew—“Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and lift the
body; so, then—Oh! God”—advancing towards the hammock with uplifted
hands—“may the resurrection and the life——”
“Brace forward! Up helm!” cried Ahab like lightning to his men.
But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the

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sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not so
quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her
hull with their ghostly baptism.
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy
hanging at the Pequod’s stern came into conspicuous relief.
“Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!” cried a foreboding voice in her
wake. “In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your
taffrail to show us your coffin!”

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 CHAPTER 132.
The Symphony.

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was
transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-
like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his
sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but
to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty
leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled,
murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades
and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it
were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air
to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling
line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at the
equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which
the poor bride gave her bosom away.
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly
firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes
of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting
his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how
oblivious were ye of old Ahab’s close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little
Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their
old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge
of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the
more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely

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aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment,
the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky,
did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel—
forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and
did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and
erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath
his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific
contain such wealth as that one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the
side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing
that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him,
or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.
Ahab turned.
“Starbuck!”
“Sir.”
“Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky.
On such a day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first
whale—a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—
ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril,
and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab
forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of
the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent
three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude
it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness,
which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country
without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary
command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly
known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted
fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!—when the poorest
landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s
fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away, whole oceans away, from that
young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next
day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife? wife?—rather
a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I
married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood
and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab
has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—
aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been!
Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and

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the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold.
Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor
leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair
aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but
from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I
feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my
heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of
grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus
intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a
human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon
God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass,
man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on
board!—lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby
Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I
see in that eye!”
“Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!
why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly
these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck’s—wife
and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are
the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us
away!—this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously,
O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I
think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.”
“They have, they have. I have seen them—some summer days in
the morning. About this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to
dance him again.”
“’Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every
morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his
father’s sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come,
my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy’s face
from the window! the boy’s hand on the hill!”
But Ahab’s glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and
cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.
“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep

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pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not
so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?
But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven;
nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can
this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God
does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven,
man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass,
and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this
unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and
fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who’s to doom, when
the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and
a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away
meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the
Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay.
Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep?
Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year’s scythes flung down, and left in
the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!”
But blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly
leaning over the same rail.

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 CHAPTER 133.
The Chase—First Day.

That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at intervals—
stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-
hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a
sagacious ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He
declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes
to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to
all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the
compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing
of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship’s course to
be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently
vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and
lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery
wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-
rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
“Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!”
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the
forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that
they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear
with their clothes in their hands.
“What d’ye see?” cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
“Nothing, nothing sir!” was the sound hailing down in reply.
“T’gallant sails!—stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!”
All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for swaying
him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were hoisting
him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft, and while peering
ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the main-top-sail and top-
gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air. “There she blows!—there
she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”
Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous

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whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final
perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath
him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian’s head was almost
on a level with Ahab’s heel. From this height the whale was now seen some
mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump,
and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air. To the credulous mariners
it seemed the same silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit
Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
“And did none of ye see it before?” cried Ahab, hailing the perched
men all around him.
“I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I
cried out,” said Tashtego.
“Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate
reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the
White Whale first. There she blows!—there she blows!—there she blows!
There again!—there again!” he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic
tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale’s visible jets. “He’s
going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats.
Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there!
Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only
black water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr.
Starbuck; lower, lower,—quick, quicker!” and he slid through the air to the
deck.
“He is heading straight to leeward, sir,” cried Stubb, “right away from
us; cannot have seen the ship yet.”
“Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!—brace
up! Shiver her!—shiver her!—So; well that! Boats, boats!”
Soon all the boats but Starbuck’s were dropped; all the boat-sails set—
all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to leeward; and
Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah’s sunken
eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the
sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean
grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed
a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter
came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling
hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing,
and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He
saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond.

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 The Chase—First Day.

Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening
white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully
accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably
flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand
bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again
by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate
with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted
hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected
from the white whale’s back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-
toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish,
silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming
like pennons.
A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness,
invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with
ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes
sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling
straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty
Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.
On each soft side—coincident with the parted swell, that but once
leaving him, then flowed so wide away—on each bright side, the whale
shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters
who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured
to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes.
Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all who for the first
time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way thou may’st have
bejuggled and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among
waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture,
Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his
submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.
But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant
his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia’s Natural
Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand
god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting,
and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly lingered over the
agitated pool that he left.
With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the
three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick’s reappearance.
“An hour,” said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat’s stern; and he gazed

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beyond the whale’s place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing
vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed
whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze now
freshened; the sea began to swell.
“The birds!—the birds!” cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were
now all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began
fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,
expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could discover
no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its
depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white
weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till
it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows
of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It
was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk
still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned
beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one
sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this
tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with
him, went forward to the bows, and seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded
his crew to grasp their oars and stand by to stern.
Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its
bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while yet under
water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious
intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in
an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.
Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled
for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a
biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his mouth, so
that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the open air,
and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish pearl-white of the
inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab’s head, and reached higher
than that. In this attitude the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as
a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed,
and crossed his arms; but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each
other’s heads to gain the uttermost stern.
And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as
the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his
body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from

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the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while
the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to
withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing
vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws
he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked
hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly
strove, the jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed,
and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit
the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea,
midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken
ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and
striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them across.
At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the
first to perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a
movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had
made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping
further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as it slipped, the
boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned
to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea.
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little
distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the
billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;
so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet
out of the water—the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,
dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray still
higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only
recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit
with their scud.
*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation
(pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise
of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously described.
By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view
whatever objects may be encircling him.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly
round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his
vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly
assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the
blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus’s elephants in the
book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the

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whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he could

still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless
Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock
might burst. From the boat’s fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and
mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not
succor him; more than enough was it for them to look to themselves. For
so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s aspect, and so planetarily
swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally
swooping upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed, still hovered
hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to strike, lest that should
be the signal for the instant destruction of the jeopardized castaways,
Ahab and all; nor in that case could they themselves hope to escape. With
straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge of the direful zone,
whose centre had now become the old man’s head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the
ship’s mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the
scene; and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!—“Sail on
the”—but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick,
and whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing
to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,—“Sail on the whale!—Drive him
off!”
The Pequod’s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed
circle, she effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he
sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.
Dragged into Stubb’s boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white
brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab’s bodily strength did
crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body’s doom: for a time, lying all
crushed in the bottom of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden under foot of herds
of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds
from out ravines.
But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
abbreviate it. In an instant’s compass, great hearts sometimes condense to
one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through
feebler men’s whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary in each
one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their life-time aggregate a whole
age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous intensities; for even in their
pointless centres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of
inferior souls.
“The harpoon,” said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on

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one bended arm—“is it safe?”

“Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it,” said Stubb, showing it.
“Lay it before me;—any missing men?”
“One, two, three, four, five;—there were five oars, sir, and here are
five men.”
“That’s good.—Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him!
there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—Hands off from
me! The eternal sap runs up in Ahab’s bones again! Set the sail; out oars;
the helm!”
It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked
up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is thus
continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now. But the
added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale, for
he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a velocity
which plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances, pushed on,
the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one;
nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted,
intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one brief
vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most
promising intermediate means of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the
boats now made for her, and were soon swayed up to their cranes—the
two parts of the wrecked boat having been previously secured by her—and
then hoisting everything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and
sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of
an albatross; the Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick.
At the well known, methodic intervals, the whale’s glittering spout was
regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would
be reported as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing
the deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted
hour expired, his voice was heard.—“Whose is the doubloon now? D’ye
see him?” and if the reply was, No, sir! straightway he commanded them
to lift him to his perch. In this way the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and
motionless; anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.
As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men
aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a still
greater breadth—thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at every
turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon the
quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered stern. At last
he paused before it; and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh troops of

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clouds will sometimes sail across, so over the old man’s face there now
stole some such added gloom as this.
Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though,
to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in
his Captain’s mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed—“The
thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!”
“What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man!
did I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could swear
thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck.”
“Aye, sir,” said Starbuck drawing near, “’tis a solemn sight; an omen,
and an ill one.”
“Omen? omen?—the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to
man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an
old wives’ darkling hint.—Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one
thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all
mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth,
nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold—I shiver!—How now? Aloft
there! D’ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a
second!”
The day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe was
rustling. Soon, it was almost dark, but the look-out men still remained
unset.
“Can’t see the spout now, sir;—too dark”—cried a voice from the air.
“How heading when last seen?”
“As before, sir,—straight to leeward.”
“Good! he will travel slower now ’tis night. Down royals and top-
gallant stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before morning;
he’s making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm there! keep
her full before the wind!—Aloft! come down!—Mr. Stubb, send a fresh
hand to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till morning.”—Then
advancing towards the doubloon in the main-mast—“Men, this gold is
mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is
dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be
killed, this gold is that man’s; and if on that day I shall again raise him,
then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye! Away now!—the
deck is thine, sir!”
And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and
slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals rousing
himself to see how the night wore on.

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 CHAPTER 134.
The Chase—Second Day.

At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.

“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the light to
spread.
“See nothing, sir.”
“Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
for;—the top-gallant sails!—aye, they should have been kept on her all
night. But no matter—’tis but resting for the rush.”
Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale,
continued through day into night, and through night into day, is a thing by
no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is the wonderful
skill, prescience of experience, and invincible confidence acquired by
some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket commanders; that from
the simple observation of a whale when last descried, they will, under
certain given circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both the direction
in which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of sight, as well
as his probable rate of progression during that period. And, in these cases,
somewhat as a pilot, when about losing sight of a coast, whose general
trending he well knows, and which he desires shortly to return to again, but
at some further point; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takes the
precise bearing of the cape at present visible, in order the more certainly
to hit aright the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited: so does
the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and
diligently marked, through several hours of daylight, then, when night
obscures the fish, the creature’s future wake through the darkness is almost
as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the pilot’s coast is
to him. So that to this hunter’s wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence
of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all desired purposes well nigh as
reliable as the steadfast land. And as the mighty iron Leviathan of the
modern railway is so familiarly known in its every pace, that, with watches
in their hands, men time his rate as doctors that of a baby’s pulse; and
lightly say of it, the up train or the down train will reach such or such a

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spot, at such or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions when
these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, according to the
observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so many hours hence
this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this
or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to render this acuteness at all
successful in the end, the wind and the sea must be the whaleman’s allies;
for of what present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill
that assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his
port? Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters
touching the chase of whales.
The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-
ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level field.
“By salt and hemp!” cried Stubb, “but this swift motion of the deck
creeps up one’s legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two brave
fellows!—Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise, on the
sea,—for by live-oaks! my spine’s a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves
no dust behind!”
“There she blows—she blows!—she blows!—right ahead!” was now
the mast-head cry.
“Aye, aye!” cried Stubb, “I knew it—ye can’t escape—blow on and
split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your
trump—blister your lungs!—Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller
shuts his watergate upon the stream!”
And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies
of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine
worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might
have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the
growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed,
as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of
Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous
day; the rack of the past night’s suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind,
reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying
mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that
made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible
as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so
enslaved them to the race.
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all;
though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and
pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in

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 The Chase—Second Day.

the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by
the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s
valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into
oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord
and keel did point to.
The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand,
some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their
eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars
in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still
strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy
them!
“Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?” cried Ahab, when, after
the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.
“Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd
jet that way, and then disappears.”
It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken
some other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for
hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin
on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the air
vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant halloo of
thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as—much nearer to the ship than the place
of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead—Moby Dick bodily burst into
view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable
gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal
his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching.
Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale
thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a
mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles
and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem
his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.
“There she breaches! there she breaches!” was the cry, as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to
Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against
the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment,
intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and stood there gradually
fading and fading away from its first sparkling intensity, to the dim
mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.
“Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!” cried Ahab, “thy hour

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and thy harpoon are at hand!—Down! down all of ye, but one man at the
fore. The boats!—stand by!”
Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like
shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards;
while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch.
“Lower away,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat—a spare
one, rigged the afternoon previous. “Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine—keep
away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!”
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first
assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the
three crews. Ahab’s boat was central; and cheering his men, he told them
he would take the whale head-and-head,—that is, pull straight up to his
forehead,—a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain limit, such
a course excludes the coming onset from the whale’s sidelong vision. But
ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three boats were plain as
the ship’s three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning himself into
furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with
open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and
heedless of the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent
on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made. But
skilfully manœuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers in the
field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank’s
breadth; while all the time, Ahab’s unearthly slogan tore every other cry
but his to shreds.
But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed
and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three
lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped
the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him; though now for a
moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more tremendous
charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid out more line: and then
was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again—hoping that way to
disencumber it of some snarls—when lo!—a sight more savage than the
embattled teeth of sharks!
Caught and twisted—corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose
harpoons and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing
and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab’s boat. Only one thing
could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached within—
through—and then, without—the rays of steel; dragged in the line beyond,
passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering the rope near

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the chocks—dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into the sea; and was all
fast again. That instant, the White Whale made a sudden rush among the
remaining tangles of the other lines; by so doing, irresistibly dragged the
more involved boats of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed them
together like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving
down into the sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a
space, the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like
the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch.
While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after
the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while aslope little
Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards
to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustily singing out for
some one to ladle him up; and while the old man’s line—now parting—
admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to rescue whom he could;—
in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils,—Ahab’s yet
unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires,—as,
arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed
his broad forehead against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over,
into the air; till it fell again—gunwale downwards—and Ahab and his men
struggled out from under it, like seals from a sea-side cave.
The first uprising momentum of the whale—modifying its direction
as he struck the surface—involuntarily launched him along it, to a little
distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his back
to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from side
to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip or crumb of
the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and came sideways
smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work for that time was
done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the ocean, and trailing after
him the intertangled lines, continued his leeward way at a traveller’s
methodic pace.
As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at, and
safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and
ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable
intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these were there; but
no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one. As with
Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to his
boat’s broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy float; nor did it so

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exhaust him as the previous day’s mishap.

But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him;
as instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of
Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory leg
had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.
“Aye, aye, Starbuck, ’tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who
he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has.”
“The ferrule has not stood, sir,” said the carpenter, now coming up; “I
put good work into that leg.”
“But no bones broken, sir, I hope,” said Stubb with true concern.
“Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!—d’ye see it.—But even
with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone
of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that’s lost. Nor white whale,
nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper
and inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape
yonder roof?—Aloft there! which way?”
“Dead to leeward, sir.”
“Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of
the spare boats and rig them—Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat’s
crews.”
“Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.”
“Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!”
“Sir?”
“My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane—there, that
shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet. By
heaven it cannot be!—missing?—quick! call them all.”
The old man’s hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company,
the Parsee was not there.
“The Parsee!” cried Stubb—“he must have been caught in——”
“The black vomit wrench thee!—run all of ye above, alow, cabin,
forecastle—find him—not gone—not gone!”
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was
nowhere to be found.
“Aye, sir,” said Stubb—“caught among the tangles of your line—I
thought I saw him dragging under.”
“My line! my line? Gone?—gone? What means that little word?—
What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.
The harpoon, too!—toss over the litter there,—d’ye see it?—the forged

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iron, men, the white whale’s—no, no, no,—blistered fool! this hand did
dart it!—’tis in the fish!—Aloft there! Keep him nailed—Quick!—all
hands to the rigging of the boats—collect the oars—harpooneers! the irons,
the irons!—hoist the royals higher—a pull on all the sheets!—helm there!
steady, steady for your life! I’ll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea
and dive straight through it, but I’ll slay him yet!”
“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck;
“never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus’ name no more
of this, that’s worse than devil’s madness. Two days chased; twice stove
to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil
shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:—what more
wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he
swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the
sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety
and blasphemy to hunt him more!”
“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since
that hour we both saw—thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes. But
in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of
this hand—a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This
whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion
years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under
orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me,
men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered
lance; propped up on a lonely foot. ’Tis Ahab—his body’s part; but Ahab’s
soul’s a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half
stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look
so. But ere I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that
Ahab’s hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called
omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning
things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore.
So with Moby Dick—two days he’s floated—tomorrow will be the third.
Aye, men, he’ll rise once more,—but only to spout his last! D’ye feel brave
men, brave?”
“As fearless fire,” cried Stubb.
“And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward,
he muttered on: “The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same
to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to
drive out of others’ hearts what’s clinched so fast in mine!—The Parsee—
the Parsee!—gone, gone? and he was to go before:—but still was to be

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Moby Dick

seen again ere I could perish—How’s that?—There’s a riddle now might

baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:—
like a hawk’s beak it pecks my brain. I’ll, I’ll solve it, though!”
When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly
as on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the
grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns
in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening
their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken keel of
Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while still
as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his
hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due
eastward for the earliest sun.

532
 CHAPTER 135.
The Chase.—Third Day.

The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the
daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.
“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.
“In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all. Helm
there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again!
were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels,
and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could
not dawn upon that world. Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to
think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling
enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity. God only has that right and
privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and
our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. And
yet, I’ve sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm, this
old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and
shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat
must breed it; but no, it’s like that sort of common grass that will grow
anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava.
How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of
split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt
blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals,
and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.
Out upon it!—it’s tainted. Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a
wicked, miserable world. I’d crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there.
And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In
every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but
run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not
stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing
than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most
exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only
bodiless as objects, not as agents. There’s a most special, a most cunning,

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oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now,
that there’s something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm
Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong
and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however
the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies
of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by
the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship
on; these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and
full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d’ye
see?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the
sun! Aye, aye, it must be so. I’ve oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye,
he’s chasing me now; not I, him—that’s bad; I might have known it, too.
Fool! the lines—the harpoons he’s towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by last
night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look outs! Man
the braces!”
Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the
Pequod’s quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the
braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her
own white wake.
“Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,” murmured
Starbuck to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the
rail. “God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from
the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying
him!”
“Stand by to sway me up!” cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen
basket. “We should meet him soon.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” and straightway Starbuck did Ahab’s bidding, and once
more Ahab swung on high.
A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now
held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the
weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three
mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it.
“Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On
deck there!—brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind’s eye. He’s too far
off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that helmsman
with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But let me have
one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there’s time for that. An

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 The Chase.—Third Day.

old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and not changed a wink
since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of Nantucket! The same!—the
same!—the same to Noah as to me. There’s a soft shower to leeward. Such
lovely leewardings! They must lead somewhere—to something else than
common land, more palmy than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes
that way; look to windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good
bye, good bye, old mast-head! What’s this?—green? aye, tiny mosses in
these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab’s head! There’s
the difference now between man’s old age and matter’s. But aye, old mast,
we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my
ship? Aye, minus a leg, that’s all. By heaven this dead wood has the better
of my live flesh every way. I can’t compare with it; and I’ve known some
ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital
stuff of vital fathers. What’s that he said? he should still go before me, my
pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom
of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all night I’ve been
sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou
told’st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot
fell short. Good-bye, mast-head—keep a good eye upon the whale, the
while I’m gone. We’ll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale
lies down there, tied by head and tail.”
He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered
through the cloven blue air to the deck.
In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop’s
stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the
mate,—who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck—and bade him pause.
“Starbuck!”
“Sir?”
“For the third time my soul’s ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck.”
“Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.”
“Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing,
Starbuck!”
“Truth, sir: saddest truth.”
“Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the
flood;—and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, Starbuck. I
am old;—shake hands with me, man.”
Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.
“Oh, my captain, my captain!—noble heart—go not—go not!—see,
it’s a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!”

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“Lower away!”—cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s arm from him. “Stand
by the crew!”
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.
“The sharks! the sharks!” cried a voice from the low cabin-window
there; “O master, my master, come back!”
But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and
the boat leaped on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when
numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath the
hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped
in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites. It is
a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming
seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the same prescient
way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east.
But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since
the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab’s
crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more
musky to the senses of the sharks—a matter sometimes well known to
affect them,—however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without
molesting the others.
“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck gazing over the side,
and following with his eyes the receding boat—“canst thou yet ring boldly
to that sight?—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed
by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?—For
when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure
the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening and
the end of that thing—be that end what it may. Oh! my God! what is this
that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,—
fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty
outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou
fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown
wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep
between—Is my journey’s end coming? My legs feel faint; like his who
has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,—beats it yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!—
stave it off—move, move! speak aloud!—Mast-head there! See ye my
boy’s hand on the hill?—Crazed;—aloft there!—keep thy keenest eye upon
the boats:—mark well the whale!—Ho! again!—drive off that hawk! see!
he pecks—he tears the vane”—pointing to the red flag flying at the main-
truck—“Ha! he soars away with it!—Where’s the old man now? see’st thou

536
 The Chase.—Third Day.

that sight, oh Ahab!—shudder, shudder!”

The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-
heads—a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded;
but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on his way a little
sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest
silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered against the
opposing bow.
“Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads drive
them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse can
be mine:—and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!”
Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles;
then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg
of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a
subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with
trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise, but
obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it hovered
for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back into the
deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like
heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the
circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the
whale.
“Give way!” cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward
to the attack; but maddened by yesterday’s fresh irons that corroded in
him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell
from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad
white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together; as
head on, he came churning his tail among the boats; and once more flailed
them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from the two mates’ boats,
and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows, but leaving Ahab’s
almost without a scar.
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and
as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire
flank as he shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed
round and round to the fish’s back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in
which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the
lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable
raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
“Befooled, befooled!”—drawing in a long lean breath—“Aye, Parsee!

537
Moby Dick

I see thee again.—Aye, and thou goest before; and this, this then is the
hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word.
Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are
useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is
enough to die—Down, men! the first thing that but offers to jump from this
boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and
my legs; and so obey me.—Where’s the whale? gone down again?”
But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with
the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had
been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily
swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,—which thus far had
been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the present her
headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his utmost velocity,
and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the sea.
“Oh! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third
day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly
seekest him!”
Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to
leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding by
the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as he leaned
over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, not
too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw Tashtego,
Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while
the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just
been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One
after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying
glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles
of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he heard the hammers in
the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart.
But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or flag was gone from the
main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, to
descend again for another flag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the
mast.
Whether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and the resistance to
his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some latent
deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White Whale’s
way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly nearing
him once more; though indeed the whale’s last start had not been so long
a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the unpitying

538
 The Chase.—Third Day.

sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the boat; and

so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades became jagged and
crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at almost every dip.
“Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull
on! ’tis the better rest, the shark’s jaw than the yielding water.”
“But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!”
“They will last long enough! pull on!—But who can tell”—he
muttered—“whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
Ahab?—But pull on! Aye, all alive, now—we near him. The helm! take the
helm! let me pass,”—and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward
to the bows of the still flying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with
the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance—
as the whale sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the smoky
mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled round
his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with
body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he
darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both
steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick
sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow,
and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had
it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung,
Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of
the oarsmen—who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were
therefore unprepared for its effects—these were flung out; but so fell, that,
in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level
on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man
helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering
sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with the
line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their seats,
and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line felt that
double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!
“What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!—’tis whole again; oars!
oars! Burst in upon him!”
Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale
wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution,
catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it

539
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the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it—it may be—a larger and
nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his
jaws amid fiery showers of foam.
Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. “I grow blind; hands!
stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is’t night?”
“The whale! The ship!” cried the cringing oarsmen.
“Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for
ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I see: the
ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?”
But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the sledge-
hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks burst
through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly
level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying hard to stop
the gap and bale out the pouring water.
Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s mast-head
hammer remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping
him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his
own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the
bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon as
he.
“The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of
air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman’s
fainting fit. Up helm, I say—ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the end of
all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo,
thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns
to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty
tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!”
“Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now
help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!
Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own unwinking
eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft;
would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!
Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow
as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with
ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but
there’ll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off
shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over
salted death, though;—cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red
cherry ere we die!”

540
 The Chase.—Third Day.

“Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I
hope my poor mother’s drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will
now come to her, for the voyage is up.”
From the ship’s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive;
hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained
in their hands, just as they had darted from their various employments;
all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to
side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of
overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution,
swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all
that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote
the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon
their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook
on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as
mountain torrents down a flume.
“The ship! The hearse!—the second hearse!” cried Ahab from the
boat; “its wood could only be American!”
Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its
keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the
other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab’s boat, where, for a time, he lay
quiescent.
“I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy
hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel;
and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-
pointed prow,—death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me?
Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh,
lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my
topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye
bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of
my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale;
to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s
sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one
common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces,
while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I
give up the spear!”
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with
igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped
to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck,
and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of

541
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the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice
in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an
oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.
For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned.
“The ship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim,
bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous
Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by
infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan
harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now,
concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each
floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all
round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out
of sight.
But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the
erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which
calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows
they almost touched;—at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered
backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and
yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed
the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking
at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to
intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and
simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath,
in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven,
with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his
whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship,
which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part
of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen
white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great
shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

542
 Epilogue

“AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE” Job.

The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because
one did survive the wreck.
It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the
Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that bowsman
assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three
men were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So,
floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when
the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly,
drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to
a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the
button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like
another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble
upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and,
owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy
shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up
by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and
dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks
on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On
the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was
the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing
children, only found another orphan.

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