

call me ishmael some years ago never mind how long precisely having
little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on
shore i thought i would sail about a little and see the watery part of
the world it is a way i have of driving off the spleen and regulating
the circulation whenever i find myself growing grim about the mouth
whenever it is a damp drizzly november in my soul whenever i find
myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and bringing up
the rear of every funeral i meet and especially whenever my hypos get
such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to
prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically
knocking people's hats off then i account it high time to get to sea
as soon as i can this is my substitute for pistol and ball with a
philosophical flourish cato throws himself upon his sword i quietly
take to the ship there is nothing surprising in this if they but knew
it almost all men in their degree some time or other cherish very
nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me

there now is your insular city of the manhattoes belted round by
wharves as indian isles by coral reefs commerce surrounds it with
her surf right and left the streets take you waterward its extreme
downtown is the battery where that noble mole is washed by waves and
cooled by breezes which a few hours previous were out of sight of land
look at the crowds of water-gazers there

circumambulate the city of a dreamy sabbath afternoon go from corlears
hook to coenties slip and from thence by whitehall northward what
do you see posted like silent sentinels all around the town stand
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries some
leaning against the spiles some seated upon the pier-heads some
looking over the bulwarks of ships from china some high aloft in the
rigging as if striving to get a still better seaward peep but these
are all landsmen of week days pent up in lath and plaster tied to
counters nailed to benches clinched to desks how then is this are
the green fields gone what do they here

but look here come more crowds pacing straight for the water and
seemingly bound for a dive strange nothing will content them but the
extremest limit of the land loitering under the shady lee of yonder
warehouses will not suffice no they must get just as nigh the water
as they possibly can without falling in and there they stand miles of
them leagues inlanders all they come from lanes and alleys streets
and avenues north east south and west yet here they all unite
tell me does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
those ships attract them thither

once more say you are in the country in some high land of lakes take
almost any path you please and ten to one it carries you down in a
dale and leaves you there by a pool in the stream there is magic
in it let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
reveries stand that man on his legs set his feet a-going and he will
infallibly lead you to water if water there be in all that region
should you ever be athirst in the great american desert try this
experiment if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
professor yes as every one knows meditation and water are wedded for
ever

but here is an artist he desires to paint you the dreamiest shadiest
quietest most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of
the saco what is the chief element he employs there stand his trees
each with a hollow trunk as if a hermit and a crucifix were within and
here sleeps his meadow and there sleep his cattle and up from yonder
cottage goes a sleepy smoke deep into distant woodlands winds a
mazy way reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their
hill-side blue but though the picture lies thus tranced and though
this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's
head yet all were vain unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the
magic stream before him go visit the prairies in june when for scores
on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among tiger-lilies what is the
one charm wanting water there is not a drop of water there were
niagara but a cataract of sand would you travel your thousand miles to
see it why did the poor poet of tennessee upon suddenly receiving two
handfuls of silver deliberate whether to buy him a coat which he sadly
needed or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to rockaway beach why
is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him at
some time or other crazy to go to sea why upon your first voyage as a
passenger did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration when first
told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land why did the
old persians hold the sea holy why did the greeks give it a separate
deity and own brother of jove surely all this is not without meaning
and still deeper the meaning of that story of narcissus who because
he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain
plunged into it and was drowned but that same image we ourselves see
in all rivers and oceans it is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
life and this is the key to it all

now when i say that i am in the habit of going to sea whenever i begin
to grow hazy about the eyes and begin to be over conscious of my lungs
i do not mean to have it inferred that i ever go to sea as a passenger
for to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse and a purse is
but a rag unless you have something in it besides passengers get
sea-sick grow quarrelsome don't sleep of nights do not enjoy
themselves much as a general thing no i never go as a passenger
nor though i am something of a salt do i ever go to sea as a
commodore or a captain or a cook i abandon the glory and distinction
of such offices to those who like them for my part i abominate all
honourable respectable toils trials and tribulations of every kind
whatsoever it is quite as much as i can do to take care of myself
without taking care of ships barques brigs schooners and what not
and as for going as cook though i confess there is considerable glory
in that a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board yet somehow
i never fancied broiling fowls though once broiled judiciously
buttered and judgmatically salted and peppered there is no one who
will speak more 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 honour
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land the
van rensselaers or randolphs or hardicanutes and more than all
if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot you have been
lording it as a country schoolmaster making the tallest boys stand
in awe of you the transition is a keen one i assure you from a
schoolmaster to a sailor and requires a strong decoction of seneca and
the stoics to enable you to grin and bear it but even this wears off in
time

what of it if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
and sweep down the decks what does that indignity amount to weighed
i mean in the scales of the new testament do you think the archangel
gabriel thinks anything the less of me because i promptly and
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance who ain't
a slave tell me that well then however the old sea-captains may
order me about however they may thump and punch me about i have the
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right that everybody else is
one way or other served in much the same way either in a physical
or metaphysical point of view that is and so the universal thump is
passed round and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades and
be content

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

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


grand contested election for the presidency of the united states

whaling voyage by one ishmael

bloody battle in affghanistan


though i cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers the
fates put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage when others
were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies and short and
easy parts in genteel comedies and jolly parts in farces though
i cannot tell why this was exactly yet now that i recall all the
circumstances i think i can see a little into the springs and motives
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises induced
me to set about performing the part i did besides cajoling me into the
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
and discriminating judgment

chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
curiosity then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
bulk the undeliverable nameless perils of the whale these with all
the attending marvels of a thousand patagonian sights and sounds helped
to sway me to my wish with other men perhaps such things would not
have been inducements but as for me i am tormented with an everlasting
itch for things remote i love to sail forbidden seas and land on
barbarous coasts not ignoring what is good i am quick to perceive a
horror and could still be social with it would they let me since it
is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place
one lodges in

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



chapter the carpet-bag


i stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag tucked it under my arm
and started for cape horn and the pacific quitting the good city of
old manhatto i duly arrived in new bedford it was a saturday night in
december much was i disappointed upon learning that the little packet
for nantucket had already sailed and that no way of reaching that place
would offer till the following monday

as most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
this same new bedford thence to embark on their voyage it may as well
be related that i for one had no idea of so doing for my mind was
made up to sail in no other than a nantucket craft because there was a
fine boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
old island which amazingly pleased me besides though new bedford has
of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling and though
in this matter poor old nantucket is now much behind her yet nantucket
was her great original the tyre of this carthage the place where the
first dead american whale was stranded where else but from nantucket
did those aboriginal whalemen the red-men first sally out in canoes to
give chase to the leviathan and where but from nantucket too did that
first adventurous little sloop put forth partly laden with imported
cobblestones so goes the story to throw at the whales in order to
discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit

now having a night a day and still another night following before me
in new bedford ere i could embark for my destined port it became a
matter of concernment where i was to eat and sleep meanwhile it was a
very dubious-looking nay a very dark and dismal night bitingly cold
and cheerless i knew no one in the place with anxious grapnels i had
sounded my pocket and only brought up a few pieces of silver so
wherever you go ishmael said i to myself as i stood in the middle of
a dreary street shouldering my bag and comparing the gloom towards the
north with the darkness towards the south wherever in your wisdom you
may conclude to lodge for the night my dear ishmael be sure to inquire
the price and don't be too particular

with halting steps i paced the streets and passed the sign of the
crossed harpoons but it looked too expensive and jolly there further
on from the bright red windows of the sword-fish inn there came such
fervent rays that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from
before the house for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches
thick in a hard asphaltic pavement rather weary for me when i struck
my foot against the flinty projections because from hard remorseless
service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight too
expensive and jolly again thought i pausing one moment to watch the
broad glare in the street and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses
within but go on ishmael said i at last don't you hear get away
from before the door your patched boots are stopping the way so on i
went i now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward for
there doubtless were the cheapest if not the cheeriest inns

such dreary streets blocks of blackness not houses on either hand
and here and there a candle like a candle moving about in a tomb at
this hour of the night of the last day of the week that quarter of
the town proved all but deserted but presently i came to a smoky light
proceeding from a low wide building the door of which stood invitingly
open it had a careless look as if it were meant for the uses of the
public so entering the first thing i did was to stumble over an
ash-box in the porch ha thought i ha as the flying particles almost
choked me are these ashes from that destroyed city gomorrah but the
crossed harpoons and the sword-fish this then must needs be the
sign of the trap however i picked myself up and hearing a loud voice
within pushed on and opened a second interior door

it seemed the great black parliament sitting in tophet a hundred black
faces turned round in their rows to peer and beyond a black angel
of doom was beating a book in a pulpit it was a negro church and the
preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness and the weeping and
wailing and teeth-gnashing there ha ishmael muttered i backing out
wretched entertainment at the sign of the trap

moving on i at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks
and heard a forlorn creaking in the air and looking up saw a swinging
sign over the door with a white painting upon it faintly representing
a tall straight jet of misty spray and these words underneath the
spouter inn peter coffin

coffin spouter rather ominous in that particular connexion thought
i but it is a common name in nantucket they say and i suppose this
peter here is an emigrant from there as the light looked so dim and
the place for the time looked quiet enough and the dilapidated little
wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from
the ruins of some burnt district and as the swinging sign had a
poverty-stricken sort of creak to it i thought that here was the very
spot for cheap lodgings and the best of pea coffee

it was a queer sort of place a gable-ended old house one side palsied
as it were and leaning over sadly it stood on a sharp bleak corner
where that tempestuous wind euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever
it did about poor paul's tossed craft euroclydon nevertheless is a
mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors with his feet on the hob
quietly toasting for bed in judging of that tempestuous wind called
euroclydon says an old writer of whose works i possess the only copy
extant it maketh a marvellous difference whether thou lookest out at
it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside or whether
thou observest it from that sashless window where the frost is on both
sides and of which the wight death is the only glazier true enough
thought i as this passage occurred to my mind old black-letter thou
reasonest well yes these eyes are windows and this body of mine is
the house what a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies
though and thrust in a little lint here and there but it's too late
to make any improvements now the universe is finished the copestone
is on and the chips were carted off a million years ago poor lazarus
there chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow and
shaking off his tatters with his shiverings he might plug up both ears
with rags and put a corn-cob into his mouth and yet that would not
keep out the tempestuous euroclydon euroclydon says old dives in his
red silken wrapper he had a redder one afterwards pooh pooh what
a fine frosty night how orion glitters what northern lights let them
talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories give
me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals

but what thinks lazarus can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
to the grand northern lights would not lazarus rather be in sumatra
than here would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
line of the equator yea ye gods go down to the fiery pit itself in
order to keep out this frost

now that lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
door of dives this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
moored to one of the moluccas yet dives himself he too lives like a
czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs and being a president of a
temperance society he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans

but no more of this blubbering now we are going a-whaling and there is
plenty of that yet to come let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet
and see what sort of a place this spouter may be



chapter the spouter-inn


entering that gable-ended spouter-inn you found yourself in a wide
low straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft on one side hung a very large
oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked and every way defaced that in the
unequal crosslights by which you viewed it it was only by diligent
study and a series of systematic visits to it and careful inquiry of
the neighbors that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
purpose such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows that at first
you almost thought some ambitious young artist in the time of the new
england hags had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched but by dint
of much and earnest contemplation and oft repeated ponderings and
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
entry you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea however
wild might not be altogether unwarranted

but what most puzzled and confounded you was a long limber portentous
black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three
blue dim perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast a boggy
soggy squitchy picture truly enough to drive a nervous man distracted
yet was there a sort of indefinite half-attained unimaginable
sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it till you involuntarily
took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting
meant ever and anon a bright but alas deceptive idea would dart you
through it's the black sea in a midnight gale it's the unnatural
combat of the four primal elements it's a blasted heath it's a
hyperborean winter scene it's the breaking-up of the icebound stream
of time but at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous
something in the picture's midst that once found out and all the rest
were plain but stop does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic
fish even the great leviathan himself

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

the opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears some were thickly set with
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws others were tufted with knots of
human hair and one was sickle-shaped with a vast handle sweeping round
like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower you
shuddered as you gazed and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage
could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking horrifying
implement mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons
all broken and deformed some were storied weapons with this once long
lance now wildly elbowed fifty years ago did nathan swain kill fifteen
whales between a sunrise and a sunset and that harpoon so like a
corkscrew now was flung in javan seas and run away with by a whale
years afterwards slain off the cape of blanco the original iron entered
nigh the tail and like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a
man travelled full forty feet and at last was found imbedded in the
hump

crossing this dusky entry and on through yon low-arched way cut
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fireplaces all round you enter the public room a still duskier place
is this with such low ponderous beams above and such old wrinkled
planks beneath that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's
cockpits especially of such a howling night when this corner-anchored
old ark rocked so furiously on one side stood a long low shelf-like
table covered with cracked glass cases filled with dusty rarities
gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks projecting from the
further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den the bar a rude
attempt at a right whale's head be that how it may there stands the
vast arched bone of the whale's jaw so wide a coach might almost drive
beneath it within are shabby shelves ranged round with old decanters
bottles flasks and in those jaws of swift destruction like another
cursed jonah by which name indeed they called him bustles a little
withered old man who for their money dearly sells the sailors
deliriums and death

abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison though
true cylinders without within the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom parallel meridians
rudely pecked into the glass surround these footpads goblets fill to
this mark and your charge is but a penny to this a penny more and so
on to the full glass the cape horn measure which you may gulp down for
a shilling

upon entering the place i found a number of young seamen gathered about
a table examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander i
sought the landlord and telling him i desired to be accommodated with a
room received for answer that his house was full not a bed unoccupied
but avast he added tapping his forehead you haint no objections
to sharing a harpooneer's blanket have ye i s'pose you are goin
a-whalin so you'd better get used to that sort of thing

i told him that i never liked to sleep two in a bed that if i should
ever do so it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be and
that if he the landlord really had no other place for me and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night i would put up with
the half of any decent man's blanket

i thought so all right take a seat supper you want supper
supper'll be ready directly

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

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

my boy said the landlord you'll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty

landlord i whispered that aint the harpooneer is it

oh no said he looking a sort of diabolically funny the harpooneer
is a dark complexioned chap he never eats dumplings he don't he eats
nothing but steaks and he likes em rare

the devil he does says i where is that harpooneer is he here

he'll be here afore long was the answer

i could not help it but i began to feel suspicious of this dark
complexioned harpooneer at any rate i made up my mind that if it so
turned out that we should sleep together he must undress and get into
bed before i did

supper over the company went back to the bar-room when knowing not
what else to do with myself i resolved to spend the rest of the evening
as a looker on

presently a rioting noise was heard without starting up the landlord
cried that's the grampus's crew i seed her reported in the offing
this morning a three years voyage and a full ship hurrah boys now
we'll have the latest news from the feegees

a tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry the door was flung open
and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough enveloped in their shaggy
watch coats and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters all
bedarned and ragged and their beards stiff with icicles they seemed an
eruption of bears from labrador they had just landed from their boat
and this was the first house they entered no wonder then that they
made a straight wake for the whale's mouth the bar when the wrinkled
little old jonah there officiating soon poured them out brimmers all
round one complained of a bad cold in his head upon which jonah
mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses which he swore was a
sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever never mind of how
long standing or whether caught off the coast of labrador or on the
weather side of an ice-island

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

i observed however that one of them held somewhat aloof and though
he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own
sober face yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise
as the rest this man interested me at once and since the sea-gods
had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate though but a
sleeping-partner one so far as this narrative is concerned i will
here venture upon a little description of him he stood full six feet
in height with noble shoulders and a chest like a coffer-dam i have
seldom seen such brawn in a man his face was deeply brown and burnt
making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast while in the deep
shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give
him much joy his voice at once announced that he was a southerner
and from his fine stature i thought he must be one of those tall
mountaineers from the alleghanian ridge in virginia when the revelry
of his companions had mounted to its height this man slipped away
unobserved and i saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the
sea in a few minutes however he was missed by his shipmates and
being it seems for some reason a huge favourite with them they raised
a cry of bulkington bulkington where's bulkington and darted out of
the house in pursuit of him

it was now about nine o'clock and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies i began to congratulate myself
upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance
of the seamen

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

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

landlord i've changed my mind about that harpooneer i shan't sleep
with him i'll try the bench here

just as you please i'm sorry i cant spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress and it's a plaguy rough board here feeling of the knots and
notches but wait a bit skrimshander i've got a carpenter's plane
there in the bar wait i say and i'll make ye snug enough so saying
he procured the plane and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting
the bench vigorously set to planing away at my bed the while grinning
like an ape the shavings flew right and left till at last the
plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot the landlord was
near spraining his wrist and i told him for heaven's sake to quit the
bed was soft enough to suit me and i did not know how all the planing
in the world could make eider down of a pine plank so gathering up the
shavings with another grin and throwing them into the great stove in
the middle of the room he went about his business and left me in a
brown study

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

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

still looking round me again and seeing no possible chance of spending
a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed i began to think
that after all i might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against
this unknown harpooneer thinks i i'll wait awhile he must be dropping
in before long i'll have a good look at him then and perhaps we may
become jolly good bedfellows after all there's no telling

but though the other boarders kept coming in by ones twos and threes
and going to bed yet no sign of my harpooneer

landlord said i what sort of a chap is he does he always keep such
late hours it was now hard upon twelve o'clock

the landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle and seemed to
be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension no he
answered generally he's an early bird airley to bed and airley to
rise yes he's the bird what catches the worm but to-night he went out
a peddling you see and i don't see what on airth keeps him so late
unless may be he can't sell his head

can't sell his head what sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
are telling me getting into a towering rage do you pretend to say
landlord that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed saturday
night or rather sunday morning in peddling his head around this town

that's precisely it said the landlord and i told him he couldn't
sell it here the market's overstocked

with what shouted i

with heads to be sure ain't there too many heads in the world

i tell you what it is landlord said i quite calmly you'd better
stop spinning that yarn to me i'm not green

may be not taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick but i
rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a
slanderin his head

i'll break it for him said i now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlord's

it's broke a'ready said he

broke said i broke do you mean

sartain and that's the very reason he can't sell it i guess

landlord said i going up to him as cool as mt hecla in a
snow-storm landlord stop whittling you and i must understand one
another and that too without delay i come to your house and want a
bed you tell me you can only give me half a one that the other half
belongs to a certain harpooneer and about this harpooneer whom i
have not yet seen you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow a sort of connexion
landlord which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest
degree i now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
harpooneer is and whether i shall be in all respects safe to spend the
night with him and in the first place you will be so good as to unsay
that story about selling his head which if true i take to be good
evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad and i've no idea of sleeping
with a madman and you sir you i mean landlord you sir by trying
to induce me to do so knowingly would thereby render yourself liable to
a criminal prosecution

wall said the landlord fetching a long breath that's a purty long
sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then but be easy be easy
this here harpooneer i have been tellin you of has just arrived from
the south seas where he bought up a lot of balmed new zealand heads
great curios you know and he's sold all on em but one and that one
he's trying to sell to-night cause to-morrow's sunday and it would not
do to be sellin human heads about the streets when folks is goin to
churches he wanted to last sunday but i stopped him just as he was
goin out of the door with four heads strung on a string for all the
airth like a string of inions

this account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery and showed
that the landlord after all had had no idea of fooling me but at
the same time what could i think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a
saturday night clean into the holy sabbath engaged in such a cannibal
business as selling the heads of dead idolators

depend upon it landlord that harpooneer is a dangerous man

he pays reg'lar was the rejoinder but come it's getting dreadful
late you had better be turning flukes it's a nice bed sal and me
slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced there's plenty of room
for two to kick about in that bed it's an almighty big bed that why
afore we give it up sal used to put our sam and little johnny in the
foot of it but i got a dreaming and sprawling about one night and
somehow sam got pitched on the floor and came near breaking his arm
arter that sal said it wouldn't do come along here i'll give ye a
glim in a jiffy and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards
me offering to lead the way but i stood irresolute when looking at a
clock in the corner he exclaimed i vum it's sunday you won't see that
harpooneer to-night he's come to anchor somewhere come along then do
come won't ye come

i considered the matter a moment and then up stairs we went and i was
ushered into a small room cold as a clam and furnished sure enough
with a prodigious bed almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers
to sleep abreast

there said the landlord placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest
that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table there make
yourself comfortable now and good night to ye i turned round from
eyeing the bed but he had disappeared

folding back the counterpane i stooped over the bed though none of the
most elegant it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well i then glanced
round the room and besides the bedstead and centre table could see
no other furniture belonging to the place but a rude shelf the four
walls and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale of
things not properly belonging to the room there was a hammock lashed
up and thrown upon the floor in one corner also a large seaman's bag
containing the harpooneer's wardrobe no doubt in lieu of a land trunk
likewise there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf
over the fire-place and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed

but what is this on the chest i took it up and held it close to the
light and felt it and smelt it and tried every way possible to arrive
at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it i can compare it to
nothing but a large door mat ornamented at the edges with little
tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an
indian moccasin there was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat
as you see the same in south american ponchos but could it be possible
that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat and parade the
streets of any christian town in that sort of guise i put it on to try
it and it weighed me down like a hamper being uncommonly shaggy and
thick and i thought a little damp as though this mysterious harpooneer
had been wearing it of a rainy day i went up in it to a bit of glass
stuck against the wall and i never saw such a sight in my life i tore
myself out of it in such a hurry that i gave myself a kink in the neck

i sat down on the side of the bed and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer and his door mat after thinking some time on
the bed-side i got up and took off my monkey jacket and then stood in
the middle of the room thinking i then took off my coat and thought
a little more in my shirt sleeves but beginning to feel very cold now
half undressed as i was and remembering what the landlord said about
the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night it being so very
late i made no more ado but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots and
then blowing out the light tumbled into bed and commended myself to the
care of heaven

whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery
there is no telling but i rolled about a good deal and could not sleep
for a long time at last i slid off into a light doze and had pretty
nearly made a good offing towards the land of nod when i heard a heavy
footfall in the passage and saw a glimmer of light come into the room
from under the door

lord save me thinks i that must be the harpooneer the infernal
head-peddler but i lay perfectly still and resolved not to say a word
till spoken to holding a light in one hand and that identical new
zealand head in the other the stranger entered the room and without
looking towards the bed placed his candle a good way off from me on the
floor in one corner and then began working away at the knotted cords
of the large bag i before spoke of as being in the room i was all
eagerness to see his face but he kept it averted for some time while
employed in unlacing the bag's mouth this accomplished however he
turned round when good heavens what a sight such a face it was of
a dark purplish yellow colour here and there stuck over with large
blackish looking squares yes it's just as i thought he's a terrible
bedfellow he's been in a fight got dreadfully cut and here he is
just from the surgeon but at that moment he chanced to turn his face
so towards the light that i plainly saw they could not be
sticking-plasters at all those black squares on his cheeks they were
stains of some sort or other at first i knew not what to make of this
but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me i remembered a story of
a white man a whaleman too who falling among the cannibals had been
tattooed by them i concluded that this harpooneer in the course of his
distant voyages must have met with a similar adventure and what is it
thought i after all it's only his outside a man can be honest in any
sort of skin but then what to make of his unearthly complexion that
part of it i mean lying round about and completely independent of the
squares of tattooing to be sure it might be nothing but a good coat of
tropical tanning but i never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man
into a purplish yellow one however i had never been in the south seas
and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the
skin now while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning
this harpooneer never noticed me at all but after some difficulty
having opened his bag he commenced fumbling in it and presently pulled
out a sort of tomahawk and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on placing
these on the old chest in the middle of the room he then took the new
zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it down into the bag
he now took off his hat a new beaver hat when i came nigh singing out
with fresh surprise there was no hair on his head none to speak of at
least nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead his
bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull
had not the stranger stood between me and the door i would have bolted
out of it quicker than ever i bolted a dinner

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

meanwhile he continued the business of undressing and at last showed
his chest and arms as i live these covered parts of him were checkered
with the same squares as his face his back too was all over the same
dark squares he seemed to have been in a thirty years war and just
escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt still more his very
legs were marked as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up
the trunks of young palms it was now quite plain that he must be some
abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the south
seas and so landed in this christian country i quaked to think of it
a peddler of heads too perhaps the heads of his own brothers he might
take a fancy to mine heavens look at that tomahawk

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

i now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image feeling but
ill at ease meantime to see what was next to follow first he takes
about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket and places
them carefully before the idol then laying a bit of ship biscuit on
top and applying the flame from the lamp he kindled the shavings into
a sacrificial blaze presently after many hasty snatches into the fire
and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers whereby he seemed to be
scorching them badly he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit
then blowing off the heat and ashes a little he made a polite offer of
it to the little negro but the little devil did not seem to fancy such
dry sort of fare at all he never moved his lips all these strange
antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the
devotee who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some
pagan psalmody or other during which his face twitched about in the
most unnatural manner at last extinguishing the fire he took the idol
up very unceremoniously and bagged it again in his grego pocket as
carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock

all these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness and
seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations and jumping into bed with me i thought it was high time
now or never before the light was put out to break the spell in which
i had so long been bound

but the interval i spent in deliberating what to say was a fatal one
taking up his tomahawk from the table he examined the head of it for an
instant and then holding it to the light with his mouth at the handle
he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke the next moment the light
was extinguished and this wild cannibal tomahawk between his teeth
sprang into bed with me i sang out i could not help it now and giving
a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me

stammering out something i knew not what i rolled away from him
against the wall and then conjured him whoever or whatever he might
be to keep quiet and let me get up and light the lamp again but his
guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my
meaning

who-e debel you he at last said you no speak-e dam-me i kill-e
and so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the
dark

landlord for god's sake peter coffin shouted i landlord watch
coffin angels save me

speak-e tell-ee me who-ee be or dam-me i kill-e again growled the
cannibal while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
hot tobacco ashes about me till i thought my linen would get on fire
but thank heaven at that moment the landlord came into the room light
in hand and leaping from the bed i ran up to him

don't be afraid now said he grinning again queequeg here wouldn't
harm a hair of your head

stop your grinning shouted i and why didn't you tell me that that
infernal harpooneer was a cannibal

i thought ye know'd it didn't i tell ye he was a peddlin heads
around town but turn flukes again and go to sleep queequeg look
here you sabbee me i sabbee you this man sleepe you you sabbee

me sabbee plenty grunted queequeg puffing away at his pipe and
sitting up in bed

you gettee in he added motioning to me with his tomahawk and
throwing the clothes to one side he really did this in not only a civil
but a really kind and charitable way i stood looking at him a moment
for all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean comely looking
cannibal what's all this fuss i have been making about thought i to
myself the man's a human being just as i am he has just as much reason
to fear me as i have to be afraid of him better sleep with a sober
cannibal than a drunken christian

landlord said i tell him to stash his tomahawk there or pipe or
whatever you call it tell him to stop smoking in short and i will
turn in with him but i don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me
it's dangerous besides i ain't insured

this being told to queequeg he at once complied and again politely
motioned me to get into bed rolling over to one side as much as to
say i won't touch a leg of ye

good night landlord said i you may go

i turned in and never slept better in my life



chapter 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 st june
the longest day in the year in our hemisphere i felt dreadfully but
there was no help for it so up stairs i went to my little room in the
third floor undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time
and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets

i lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
before i could hope for a resurrection sixteen hours in bed the
small of my back ached to think of it and it was so light too the
sun shining in at the window and a great rattling of coaches in the
streets and the sound of gay voices all over the house i felt worse
and worse at last i got up dressed and softly going down in my
stockinged feet sought out my stepmother and suddenly threw myself
at her feet beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good
slippering for my misbehaviour anything indeed but condemning me to lie
abed such an unendurable length of time but she was the best and most
conscientious of stepmothers and back i had to go to my room for
several hours i lay there broad awake feeling a great deal worse than i
have ever done since even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes at
last i must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze and slowly
waking from it half steeped in dreams i opened my eyes and the before
sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness instantly i felt a shock
running through all my frame nothing was to be seen and nothing was
to be heard but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine my arm hung
over the counterpane and the nameless unimaginable silent form
or phantom to which the hand belonged seemed closely seated by my
bed-side for what seemed ages piled on ages i lay there frozen with
the most awful fears not daring to drag away my hand yet ever thinking
that if i could but stir it one single inch the horrid spell would be
broken i knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me
but waking in the morning i shudderingly remembered it all and for
days and weeks and months afterwards i lost myself in confounding
attempts to explain the mystery nay to this very hour i often puzzle
myself with it

now take away the awful fear and my sensations at feeling the
supernatural hand in mine were very similar in their strangeness to
those which i experienced on waking up and seeing queequeg's pagan
arm thrown round me but at length all the past night's events soberly
recurred one by one in fixed reality and then i lay only alive to
the comical predicament for though i tried to move his arm unlock his
bridegroom clasp yet sleeping as he was he still hugged me tightly
as though naught but death should part us twain i now strove to rouse
him queequeg but his only answer was a snore i then rolled over
my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar and suddenly felt a
slight scratch throwing aside the counterpane there lay the tomahawk
sleeping by the savage's side as if it were a hatchet-faced baby a
pretty pickle truly thought i abed here in a strange house in the
broad day with a cannibal and a tomahawk queequeg in the name of
goodness queequeg wake at length by dint of much wriggling and
loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his
hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style i succeeded in
extracting a grunt and presently he drew back his arm shook himself
all over like a newfoundland dog just from the water and sat up in bed
stiff as a pike-staff looking at me and rubbing his eyes as if he
did not altogether remember how i came to be there though a dim
consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over
him meanwhile i lay quietly eyeing him having no serious misgivings
now and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature when at
last his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow
and he became as it were reconciled to the fact he jumped out upon
the floor and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that
if it pleased me he would dress first and then leave me to dress
afterwards leaving the whole apartment to myself thinks i queequeg
under the circumstances this is a very civilized overture but the
truth is these savages have an innate sense of delicacy say what
you will it is marvellous how essentially polite they are i pay this
particular compliment to queequeg because he treated me with so much
civility and consideration while i was guilty of great rudeness
staring at him from the bed and watching all his toilette motions for
the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding nevertheless
a man like queequeg you don't see every day he and his ways were well
worth unusual regarding

he commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat a very tall one
by the by and then still minus his trowsers he hunted up his boots
what under the heavens he did it for i cannot tell but his next
movement was to crush himself boots in hand and hat on under the bed
when from sundry violent gaspings and strainings i inferred he was
hard at work booting himself though by no law of propriety that i ever
heard of is any man required to be private when putting on his
boots but queequeg do you see was a creature in the transition
stage neither caterpillar nor butterfly he was just enough civilized
to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners his
education was not yet completed he was an undergraduate if he had not
been a small degree civilized he very probably would not have troubled
himself with boots at all but then if he had not been still a savage
he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on at
last he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his
eyes and began creaking and limping about the room as if not
being much accustomed to boots his pair of damp wrinkled cowhide
ones probably not made to order either rather pinched and tormented
him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning

seeing now that there were no curtains to the window and that the
street being very narrow the house opposite commanded a plain view
into the room and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
queequeg made staving about with little else but his hat and boots on
i begged him as well as i could to accelerate his toilet somewhat
and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible he
complied and then proceeded to wash himself at that time in the
morning any christian would have washed his face but queequeg to
my amazement contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
chest arms and hands he then donned his waistcoat and taking up a
piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table dipped it into water
and commenced lathering his face i was watching to see where he kept
his razor when lo and behold he takes the harpoon from the bed corner
slips out the long wooden stock unsheathes the head whets it a little
on his boot and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall
begins a vigorous scraping or rather harpooning of his cheeks thinks
i queequeg this is using rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance
afterwards i wondered the less at this operation when i came to know of
what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made and how exceedingly sharp
the long straight edges are always kept

the rest of his toilet was soon achieved and he proudly marched out of
the room wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket and sporting his
harpoon like a marshal's baton



chapter breakfast


i quickly followed suit and descending into the bar-room accosted the
grinning landlord very pleasantly i cherished no malice towards him
though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
bedfellow

however a good laugh is a mighty good thing and rather too scarce a
good thing the more's the pity so if any one man in his own
proper person afford stuff for a good joke to anybody let him not be
backward but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in
that way and the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him
be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for

the bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the
night previous and whom i had not as yet had a good look at they were
nearly all whalemen chief mates and second mates and third mates and
sea carpenters and sea coopers and sea blacksmiths and harpooneers
and ship keepers a brown and brawny company with bosky beards an
unshorn shaggy set all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns

you could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore this
young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue and
would seem to smell almost as musky he cannot have been three days
landed from his indian voyage that man next him looks a few shades
lighter you might say a touch of satin wood is in him in the
complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn but slightly bleached
withal he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore but who could show
a cheek like queequeg which barred with various tints seemed like the
andes western slope to show forth in one array contrasting climates
zone by zone

grub ho now cried the landlord flinging open a door and in we went
to breakfast

they say that men who have seen the world thereby become quite at ease
in manner quite self-possessed in company not always though ledyard
the great new england traveller and mungo park the scotch one of all
men they possessed the least assurance in the parlor but perhaps the
mere crossing of siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as ledyard did or
the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach in the negro heart
of africa which was the sum of poor mungo's performances this kind of
travel i say may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social
polish still for the most part that sort of thing is to be had
anywhere

these reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that
after we were all seated at the table and i was preparing to hear some
good stories about whaling to my no small surprise nearly every
man maintained a profound silence and not only that but they looked
embarrassed yes here were a set of sea-dogs many of whom without the
slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas entire
strangers to them and duelled them dead without winking and yet here
they sat at a social breakfast table all of the same calling all of
kindred tastes looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they
had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the green mountains
a curious sight these bashful bears these timid warrior whalemen

but as for queequeg why queequeg sat there among them at the head of
the table too it so chanced as cool as an icicle to be sure i cannot
say much for his breeding his greatest admirer could not have cordially
justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him and using it
there without ceremony reaching over the table with it to the imminent
jeopardy of many heads and grappling the beefsteaks towards him but
that was certainly very coolly done by him and every one knows that in
most people's estimation to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly

we will not speak of all queequeg's peculiarities here how he eschewed
coffee and hot rolls and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks
done rare enough that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the
rest into the public room lighted his tomahawk-pipe and was sitting
there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on when i
sallied out for a stroll



chapter the street


if i had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish
an individual as queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
civilized town that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
daylight stroll through the streets of new bedford

in thoroughfares nigh the docks any considerable seaport will
frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign
parts even in broadway and chestnut streets mediterranean mariners
will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies regent street is not
unknown to lascars and malays and at bombay in the apollo green live
yankees have often scared the natives but new bedford beats all water
street and wapping in these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors
but in new bedford actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners
savages outright many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh it
makes a stranger stare

but besides the feegeeans tongatobooarrs erromanggoans pannangians
and brighggians and besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft
which unheeded reel about the streets you will see other sights still
more curious certainly more comical there weekly arrive in this town
scores of green vermonters and new hampshire men all athirst for gain
and glory in the fishery they are mostly young of stalwart frames
fellows who have felled forests and now seek to drop the axe and snatch
the whale-lance many are as green as the green mountains whence they
came in some things you would think them but a few hours old look
there that chap strutting round the corner he wears a beaver hat and
swallow-tailed coat girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife here
comes another with a sou-wester and a bombazine cloak

no town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one i mean a
downright bumpkin dandy a fellow that in the dog-days will mow his
two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands now when a
country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished
reputation and joins the great whale-fishery you should see the
comical things he does upon reaching the seaport in bespeaking his
sea-outfit he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats straps to his
canvas trowsers ah poor hay-seed how bitterly will burst those straps
in the first howling gale when thou art driven straps buttons and
all down the throat of the tempest

but think not that this famous town has only harpooneers cannibals and
bumpkins to show her visitors not at all still new bedford is a queer
place had it not been for us whalemen that tract of land would this
day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of labrador
as it is parts of her back country are enough to frighten one they
look so bony the town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live
in in all new england it is a land of oil true enough but not like
canaan a land also of corn and wine the streets do not run with
milk nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs yet in
spite of this nowhere in all america will you find more patrician-like
houses parks and gardens more opulent than in new bedford whence came
they how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country

go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
mansion and your question will be answered yes all these brave houses
and flowery gardens came from the atlantic pacific and indian oceans
one and all they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom
of the sea can herr alexander perform a feat like that

in new bedford fathers they say give whales for dowers to their
daughters and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece
you must go to new bedford to see a brilliant wedding for they say
they have reservoirs of oil in every house and every night recklessly
burn their lengths in spermaceti candles

in summer time the town is sweet to see full of fine maples long
avenues of green and gold and in august high in air the beautiful and
bountiful horse-chestnuts candelabra-wise proffer the passer-by their
tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms so omnipotent is art
which in many a district of new bedford has superinduced bright terraces
of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final
day

and the women of new bedford they bloom like their own red roses but
roses only bloom in summer whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks
is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens elsewhere match that
bloom of theirs ye cannot save in salem where they tell me the young
girls breathe such musk their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off
shore as though they were drawing nigh the odorous moluccas instead of
the puritanic sands



chapter 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
st 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 st 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
d this tablet is erected to his memory by his widow

shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket i seated myself
near the door and turning sideways was surprised to see queequeg near
me affected by the solemnity of the scene there was a wondering gaze
of incredulous curiosity in his countenance this savage was the only
person present who seemed to notice my entrance because he was the only
one who could not read and therefore was not reading those frigid
inscriptions on the wall whether any of the relatives of the seamen
whose names appeared there were now among the congregation i knew not
but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery and so plainly
did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings
of some unceasing grief that i feel sure that here before me were
assembled those in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak
tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh

oh ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass who standing among
flowers can say here here lies my beloved ye know not the desolation
that broods in bosoms like these what bitter blanks in those
black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes what despair in those
immovable inscriptions what deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in
the lines that seem to gnaw upon all faith and refuse resurrections to
the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave as well might
those tablets stand in the cave of elephanta as here

in what census of living creatures the dead of mankind are included
why it is that a universal proverb says of them that they tell no
tales though containing more secrets than the goodwin sands how it is
that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world we prefix
so significant and infidel a word and yet do not thus entitle him if
he but embarks for the remotest indies of this living earth why the
life insurance companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals in what
eternal unstirring paralysis and deadly hopeless trance yet lies
antique adam who died sixty round centuries ago how it is that we
still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are
dwelling in unspeakable bliss why all the living so strive to hush all
the dead wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a
whole city all these things are not without their meanings

but faith like a jackal feeds among the tombs and even from these
dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope

it needs scarcely to be told with what feelings on the eve of a
nantucket voyage i regarded those marble tablets and by the murky
light of that darkened doleful day read the fate of the whalemen
who had gone before me yes ishmael the same fate may be thine but
somehow i grew merry again delightful inducements to embark fine
chance for promotion it seems aye a stove boat will make me an
immortal by brevet yes there is death in this business of whaling a
speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into eternity but what
then methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of life and death
methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true
substance methinks that in looking at things spiritual we are too
much like oysters observing the sun through the water and thinking that
thick water the thinnest of air methinks my body is but the lees of my
better being in fact take my body who will take it i say it is not
me and therefore three cheers for nantucket and come a stove boat and
stove body when they will for stave my soul jove himself cannot



chapter the pulpit


i had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
robustness entered immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon
admitting him a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain yes it
was the famous father mapple so called by the whalemen among whom he
was a very great favourite he had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his
youth but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry
at the time i now write of father mapple was in the hardy winter of a
healthy old age that sort of old age which seems merging into a second
flowering youth for among all the fissures of his wrinkles there shone
certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom the spring verdure
peeping forth even beneath february's snow no one having previously
heard his history could for the first time behold father mapple without
the utmost interest because there were certain engrafted clerical
peculiarities about him imputable to that adventurous maritime life
he had led when he entered i observed that he carried no umbrella and
certainly had not come in his carriage for his tarpaulin hat ran down
with melting sleet and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to
drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed
however hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed and hung up
in a little space in an adjacent corner when arrayed in a decent suit
he quietly approached the pulpit

like most old fashioned pulpits it was a very lofty one and since a
regular stairs to such a height would by its long angle with the floor
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel the architect
it seemed had acted upon the hint of father mapple and finished the
pulpit without a stairs substituting a perpendicular side ladder like
those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea the wife of a whaling
captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted
man-ropes for this ladder which being itself nicely headed and
stained with a mahogany colour the whole contrivance considering what
manner of chapel it was seemed by no means in bad taste halting for
an instant at the foot of the ladder and with both hands grasping the
ornamental knobs of the man-ropes father mapple cast a look upwards
and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity hand
over hand mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel

the perpendicular parts of this side ladder as is usually the case with
swinging ones were of cloth-covered rope only the rounds were of wood
so that at every step there was a joint at my first glimpse of the
pulpit it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship
these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary for i was not
prepared to see father mapple after gaining the height slowly turn
round and stooping over the pulpit deliberately drag up the ladder
step by step till the whole was deposited within leaving him
impregnable in his little quebec

i pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this
father mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity
that i could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks
of the stage no thought i there must be some sober reason for this
thing furthermore it must symbolize something unseen can it be
then that by that act of physical isolation he signifies his spiritual
withdrawal for the time from all outward worldly ties and connexions
yes for replenished with the meat and wine of the word to the faithful
man of god this pulpit i see is a self-containing stronghold a lofty
ehrenbreitstein with a perennial well of water within the walls

but the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place
borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit the wall which formed its back
was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy
breakers but high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds there
floated a little isle of sunlight from which beamed forth an angel's
face and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
ship's tossed deck something like that silver plate now inserted into
the victory's plank where nelson fell ah noble ship the angel
seemed to say beat on beat on thou noble ship and bear a hardy
helm for lo the sun is breaking through the clouds are rolling
off serenest azure is at hand

nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that
had achieved the ladder and the picture its panelled front was in
the likeness of a ship's bluff bows and the holy bible rested on a
projecting piece of scroll work fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed
beak

what could be more full of meaning for the pulpit is ever this earth's
foremost part all the rest comes in its rear the pulpit leads the
world from thence it is the storm of god's quick wrath is first
descried and the bow must bear the earliest brunt from thence it is
the god of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds
yes the world's a ship on its passage out and not a voyage complete
and the pulpit is its prow



chapter the sermon


father mapple rose and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered
the scattered people to condense starboard gangway there side away
to larboard larboard gangway to starboard midships midships

there was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches and a
still slighter shuffling of women's shoes and all was quiet again and
every eye on the preacher

he paused a little then kneeling in the pulpit's bows folded his large
brown hands across his chest uplifted his closed eyes and offered
a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the
bottom of the sea

this ended in prolonged solemn tones like the continual tolling of
a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog in such tones he
commenced reading the following hymn but changing his manner towards
the concluding stanzas burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy 

 the ribs and terrors in the whale
 arched over me a dismal gloom
 while all god's sun-lit waves rolled by
 and lift me deepening down to doom

 i saw the opening maw of hell
 with endless pains and sorrows there
 which none but they that feel can tell 
 oh i was plunging to despair

 in black distress i called my god
 when i could scarce believe him mine
 he bowed his ear to my complaints 
 no more the whale did me confine

 with speed he flew to my relief
 as on a radiant dolphin borne
 awful yet bright as lightning shone
 the face of my deliverer god

 my song for ever shall record
 that terrible that joyful hour
 i give the glory to my god
 his all the mercy and the power


nearly all joined in singing this hymn which swelled high above the
howling of the storm a brief pause ensued the preacher slowly turned
over the leaves of the bible and at last folding his hand down upon
the proper page said beloved shipmates clinch the last verse of the
first chapter of jonah and god had prepared a great fish to swallow up
jonah

shipmates this book containing only four chapters four yarns is one
of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the scriptures yet what
depths of the soul does jonah's deep sealine sound what a pregnant
lesson to us is this prophet what a noble thing is that canticle in the
fish's belly how billow-like and boisterously grand we feel the floods
surging over us we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters
sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us but what is this
lesson that the book of jonah teaches shipmates it is a two-stranded
lesson a lesson to us all as sinful men and a lesson to me as a pilot
of the living god as sinful men it is a lesson to us all because it
is a story of the sin hard-heartedness suddenly awakened fears the
swift punishment repentance prayers and finally the deliverance and
joy of jonah as with all sinners among men the sin of this son of
amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of god never
mind now what that command was or how conveyed which he found a hard
command but all the things that god would have us do are hard for us to
do remember that and hence he oftener commands us than endeavors to
persuade and if we obey god we must disobey ourselves and it is in
this disobeying ourselves wherein the hardness of obeying god consists

with this sin of disobedience in him jonah still further flouts at
god by seeking to flee from him he thinks that a ship made by men will
carry him into countries where god does not reign but only the captains
of this earth he skulks about the wharves of joppa and seeks a ship
that's bound for tarshish there lurks perhaps a hitherto unheeded
meaning here by all accounts tarshish could have been no other city
than the modern cadiz that's the opinion of learned men and where is
cadiz shipmates cadiz is in spain as far by water from joppa
as jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days when the
atlantic was an almost unknown sea because joppa the modern jaffa
shipmates is on the most easterly coast of the mediterranean the
syrian and tarshish or cadiz more than two thousand miles to the
westward from that just outside the straits of gibraltar see ye
not then shipmates that jonah sought to flee world-wide from god
miserable man oh most contemptible and worthy of all scorn with
slouched hat and guilty eye skulking from his god prowling among the
shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas so disordered
self-condemning is his look that had there been policemen in those
days jonah on the mere suspicion of something wrong had been arrested
ere he touched a deck how plainly he's a fugitive no baggage not a
hat-box valise or carpet-bag no friends accompany him to the wharf
with their adieux at last after much dodging search he finds the
tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo and as he steps on
board to see its captain in the cabin all the sailors for the moment
desist from hoisting in the goods to mark the stranger's evil eye
jonah sees this but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence
in vain essays his wretched smile strong intuitions of the man assure
the mariners he can be no innocent in their gamesome but still serious
way one whispers to the other jack he's robbed a widow or joe
do you mark him he's a bigamist or harry lad i guess he's the
adulterer that broke jail in old gomorrah or belike one of the missing
murderers from sodom another runs to read the bill that's stuck
against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored offering
five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide and
containing a description of his person he reads and looks from jonah
to the bill while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round jonah
prepared to lay their hands upon him frighted jonah trembles and
summoning all his boldness to his face only looks so much the more a
coward he will not confess himself suspected but that itself is strong
suspicion so he makes the best of it and when the sailors find him
not to be the man that is advertised they let him pass and he descends
into the cabin

who's there cries the captain at his busy desk hurriedly making
out his papers for the customs who's there oh how that harmless
question mangles jonah for the instant he almost turns to flee again
but he rallies i seek a passage in this ship to tarshish how soon
sail ye sir thus far the busy captain had not looked up to jonah
though the man now stands before him but no sooner does he hear that
hollow voice than he darts a scrutinizing glance we sail with the
next coming tide at last he slowly answered still intently eyeing
him no sooner sir soon enough for any honest man that goes a
passenger ha jonah that's another stab but he swiftly calls away
the captain from that scent i'll sail with ye he says the
passage money how much is that i'll pay now for it is particularly
written shipmates as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this
history that he paid the fare thereof ere the craft did sail and
taken with the context this is full of meaning

now jonah's captain shipmates was one whose discernment detects crime
in any but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless in this
world shipmates sin that pays its way can travel freely and without
a passport whereas virtue if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers
so jonah's captain prepares to test the length of jonah's purse ere he
judge him openly he charges him thrice the usual sum and it's assented
to then the captain knows that jonah is a fugitive but at the same
time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold yet when
jonah fairly takes out his purse prudent suspicions still molest the
captain he rings every coin to find a counterfeit not a forger any
way he mutters and jonah is put down for his passage point out my
state-room sir says jonah now i'm travel-weary i need sleep
thou lookest like it says the captain there's thy room jonah
enters and would lock the door but the lock contains no key hearing
him foolishly fumbling there the captain laughs lowly to himself and
mutters something about the doors of convicts cells being never allowed
to be locked within all dressed and dusty as he is jonah throws
himself into his berth and finds the little state-room ceiling almost
resting on his forehead the air is close and jonah gasps then in
that contracted hole sunk too beneath the ship's water-line jonah
feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour when the whale
shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels wards

screwed at its axis against the side a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in jonah's room and the ship heeling over towards the wharf
with the weight of the last bales received the lamp flame and all
though in slight motion still maintains a permanent obliquity with
reference to the room though in truth infallibly straight itself it
but made obvious the false lying levels among which it hung the lamp
alarms and frightens jonah as lying in his berth his tormented eyes
roll round the place and this thus far successful fugitive finds no
refuge for his restless glance but that contradiction in the lamp more
and more appals him the floor the ceiling and the side are all awry
oh so my conscience hangs in me he groans straight upwards so it
burns but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness

like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed still
reeling but with conscience yet pricking him as the plungings of the
roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him as
one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish
praying god for annihilation until the fit be passed and at last amid
the whirl of woe he feels a deep stupor steals over him as over the
man who bleeds to death for conscience is the wound and there's naught
to staunch it so after sore wrestlings in his berth jonah's prodigy
of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep

and now the time of tide has come the ship casts off her cables and
from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for tarshish all careening
glides to sea that ship my friends was the first of recorded
smugglers the contraband was jonah but the sea rebels he will not
bear the wicked burden a dreadful storm comes on the ship is like to
break but now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her
when boxes bales and jars are clattering overboard when the wind
is shrieking and the men are yelling and every plank thunders with
trampling feet right over jonah's head in all this raging tumult jonah
sleeps his hideous sleep he sees no black sky and raging sea feels not
the reeling timbers and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the
mighty whale which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after
him aye shipmates jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship a
berth in the cabin as i have taken it and was fast asleep but the
frightened master comes to him and shrieks in his dead ear what
meanest thou o sleeper arise startled from his lethargy by that
direful cry jonah staggers to his feet and stumbling to the deck
grasps a shroud to look out upon the sea but at that moment he is
sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks wave after
wave thus leaps into the ship and finding no speedy vent runs roaring
fore and aft till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat
and ever as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep
gullies in the blackness overhead aghast jonah sees the rearing
bowsprit pointing high upward but soon beat downward again towards the
tormented deep

terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul in all his cringing
attitudes the god-fugitive is now too plainly known the sailors mark
him more and more certain grow their suspicions of him and at last
fully to test the truth by referring the whole matter to high heaven
they fall to casting lots to see for whose cause this great tempest was
upon them the lot is jonah's that discovered then how furiously they
mob him with their questions what is thine occupation whence comest
thou thy country what people but mark now my shipmates the behavior
of poor jonah the eager mariners but ask him who he is and where
from whereas they not only receive an answer to those questions
but likewise another answer to a question not put by them but the
unsolicited answer is forced from jonah by the hard hand of god that is
upon him

i am a hebrew he cries and then i fear the lord the god of heaven
who hath made the sea and the dry land fear him o jonah aye well
mightest thou fear the lord god then straightway he now goes on to
make a full confession whereupon the mariners became more and more
appalled but still are pitiful for when jonah not yet supplicating
god for mercy since he but too well knew the darkness of his
deserts when wretched jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him
forth into the sea for he knew that for his sake this great tempest
was upon them they mercifully turn from him and seek by other means to
save the ship but all in vain the indignant gale howls louder
then with one hand raised invokingly to god with the other they not
unreluctantly lay hold of jonah

and now behold jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea
when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east and the sea
is still as jonah carries down the gale with him leaving smooth
water behind he goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless
commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into
the yawning jaws awaiting him and the whale shoots-to all his ivory
teeth like so many white bolts upon his prison then jonah prayed unto
the lord out of the fish's belly but observe his prayer and learn a
weighty lesson for sinful as he is jonah does not weep and wail for
direct deliverance he feels that his dreadful punishment is just he
leaves all his deliverance to god contenting himself with this that
spite of all his pains and pangs he will still look towards his holy
temple and here shipmates is true and faithful repentance not
clamorous for pardon but grateful for punishment and how pleasing to
god was this conduct in jonah is shown in the eventual deliverance of
him from the sea and the whale shipmates i do not place jonah before
you to be copied for his sin but i do place him before you as a model
for repentance sin not but if you do take heed to repent of it like
jonah

while he was speaking these words the howling of the shrieking
slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher who
when describing jonah's sea-storm seemed tossed by a storm himself
his deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell his tossed arms seemed the
warring elements at work and the thunders that rolled away from off his
swarthy brow and the light leaping from his eye made all his simple
hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them

there now came a lull in his look as he silently turned over the leaves
of the book once more and at last standing motionless with closed
eyes for the moment seemed communing with god and himself

but again he leaned over towards the people and bowing his head lowly
with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility he spake these
words

shipmates god has laid but one hand upon you both his hands press
upon me i have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that
jonah teaches to all sinners and therefore to ye and still more to me
for i am a greater sinner than ye and now how gladly would i come down
from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit and
listen as you listen while some one of you reads me that other and more
awful lesson which jonah teaches to me as a pilot of the living god
how being an anointed pilot-prophet or speaker of true things and
bidden by the lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a
wicked nineveh jonah appalled at the hostility he should raise fled
from his mission and sought to escape his duty and his god by taking
ship at joppa but god is everywhere tarshish he never reached as we
have seen god came upon him in the whale and swallowed him down to
living gulfs of doom and with swift slantings tore him along into the
midst of the seas where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand
fathoms down and the weeds were wrapped about his head and all the
watery world of woe bowled over him yet even then beyond the reach of
any plummet out of the belly of hell when the whale grounded upon
the ocean's utmost bones even then god heard the engulphed repenting
prophet when he cried then god spake unto the fish and from the
shuddering cold and blackness of the sea the whale came breeching
up towards the warm and pleasant sun and all the delights of air and
earth and vomited out jonah upon the dry land when the word of the
lord came a second time and jonah bruised and beaten his ears like
two sea-shells still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean jonah
did the almighty's bidding and what was that shipmates to preach the
truth to the face of falsehood that was it

this shipmates this is that other lesson and woe to that pilot of
the living god who slights it woe to him whom this world charms from
gospel duty woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when god
has brewed them into a gale woe to him who seeks to please rather than
to appal woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness woe
to him who in this world courts not dishonour woe to him who would
not be true even though to be false were salvation yea woe to him
who as the great pilot paul has it while preaching to others is
himself a castaway

he dropped and fell away from himself for a moment then lifting his
face to them again showed a deep joy in his eyes as he cried out with
a heavenly enthusiasm but oh shipmates on the starboard hand of
every woe there is a sure delight and higher the top of that delight
than the bottom of the woe is deep is not the main-truck higher than
the kelson is low delight is to him a far far upward and inward
delight who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth ever
stands forth his own inexorable self delight is to him whose strong
arms yet support him when the ship of this base treacherous world has
gone down beneath him delight is to him who gives no quarter in the
truth and kills burns and destroys all sin though he pluck it out
from under the robes of senators and judges delight top-gallant
delight is to him who acknowledges no law or lord but the lord his
god and is only a patriot to heaven delight is to him whom all the
waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake
from this sure keel of the ages and eternal delight and deliciousness
will be his who coming to lay him down can say with his final
breath o father chiefly known to me by thy rod mortal or immortal
here i die i have striven to be thine more than to be this world's or
mine own yet this is nothing i leave eternity to thee for what is man
that he should live out the lifetime of his god

he said no more but slowly waving a benediction covered his face with
his hands and so remained kneeling till all the people had departed
and he was left alone in the place



chapter a bosom friend


returning to the spouter-inn from the chapel i found queequeg there
quite alone he having left the chapel before the benediction some time
he was sitting on a bench before the fire with his feet on the stove
hearth and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little
negro idol of his peering hard into its face and with a jack-knife
gently whittling away at its nose meanwhile humming to himself in his
heathenish way

but being now interrupted he put up the image and pretty soon going
to the table took up a large book there and placing it on his lap
began counting the pages with deliberate regularity at every fiftieth
page as i fancied stopping a moment looking vacantly around him and
giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment he
would then begin again at the next fifty seeming to commence at number
one each time as though he could not count more than fifty and it was
only by such a large number of fifties being found together that his
astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited

with much interest i sat watching him savage though he was and
hideously marred about the face at least to my taste his countenance
yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable you cannot
hide the soul through all his unearthly tattooings i thought i saw
the traces of a simple honest heart and in his large deep eyes
fiery black and bold there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a
thousand devils and besides all this there was a certain lofty bearing
about the pagan which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim
he looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor
whether it was too that his head being shaved his forehead was drawn
out in freer and brighter relief and looked more expansive than it
otherwise would this i will not venture to decide but certain it was
his head was phrenologically an excellent one it may seem ridiculous
but it reminded me of general washington's head as seen in the popular
busts of him it had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
from above the brows which were likewise very projecting like two
long promontories thickly wooded on top queequeg was george washington
cannibalistically developed

whilst i was thus closely scanning him half-pretending meanwhile to be
looking out at the storm from the casement he never heeded my presence
never troubled himself with so much as a single glance but appeared
wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book
considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night
previous and especially considering the affectionate arm i had found
thrown over me upon waking in the morning i thought this indifference
of his very strange but savages are strange beings at times you do not
know exactly how to take them at first they are overawing their calm
self-collectedness of simplicity seems a socratic wisdom i had noticed
also that queequeg never consorted at all or but very little with the
other seamen in the inn he made no advances whatever appeared to have
no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances all this struck
me as mighty singular yet upon second thoughts there was something
almost sublime in it here was a man some twenty thousand miles from
home by the way of cape horn that is which was the only way he could
get there thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in
the planet jupiter and yet he seemed entirely at his ease preserving
the utmost serenity content with his own companionship always equal to
himself surely this was a touch of fine philosophy though no doubt he
had never heard there was such a thing as that but perhaps to be
true philosophers we mortals should not be conscious of so living or
so striving so soon as i hear that such or such a man gives himself
out for a philosopher i conclude that like the dyspeptic old woman he
must have broken his digester

as i sat there in that now lonely room the fire burning low in that
mild stage when after its first intensity has warmed the air it then
only glows to be looked at the evening shades and phantoms gathering
round the casements and peering in upon us silent solitary twain
the storm booming without in solemn swells i began to be sensible of
strange feelings i felt a melting in me no more my splintered heart
and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world this soothing
savage had redeemed it there he sat his very indifference speaking a
nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits
wild he was a very sight of sights to see yet i began to feel myself
mysteriously drawn towards him and those same things that would have
repelled most others they were the very magnets that thus drew me i'll
try a pagan friend thought i since christian kindness has proved but
hollow courtesy i drew my bench near him and made some friendly signs
and hints doing my best to talk with him meanwhile at first he little
noticed these advances but presently upon my referring to his last
night's hospitalities he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
bedfellows i told him yes whereat i thought he looked pleased perhaps
a little complimented

we then turned over the book together and i endeavored to explain to
him the purpose of the printing and the meaning of the few pictures
that were in it thus i soon engaged his interest and from that we went
to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen
in this famous town soon i proposed a social smoke and producing
his pouch and tomahawk he quietly offered me a puff and then we sat
exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his and keeping it regularly
passing between us

if there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the pagan's
breast this pleasant genial smoke we had soon thawed it out and left
us cronies he seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as
i to him and when our smoke was over he pressed his forehead against
mine clasped me round the waist and said that henceforth we were
married meaning in his country's phrase that we were bosom friends
he would gladly die for me if need should be in a countryman this
sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature a thing
to be much distrusted but in this simple savage those old rules would
not apply

after supper and another social chat and smoke we went to our room
together he made me a present of his embalmed head took out his
enormous tobacco wallet and groping under the tobacco drew out
some thirty dollars in silver then spreading them on the table and
mechanically dividing them into two equal portions pushed one of them
towards me and said it was mine i was going to remonstrate but he
silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers pockets i let them stay
he then went about his evening prayers took out his idol and removed
the paper fireboard by certain signs and symptoms i thought he seemed
anxious for me to join him but well knowing what was to follow i
deliberated a moment whether in case he invited me i would comply or
otherwise

i was a good christian born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
presbyterian church how then could i unite with this wild idolator in
worshipping his piece of wood but what is worship thought i do
you suppose now ishmael that the magnanimous god of heaven and
earth pagans and all included can possibly be jealous of an
insignificant bit of black wood impossible but what is worship to do
the will of god that is worship and what is the will of god to do to
my fellow man what i would have my fellow man to do to me that is the
will of god now queequeg is my fellow man and what do i wish that
this queequeg would do to me why unite with me in my particular
presbyterian form of worship consequently i must then unite with him
in his ergo i must turn idolator so i kindled the shavings helped
prop up the innocent little idol offered him burnt biscuit with
queequeg salamed before him twice or thrice kissed his nose and that
done we undressed and went to bed at peace with our own consciences
and all the world but we did not go to sleep without some little chat

how it is i know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends man and wife they say there open the very
bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie
and chat over old times till nearly morning thus then in our hearts
honeymoon lay i and queequeg a cosy loving pair



chapter nightgown


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

yes we became very wakeful so much so that our recumbent position
began to grow wearisome and by little and little we found ourselves
sitting up the clothes well tucked around us leaning against the
head-board with our four knees drawn up close together and our two
noses bending over them as if our kneepans were warming-pans we felt
very nice and snug the more so since it was so chilly out of doors
indeed out of bed-clothes too seeing that there was no fire in the
room the more so i say because truly to enjoy bodily warmth some
small part of you must be cold for there is no quality in this world
that is not what it is merely by contrast nothing exists in itself if
you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable and have been so
a long time then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more but if
like queequeg and me in the bed the tip of your nose or the crown
of your head be slightly chilled why then indeed in the general
consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm for this
reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire which
is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich for the height of this
sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and
your snugness and the cold of the outer air then there you lie like the
one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal

we had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time when all at
once i thought i would open my eyes for when between sheets whether
by day or by night and whether asleep or awake i have a way of always
keeping my eyes shut in order the more to concentrate the snugness
of being in bed because no man can ever feel his own identity aright
except his eyes be closed as if darkness were indeed the proper element
of our essences though light be more congenial to our clayey part upon
opening my eyes then and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created
darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated
twelve-o'clock-at-night i experienced a disagreeable revulsion nor did
i at all object to the hint from queequeg that perhaps it were best to
strike a light seeing that we were so wide awake and besides he felt
a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his tomahawk be it said
that though i had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the
bed the night before yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when
love once comes to bend them for now i liked nothing better than to
have queequeg smoking by me even in bed because he seemed to be full
of such serene household joy then i no more felt unduly concerned for
the landlord's policy of insurance i was only alive to the condensed
confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real
friend with our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders we now passed
the tomahawk from one to the other till slowly there grew over us a
blue hanging tester of smoke illuminated by the flame of the new-lit
lamp

whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far
distant scenes i know not but he now spoke of his native island and
eager to hear his history i begged him to go on and tell it he gladly
complied though at the time i but ill comprehended not a few of his
words yet subsequent disclosures when i had become more familiar with
his broken phraseology now enable me to present the whole story such as
it may prove in the mere skeleton i give



chapter biographical


queequeg was a native of rokovoko an island far away to the west and
south it is not down in any map true places never are

when a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in
a grass clout followed by the nibbling goats as if he were a green
sapling even then in queequeg's ambitious soul lurked a strong desire
to see something more of christendom than a specimen whaler or two his
father was a high chief a king his uncle a high priest and on the
maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable
warriors there was excellent blood in his veins royal stuff though
sadly vitiated i fear by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his
untutored youth

a sag harbor ship visited his father's bay and queequeg sought a
passage to christian lands but the ship having her full complement of
seamen spurned his suit and not all the king his father's influence
could prevail but queequeg vowed a vow alone in his canoe he paddled
off to a distant strait which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island on one side was a coral reef on the other a low
tongue of land covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the
water hiding his canoe still afloat among these thickets with its
prow seaward he sat down in the stern paddle low in hand and when the
ship was gliding by like a flash he darted out gained her side with
one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe climbed up
the chains and throwing himself at full length upon the deck grappled
a ring-bolt there and swore not to let it go though hacked in pieces

in vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard suspended a
cutlass over his naked wrists queequeg was the son of a king and
queequeg budged not struck by his desperate dauntlessness and his wild
desire to visit christendom the captain at last relented and told
him he might make himself at home but this fine young savage this sea
prince of wales never saw the captain's cabin they put him down among
the sailors and made a whaleman of him but like czar peter content to
toil in the shipyards of foreign cities queequeg disdained no seeming
ignominy if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his
untutored countrymen for at bottom so he told me he was actuated by a
profound desire to learn among the christians the arts whereby to
make his people still happier than they were and more than that
still better than they were but alas the practices of whalemen soon
convinced him that even christians could be both miserable and wicked
infinitely more so than all his father's heathens arrived at last in
old sag harbor and seeing what the sailors did there and then going on
to nantucket and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also
poor queequeg gave it up for lost thought he it's a wicked world in
all meridians i'll die a pagan

and thus an old idolator at heart he yet lived among these christians
wore their clothes and tried to talk their gibberish hence the queer
ways about him though now some time from home

by hints i asked him whether he did not propose going back and having
a coronation since he might now consider his father dead and gone he
being very old and feeble at the last accounts he answered no not yet
and added that he was fearful christianity or rather christians had
unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan
kings before him but by and by he said he would return as soon as
he felt himself baptized again for the nonce however he proposed to
sail about and sow his wild oats in all four oceans they had made a
harpooneer of him and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now

i asked him what might be his immediate purpose touching his future
movements he answered to go to sea again in his old vocation upon
this i told him that whaling was my own design and informed him of my
intention to sail out of nantucket as being the most promising port for
an adventurous whaleman to embark from he at once resolved to accompany
me to that island ship aboard the same vessel get into the same watch
the same boat the same mess with me in short to share my every hap
with both my hands in his boldly dip into the potluck of both worlds
to all this i joyously assented for besides the affection i now felt
for queequeg he was an experienced harpooneer and as such could not
fail to be of great usefulness to one who like me was wholly ignorant
of the mysteries of whaling though well acquainted with the sea as
known to merchant seamen

his story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff queequeg embraced
me pressed his forehead against mine and blowing out the light we
rolled over from each other this way and that and very soon were
sleeping


chapter wheelbarrow


next morning monday after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber
for a block i settled my own and comrade's bill using however my
comrade's money the grinning landlord as well as the boarders seemed
amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between
me and queequeg especially as peter coffin's cock and bull stories
about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person
whom i now companied with

we borrowed a wheelbarrow and embarking our things including my own
poor carpet-bag and queequeg's canvas sack and hammock away we went
down to the moss the little nantucket packet schooner moored at the
wharf as we were going along the people stared not at queequeg
so much for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their
streets but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms but we
heeded them not going along wheeling the barrow by turns and queequeg
now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs i asked
him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore and
whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons to this in
substance he replied that though what i hinted was true enough yet
he had a particular affection for his own harpoon because it was of
assured stuff well tried in many a mortal combat and deeply intimate
with the hearts of whales in short like many inland reapers
and mowers who go into the farmers meadows armed with their own
scythes though in no wise obliged to furnish them even so queequeg
for his own private reasons preferred his own harpoon

shifting the barrow from my hand to his he told me a funny story about
the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen it was in sag harbor the owners
of his ship it seems had lent him one in which to carry his
heavy chest to his boarding house not to seem ignorant about the
thing though in truth he was entirely so concerning the precise way in
which to manage the barrow queequeg puts his chest upon it lashes it
fast and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf why
said i queequeg you might have known better than that one would
think didn't the people laugh

upon this he told me another story the people of his island of
rokovoko it seems at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water
of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl and
this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided
mat where the feast is held now a certain grand merchant ship once
touched at rokovoko and its commander from all accounts a very
stately punctilious gentleman at least for a sea captain this
commander was invited to the wedding feast of queequeg's sister a
pretty young princess just turned of ten well when all the wedding
guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage this captain
marches in and being assigned the post of honour placed himself over
against the punchbowl and between the high priest and his majesty the
king queequeg's father grace being said for those people have their
grace as well as we though queequeg told me that unlike us who at such
times look downwards to our platters they on the contrary copying the
ducks glance upwards to the great giver of all feasts grace i say
being said the high priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony
of the island that is dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers
into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates seeing himself
placed next the priest and noting the ceremony and thinking
himself being captain of a ship as having plain precedence over a
mere island king especially in the king's own house the captain coolly
proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl taking it i suppose for a
huge finger-glass now said queequeg what you tink now didn't our
people laugh

at last passage paid and luggage safe we stood on board the schooner
hoisting sail it glided down the acushnet river on one side new
bedford rose in terraces of streets their ice-covered trees all
glittering in the clear cold air huge hills and mountains of casks on
casks were piled upon her wharves and side by side the world-wandering
whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last while from others
came a sound of carpenters and coopers with blended noises of fires and
forges to melt the pitch all betokening that new cruises were on the
start that one most perilous and long voyage ended only begins a
second and a second ended only begins a third and so on for ever
and for aye such is the endlessness yea the intolerableness of all
earthly effort

gaining the more open water the bracing breeze waxed fresh the little
moss tossed the quick foam from her bows as a young colt his snortings
how i snuffed that tartar air how i spurned that turnpike earth that
common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and
hoofs and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will
permit no records

at the same foam-fountain queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me
his dusky nostrils swelled apart he showed his filed and pointed teeth
on on we flew and our offing gained the moss did homage to the
blast ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the sultan sideways
leaning we sideways darted every ropeyarn tingling like a wire the
two tall masts buckling like indian canes in land tornadoes so full of
this reeling scene were we as we stood by the plunging bowsprit that
for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers a
lubber-like assembly who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so
companionable as though a white man were anything more dignified than a
whitewashed negro but there were some boobies and bumpkins there who
by their intense greenness must have come from the heart and centre of
all verdure queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him
behind his back i thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come dropping
his harpoon the brawny savage caught him in his arms and by an almost
miraculous dexterity and strength sent him high up bodily into the air
then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset the fellow landed with
bursting lungs upon his feet while queequeg turning his back upon him
lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff

capting capting yelled the bumpkin running towards that officer
capting capting here's the devil

hallo you sir cried the captain a gaunt rib of the sea stalking
up to queequeg what in thunder do you mean by that don't you know you
might have killed that chap

what him say said queequeg as he mildly turned to me

he say said i that you came near kill-e that man there pointing
to the still shivering greenhorn

kill-e cried queequeg twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain ah him bevy small-e fish-e queequeg no kill-e
so small-e fish-e queequeg kill-e big whale

look you roared the captain i'll kill-e you you cannibal if you
try any more of your tricks aboard here so mind your eye

but it so happened just then that it was high time for the captain to
mind his own eye the prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted
the weather-sheet and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to
side completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck the poor
fellow whom queequeg had handled so roughly was swept overboard all
hands were in a panic and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it
seemed madness it flew from right to left and back again almost
in one ticking of a watch and every instant seemed on the point of
snapping into splinters nothing was done and nothing seemed capable of
being done those on deck rushed towards the bows and stood eyeing the
boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale in the
midst of this consternation queequeg dropped deftly to his knees and
crawling under the path of the boom whipped hold of a rope secured one
end to the bulwarks and then flinging the other like a lasso caught it
round the boom as it swept over his head and at the next jerk the spar
was that way trapped and all was safe the schooner was run into the
wind and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat queequeg
stripped to the waist darted from the side with a long living arc of
a leap for three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog
throwing his long arms straight out before him and by turns revealing
his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam i looked at the grand
and glorious fellow but saw no one to be saved the greenhorn had gone
down shooting himself perpendicularly from the water queequeg now
took an instant's glance around him and seeming to see just how matters
were dived down and disappeared a few minutes more and he rose again
one arm still striking out and with the other dragging a lifeless form
the boat soon picked them up the poor bumpkin was restored all hands
voted queequeg a noble trump the captain begged his pardon from that
hour i clove to queequeg like a barnacle yea till poor queequeg took
his last long dive

was there ever such unconsciousness he did not seem to think that he at
all deserved a medal from the humane and magnanimous societies he only
asked for water fresh water something to wipe the brine off that
done he put on dry clothes lighted his pipe and leaning against the
bulwarks and mildly eyeing those around him seemed to be saying
to himself it's a mutual joint-stock world in all meridians we
cannibals must help these christians



chapter nantucket


nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning so after a
fine run we safely arrived in nantucket

nantucket take out your map and look at it see what a real corner of
the world it occupies how it stands there away off shore more lonely
than the eddystone lighthouse look at it a mere hillock and elbow of
sand all beach without a background there is more sand there than
you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper some
gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there they
don't grow naturally that they import canada thistles that they have
to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask that
pieces of wood in nantucket are carried about like bits of the true
cross in rome that people there plant toadstools before their houses
to get under the shade in summer time that one blade of grass makes an
oasis three blades in a day's walk a prairie that they wear quicksand
shoes something like laplander snow-shoes that they are so shut up
belted about every way inclosed surrounded and made an utter island
of by the ocean that to their very chairs and tables small clams will
sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles but these
extravaganzas only show that nantucket is no illinois

look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was
settled by the red-men thus goes the legend in olden times an eagle
swooped down upon the new england coast and carried off an infant
indian in his talons with loud lament the parents saw their child borne
out of sight over the wide waters they resolved to follow in the same
direction setting out in their canoes after a perilous passage they
discovered the island and there they found an empty ivory casket the
poor little indian's skeleton

what wonder then that these nantucketers born on a beach should take
to the sea for a livelihood they first caught crabs and quohogs in
the sand grown bolder they waded out with nets for mackerel more
experienced they pushed off in boats and captured cod and at last
launching a navy of great ships on the sea explored this watery world
put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it peeped in
at behring's straits and in all seasons and all oceans declared
everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
flood most monstrous and most mountainous that himmalehan salt-sea
mastodon clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power that
his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and
malicious assaults

and thus have these naked nantucketers these sea hermits issuing from
their ant-hill in the sea overrun and conquered the watery world like
so many alexanders parcelling out among them the atlantic pacific and
indian oceans as the three pirate powers did poland let america add
mexico to texas and pile cuba upon canada let the english overswarm
all india and hang out their blazing banner from the sun two thirds
of this terraqueous globe are the nantucketer's for the sea is his he
owns it as emperors own empires other seamen having but a right of
way through it merchant ships are but extension bridges armed ones but
floating forts even pirates and privateers though following the sea
as highwaymen the road they but plunder other ships other fragments of
the land like themselves without seeking to draw their living from the
bottomless deep itself the nantucketer he alone resides and riots on
the sea he alone in bible language goes down to it in ships to and
fro ploughing it as his own special plantation there is his home there
lies his business which a noah's flood would not interrupt though it
overwhelmed all the millions in china he lives on the sea as prairie
cocks in the prairie he hides among the waves he climbs them as
chamois hunters climb the alps for years he knows not the land so
that when he comes to it at last it smells like another world more
strangely than the moon would to an earthsman with the landless gull
that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows
so at nightfall the nantucketer out of sight of land furls his sails
and lays him to his rest while under his very pillow rush herds of
walruses and whales



chapter chowder


it was quite late in the evening when the little moss came snugly
to anchor and queequeg and i went ashore so we could attend to no
business that day at least none but a supper and a bed the landlord of
the spouter-inn had recommended us to his cousin hosea hussey of the
try pots whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept
hotels in all nantucket and moreover he had assured us that cousin
hosea as he called him was famous for his chowders in short he
plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at
the try pots but the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow
warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the
larboard and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a
corner three points to the starboard and that done then ask the first
man we met where the place was these crooked directions of his very
much puzzled us at first especially as at the outset queequeg
insisted that the yellow warehouse our first point of departure must
be left on the larboard hand whereas i had understood peter coffin to
say it was on the starboard however by dint of beating about a little
in the dark and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant
to inquire the way we at last came to something which there was no
mistaking

two enormous wooden pots painted black and suspended by asses ears
swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast planted in front of an
old doorway the horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other
side so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows
perhaps i was over sensitive to such impressions at the time but i
could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving a sort of
crick was in my neck as i gazed up to the two remaining horns yes two
of them one for queequeg and one for me it's ominous thinks i a
coffin my innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port tombstones
staring at me in the whalemen's chapel and here a gallows and a pair
of prodigious black pots too are these last throwing out oblique hints
touching tophet

i was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman
with yellow hair and a yellow gown standing in the porch of the inn
under a dull red lamp swinging there that looked much like an injured
eye and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen
shirt

get along with ye said she to the man or i'll be combing ye

come on queequeg said i all right there's mrs hussey

and so it turned out mr hosea hussey being from home but leaving
mrs hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs upon
making known our desires for a supper and a bed mrs hussey postponing
further scolding for the present ushered us into a little room and
seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded
repast turned round to us and said clam or cod

what's that about cods ma'am said i with much politeness

clam or cod she repeated

a clam for supper a cold clam is that what you mean mrs hussey
says i but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter
time ain't it mrs hussey

but being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
shirt who was waiting for it in the entry and seeming to hear nothing
but the word clam mrs hussey hurried towards an open door leading to
the kitchen and bawling out clam for two disappeared

queequeg said i do you think that we can make out a supper for us
both on one clam

however a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us but when that smoking chowder
came in the mystery was delightfully explained oh sweet friends
hearken to me it was made of small juicy clams scarcely bigger than
hazel nuts mixed with pounded ship biscuit and salted pork cut up into
little flakes the whole enriched with butter and plentifully seasoned
with pepper and salt our appetites being sharpened by the frosty
voyage and in particular queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food
before him and the chowder being surpassingly excellent we despatched
it with great expedition when leaning back a moment and bethinking
me of mrs hussey's clam and cod announcement i thought i would try
a little experiment stepping to the kitchen door i uttered the word
cod with great emphasis and resumed my seat in a few moments the
savoury steam came forth again but with a different flavor and in good
time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us

we resumed business and while plying our spoons in the bowl thinks i
to myself i wonder now if this here has any effect on the head
what's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people but look
queequeg ain't that a live eel in your bowl where's your harpoon

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

supper concluded we received a lamp and directions from mrs hussey
concerning the nearest way to bed but as queequeg was about to precede
me up the stairs the lady reached forth her arm and demanded his
harpoon she allowed no harpoon in her chambers why not said i
every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon but why not because
it's dangerous says she ever since young stiggs coming from that
unfort'nt v'y'ge of his when he was gone four years and a half with
only three barrels of ile was found dead in my first floor back with
his harpoon in his side ever since then i allow no boarders to take
sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night so mr queequeg for
she had learned his name i will just take this here iron and keep
it for you till morning but the chowder clam or cod to-morrow for
breakfast men

both says i and let's have a couple of smoked herring by way of
variety



chapter the ship


in bed we concocted our plans for the morrow but to my surprise and
no small concern queequeg now gave me to understand that he had been
diligently consulting yojo the name of his black little god and yojo
had told him two or three times over and strongly insisted upon it
everyway that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in
harbor and in concert selecting our craft instead of this i say yojo
earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly
with me inasmuch as yojo purposed befriending us and in order to
do so had already pitched upon a vessel which if left to myself i
ishmael should infallibly light upon for all the world as though it
had turned out by chance and in that vessel i must immediately ship
myself for the present irrespective of queequeg

i have forgotten to mention that in many things queequeg placed great
confidence in the excellence of yojo's judgment and surprising forecast
of things and cherished yojo with considerable esteem as a rather good
sort of god who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole but in all
cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs

now this plan of queequeg's or rather yojo's touching the selection
of our craft i did not like that plan at all i had not a little relied
upon queequeg's sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry
us and our fortunes securely but as all my remonstrances produced
no effect upon queequeg i was obliged to acquiesce and accordingly
prepared to set about this business with a determined rushing sort
of energy and vigor that should quickly settle that trifling little
affair next morning early leaving queequeg shut up with yojo in our
little bedroom for it seemed that it was some sort of lent or ramadan
or day of fasting humiliation and prayer with queequeg and yojo that
day how it was i never could find out for though i applied myself
to it several times i never could master his liturgies and xxxix
articles leaving queequeg then fasting on his tomahawk pipe and yojo
warming himself at his sacrificial fire of shavings i sallied out among
the shipping after much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries
i learnt that there were three ships up for three-years voyages the
devil-dam the tit-bit and the pequod devil-dam i do not know the
origin of tit-bit is obvious pequod you will no doubt remember was
the name of a celebrated tribe of massachusetts indians now extinct
as the ancient medes i peered and pryed about the devil-dam from her
hopped over to the tit-bit and finally going on board the pequod
looked around her for a moment and then decided that this was the very
ship for us

you may have seen many a quaint craft in your day for aught i
know square-toed luggers mountainous japanese junks butter-box
galliots and what not but take my word for it you never saw such a
rare old craft as this same rare old pequod she was a ship of the old
school rather small if anything with an old-fashioned claw-footed look
about her long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms
of all four oceans her old hull's complexion was darkened like a french
grenadier's who has alike fought in egypt and siberia her venerable
bows looked bearded her masts cut somewhere on the coast of japan
where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale her masts stood
stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of cologne her
ancient decks were worn and wrinkled like the pilgrim-worshipped
flag-stone in canterbury cathedral where becket bled but to all these
her old antiquities were added new and marvellous features pertaining
to the wild business that for more than half a century she had followed
old captain peleg many years her chief-mate before he commanded
another vessel of his own and now a retired seaman and one of the
principal owners of the pequod this old peleg during the term of his
chief-mateship had built upon her original grotesqueness and inlaid
it all over with a quaintness both of material and device unmatched
by anything except it be thorkill-hake's carved buckler or bedstead she
was apparelled like any barbaric ethiopian emperor his neck heavy with
pendants of polished ivory she was a thing of trophies a cannibal of
a craft tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies all
round her unpanelled open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous
jaw with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale inserted there for
pins to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to those thews ran not
through base blocks of land wood but deftly travelled over sheaves of
sea-ivory scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm she sported
there a tiller and that tiller was in one mass curiously carved
from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe the helmsman who
steered by that tiller in a tempest felt like the tartar when he holds
back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw a noble craft but somehow a
most melancholy all noble things are touched with that

now when i looked about the quarter-deck for some one having authority
in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage at first i saw
nobody but i could not well overlook a strange sort of tent or
rather wigwam pitched a little behind the main-mast it seemed only
a temporary erection used in port it was of a conical shape some ten
feet high consisting of the long huge slabs of limber black bone taken
from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the right-whale
planted with their broad ends on the deck a circle of these slabs laced
together mutually sloped towards each other and at the apex united in
a tufted point where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the
top-knot on some old pottowottamie sachem's head a triangular opening
faced towards the bows of the ship so that the insider commanded a
complete view forward

and half concealed in this queer tenement i at length found one who
by his aspect seemed to have authority and who it being noon and
the ship's work suspended was now enjoying respite from the burden of
command he was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair wriggling all
over with curious carving and the bottom of which was formed of a
stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was
constructed

there was nothing so very particular perhaps about the appearance of
the elderly man i saw he was brown and brawny like most old seamen
and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth cut in the quaker style
only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest
wrinkles interlacing round his eyes which must have arisen from
his continual sailings in many hard gales and always looking to
windward for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed
together such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl

is this the captain of the pequod said i advancing to the door of
the tent

supposing it be the captain of the pequod what dost thou want of him
he demanded

i was thinking of shipping

thou wast wast thou i see thou art no nantucketer ever been in a
stove boat

no sir i never have

dost know nothing at all about whaling i dare say eh

nothing sir but i have no doubt i shall soon learn i've been several
voyages in the merchant service and i think that 

merchant service be damned talk not that lingo to me dost see that
leg i'll take that leg away from thy stern if ever thou talkest of
the marchant service to me again marchant service indeed i suppose now
ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships
but flukes man what makes thee want to go a whaling eh it looks
a little suspicious don't it eh hast not been a pirate hast
thou didst not rob thy last captain didst thou dost not think of
murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea

i protested my innocence of these things i saw that under the mask
of these half humorous innuendoes this old seaman as an insulated
quakerish nantucketer was full of his insular prejudices and rather
distrustful of all aliens unless they hailed from cape cod or the
vineyard

but what takes thee a-whaling i want to know that before i think of
shipping ye

well sir i want to see what whaling is i want to see the world

want to see what whaling is eh have ye clapped eye on captain ahab

who is captain ahab sir

aye aye i thought so captain ahab is the captain of this ship

i am mistaken then i thought i was speaking to the captain himself

thou art speaking to captain peleg that's who ye are speaking to
young man it belongs to me and captain bildad to see the pequod fitted
out for the voyage and supplied with all her needs including crew we
are part owners and agents but as i was going to say if thou wantest
to know what whaling is as thou tellest ye do i can put ye in a way of
finding it out before ye bind yourself to it past backing out clap
eye on captain ahab young man and thou wilt find that he has only one
leg

what do you mean sir was the other one lost by a whale

lost by a whale young man come nearer to me it was devoured
chewed up crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a
boat ah ah

i was a little alarmed by his energy perhaps also a little touched at
the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation but said as calmly as i
could what you say is no doubt true enough sir but how could i know
there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale though indeed
i might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident

look ye now young man thy lungs are a sort of soft d'ye see thou
dost not talk shark a bit sure ye've been to sea before now sure of
that

sir said i i thought i told you that i had been four voyages in the
merchant 

hard down out of that mind what i said about the marchant
service don't aggravate me i won't have it but let us understand each
other i have given thee a hint about what whaling is do ye yet feel
inclined for it

i do sir

very good now art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's
throat and then jump after it answer quick

i am sir if it should be positively indispensable to do so not to be
got rid of that is which i don't take to be the fact

good again now then thou not only wantest to go a-whaling to find
out by experience what whaling is but ye also want to go in order to
see the world was not that what ye said i thought so well then just
step forward there and take a peep over the weather-bow and then back
to me and tell me what ye see there

for a moment i stood a little puzzled by this curious request not
knowing exactly how to take it whether humorously or in earnest but
concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl captain peleg started
me on the errand

going forward and glancing over the weather bow i perceived that the
ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide was now obliquely
pointing towards the open ocean the prospect was unlimited but
exceedingly monotonous and forbidding not the slightest variety that i
could see

well what's the report said peleg when i came back what did ye
see

not much i replied nothing but water considerable horizon though
and there's a squall coming up i think

well what does thou think then of seeing the world do ye wish to go
round cape horn to see any more of it eh can't ye see the world where
you stand

i was a little staggered but go a-whaling i must and i would and the
pequod was as good a ship as any i thought the best and all this i now
repeated to peleg seeing me so determined he expressed his willingness
to ship me

and thou mayest as well sign the papers right off he added come
along with ye and so saying he led the way below deck into the cabin

seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and
surprising figure it turned out to be captain bildad who along with
captain peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel the other
shares as is sometimes the case in these ports being held by a crowd
of old annuitants widows fatherless children and chancery wards each
owning about the value of a timber head or a foot of plank or a nail
or two in the ship people in nantucket invest their money in whaling
vessels the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks
bringing in good interest

now bildad like peleg and indeed many other nantucketers was a
quaker the island having been originally settled by that sect and to
this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the
peculiarities of the quaker only variously and anomalously modified
by things altogether alien and heterogeneous for some of these same
quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters they
are fighting quakers they are quakers with a vengeance

so that there are instances among them of men who named with scripture
names a singularly common fashion on the island and in childhood
naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the quaker
idiom still from the audacious daring and boundless adventure
of their subsequent lives strangely blend with these unoutgrown
peculiarities a thousand bold dashes of character not unworthy a
scandinavian sea-king or a poetical pagan roman and when these things
unite in a man of greatly superior natural force with a globular brain
and a ponderous heart who has also by the stillness and seclusion
of many long night-watches in the remotest waters and beneath
constellations never seen here at the north been led to think
untraditionally and independently receiving all nature's sweet or
savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding
breast and thereby chiefly but with some help from accidental
advantages to learn a bold and nervous lofty language that man makes
one in a whole nation's census a mighty pageant creature formed for
noble tragedies nor will it at all detract from him dramatically
regarded if either by birth or other circumstances he have what seems
a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature for all
men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness be sure
of this o young ambition all mortal greatness is but disease but
as yet we have not to do with such an one but with quite another and
still a man who if indeed peculiar it only results again from another
phase of the quaker modified by individual circumstances

like captain peleg captain bildad was a well-to-do retired whaleman
but unlike captain peleg who cared not a rush for what are called
serious things and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the
veriest of all trifles captain bildad had not only been originally
educated according to the strictest sect of nantucket quakerism but all
his subsequent ocean life and the sight of many unclad lovely island
creatures round the horn all that had not moved this native born
quaker one single jot had not so much as altered one angle of his
vest still for all this immutableness was there some lack of
common consistency about worthy captain peleg though refusing from
conscientious scruples to bear arms against land invaders yet himself
had illimitably invaded the atlantic and pacific and though a sworn foe
to human bloodshed yet had he in his straight-bodied coat spilled tuns
upon tuns of leviathan gore how now in the contemplative evening of his
days the pious bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence i do
not know but it did not seem to concern him much and very probably
he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's
religion is one thing and this practical world quite another this
world pays dividends rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes
of the drabbest drab to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat
from that becoming boat-header chief-mate and captain and finally a
ship owner bildad as i hinted before had concluded his adventurous
career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of
sixty and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his
well-earned income

now bildad i am sorry to say had the reputation of being an
incorrigible old hunks and in his sea-going days a bitter hard
task-master they told me in nantucket though it certainly seems a
curious story that when he sailed the old categut whaleman his crew
upon arriving home were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital sore
exhausted and worn out for a pious man especially for a quaker he was
certainly rather hard-hearted to say the least he never used to swear
though at his men they said but somehow he got an inordinate
quantity of cruel unmitigated hard work out of them when bildad was a
chief-mate to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you made
you feel completely nervous till you could clutch something a hammer
or a marling-spike and go to work like mad at something or other
never mind what indolence and idleness perished before him his own
person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character on his
long gaunt body he carried no spare flesh no superfluous beard
his chin having a soft economical nap to it like the worn nap of his
broad-brimmed hat

such then was the person that i saw seated on the transom when i
followed captain peleg down into the cabin the space between the decks
was small and there bolt-upright sat old bildad who always sat so
and never leaned and this to save his coat tails his broad-brim was
placed beside him his legs were stiffly crossed his drab vesture was
buttoned up to his chin and spectacles on nose he seemed absorbed in
reading from a ponderous volume

bildad cried captain peleg at it again bildad eh ye have been
studying those scriptures now for the last thirty years to my certain
knowledge how far ye got bildad

as if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate
bildad without noticing his present irreverence quietly looked up and
seeing me glanced again inquiringly towards peleg

he says he's our man bildad said peleg he wants to ship

dost thee said bildad in a hollow tone and turning round to me

i dost said i unconsciously he was so intense a quaker

what do ye think of him bildad said peleg

he'll do said bildad eyeing me and then went on spelling away at
his book in a mumbling tone quite audible

i thought him the queerest old quaker i ever saw especially as peleg
his friend and old shipmate seemed such a blusterer but i said
nothing only looking round me sharply peleg now threw open a chest
and drawing forth the ship's articles placed pen and ink before him
and seated himself at a little table i began to think it was high time
to settle with myself at what terms i would be willing to engage for the
voyage i was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no
wages but all hands including the captain received certain shares of
the profits called lays and that these lays were proportioned to the
degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's
company i was also aware that being a green hand at whaling my own
lay would not be very large but considering that i was used to the sea
could steer a ship splice a rope and all that i made no doubt that
from all i had heard i should be offered at least the th lay that
is the th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage whatever
that might eventually amount to and though the th lay was what they
call a rather long lay yet it was better than nothing and if we had a
lucky voyage might pretty nearly pay for the clothing i would wear out
on it not to speak of my three years beef and board for which i would
not have to pay one stiver

it might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
fortune and so it was a very poor way indeed but i am one of those
that never take on about princely fortunes and am quite content if the
world is ready to board and lodge me while i am putting up at this grim
sign of the thunder cloud upon the whole i thought that the th lay
would be about the fair thing but would not have been surprised had i
been offered the th considering i was of a broad-shouldered make

but one thing nevertheless that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this ashore i had heard
something of both captain peleg and his unaccountable old crony bildad
how that they being the principal proprietors of the pequod therefore
the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners left nearly the
whole management of the ship's affairs to these two and i did not know
but what the stingy old bildad might have a mighty deal to say about
shipping hands especially as i now found him on board the pequod
quite at home there in the cabin and reading his bible as if at his
own fireside now while peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his
jack-knife old bildad to my no small surprise considering that he was
such an interested party in these proceedings bildad never heeded
us but went on mumbling to himself out of his book lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth where moth 

well captain bildad interrupted peleg what d'ye say what lay
shall we give this young man

thou knowest best was the sepulchral reply the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much would it where moth and rust do
corrupt but lay 

lay indeed thought i and such a lay the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh well old bildad you are determined that i for one
shall not lay up many lays here below where moth and rust do corrupt
it was an exceedingly long lay that indeed and though from the
magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman yet
the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and
seventy-seven is a pretty large number yet when you come to make
a teenth of it you will then see i say that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons and so i thought at the time

why blast your eyes bildad cried peleg thou dost not want to
swindle this young man he must have more than that

seven hundred and seventy-seventh again said bildad without lifting
his eyes and then went on mumbling for where your treasure is there
will your heart be also

i am going to put him down for the three hundredth said peleg do ye
hear that bildad the three hundredth lay i say

bildad laid down his book and turning solemnly towards him said
captain peleg thou hast a generous heart but thou must consider the
duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship widows and orphans
many of them and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this
young man we may be taking the bread from those widows and those
orphans the seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay captain peleg

thou bildad roared peleg starting up and clattering about the
cabin blast ye captain bildad if i had followed thy advice in these
matters i would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be
heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round cape
horn

captain peleg said bildad steadily thy conscience may be drawing
ten inches of water or ten fathoms i can't tell but as thou art still
an impenitent man captain peleg i greatly fear lest thy conscience be
but a leaky one and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the
fiery pit captain peleg

fiery pit fiery pit ye insult me man past all natural bearing ye
insult me it's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that
he's bound to hell flukes and flames bildad say that again to me and
start my soul-bolts but i'll i'll yes i'll swallow a live goat with
all his hair and horns on out of the cabin ye canting drab-coloured
son of a wooden gun a straight wake with ye

as he thundered out this he made a rush at bildad but with a marvellous
oblique sliding celerity bildad for that time eluded him

alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
responsible owners of the ship and feeling half a mind to give up
all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily
commanded i stepped aside from the door to give egress to bildad who
i made no doubt was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened
wrath of peleg but to my astonishment he sat down again on the
transom very quietly and seemed to have not the slightest intention of
withdrawing he seemed quite used to impenitent peleg and his ways as
for peleg after letting off his rage as he had there seemed no more
left in him and he too sat down like a lamb though he twitched a
little as if still nervously agitated whew he whistled at last the
squall's gone off to leeward i think bildad thou used to be good at
sharpening a lance mend that pen will ye my jack-knife here needs
the grindstone that's he thank ye bildad now then my young man
ishmael's thy name didn't ye say well then down ye go here ishmael
for the three hundredth lay

captain peleg said i i have a friend with me who wants to ship
too shall i bring him down to-morrow

to be sure said peleg fetch him along and we'll look at him

what lay does he want groaned bildad glancing up from the book in
which he had again been burying himself

oh never thee mind about that bildad said peleg has he ever
whaled it any turning to me

killed more whales than i can count captain peleg

well bring him along then

and after signing the papers off i went nothing doubting but that i
had done a good morning's work and that the pequod was the identical
ship that yojo had provided to carry queequeg and me round the cape

but i had not proceeded far when i began to bethink me that the captain
with whom i was to sail yet remained unseen by me though indeed in
many cases a whale-ship will be completely fitted out and receive all
her crew on board ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving
to take command for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged and the
shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief that if the captain have
a family or any absorbing concernment of that sort he does not trouble
himself much about his ship in port but leaves her to the owners till
all is ready for sea however it is always as well to have a look at
him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands turning back
i accosted captain peleg inquiring where captain ahab was to be found

and what dost thou want of captain ahab it's all right enough thou
art shipped

yes but i should like to see him

but i don't think thou wilt be able to at present i don't know exactly
what's the matter with him but he keeps close inside the house a sort
of sick and yet he don't look so in fact he ain't sick but no he
isn't well either any how young man he won't always see me so i
don't suppose he will thee he's a queer man captain ahab so some
think but a good one oh thou'lt like him well enough no fear no
fear he's a grand ungodly god-like man captain ahab doesn't speak
much but when he does speak then you may well listen mark ye be
forewarned ahab's above the common ahab's been in colleges as well as
mong the cannibals been used to deeper wonders than the waves fixed
his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales his lance
aye the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle oh he ain't
captain bildad no and he ain't captain peleg he's ahab boy and ahab
of old thou knowest was a crowned king

and a very vile one when that wicked king was slain the dogs did
they not lick his blood

come hither to me hither hither said peleg with a significance in
his eye that almost startled me look ye lad never say that on board
the pequod never say it anywhere captain ahab did not name himself
twas a foolish ignorant whim of his crazy widowed mother who died
when he was only a twelvemonth old and yet the old squaw tistig at
gayhead said that the name would somehow prove prophetic and perhaps
other fools like her may tell thee the same i wish to warn thee it's a
lie i know captain ahab well i've sailed with him as mate years ago
i know what he is a good man not a pious good man like bildad but
a swearing good man something like me only there's a good deal more of
him aye aye i know that he was never very jolly and i know that on
the passage home he was a little out of his mind for a spell but it
was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that
about as any one might see i know too that ever since he lost
his leg last voyage by that accursed whale he's been a kind of
moody desperate moody and savage sometimes but that will all pass
off and once for all let me tell thee and assure thee young man it's
better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one so
good-bye to thee and wrong not captain ahab because he happens to
have a wicked name besides my boy he has a wife not three voyages
wedded a sweet resigned girl think of that by that sweet girl that
old man has a child hold ye then there can be any utter hopeless
harm in ahab no no my lad stricken blasted if he be ahab has his
humanities

as i walked away i was full of thoughtfulness what had been
incidentally revealed to me of captain ahab filled me with a certain
wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him and somehow at the time
i felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him but for i don't know what
unless it was the cruel loss of his leg and yet i also felt a strange
awe of him but that sort of awe which i cannot at all describe was
not exactly awe i do not know what it was but i felt it and it did
not disincline me towards him though i felt impatience at what seemed
like mystery in him so imperfectly as he was known to me then however
my thoughts were at length carried in other directions so that for the
present dark ahab slipped my mind



chapter the ramadan


as queequeg's ramadan or fasting and humiliation was to continue all
day i did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall for i
cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations
never mind how comical and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool or those other
creatures in certain parts of our earth who with a degree of footmanism
quite unprecedented in other planets bow down before the torso of
a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate
possessions yet owned and rented in his name

i say we good presbyterian christians should be charitable in these
things and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals
pagans and what not because of their half-crazy conceits on these
subjects there was queequeg now certainly entertaining the most
absurd notions about yojo and his ramadan but what of that queequeg
thought he knew what he was about i suppose he seemed to be content
and there let him rest all our arguing with him would not avail let
him be i say and heaven have mercy on us all presbyterians and pagans
alike for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head and
sadly need mending

towards evening when i felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over i went up to his room and knocked at the door but
no answer i tried to open it but it was fastened inside queequeg
said i softly through the key-hole all silent i say queequeg why
don't you speak it's i ishmael but all remained still as before i
began to grow alarmed i had allowed him such abundant time i thought
he might have had an apoplectic fit i looked through the key-hole but
the door opening into an odd corner of the room the key-hole prospect
was but a crooked and sinister one i could only see part of the
foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall but nothing more i
was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden shaft of
queequeg's harpoon which the landlady the evening previous had taken
from him before our mounting to the chamber that's strange thought i
but at any rate since the harpoon stands yonder and he seldom or
never goes abroad without it therefore he must be inside here and no
possible mistake

queequeg queequeg all still something must have happened
apoplexy i tried to burst open the door but it stubbornly resisted
running down stairs i quickly stated my suspicions to the first person
i met the chamber-maid la la she cried i thought something must
be the matter i went to make the bed after breakfast and the door was
locked and not a mouse to be heard and it's been just so silent ever
since but i thought may be you had both gone off and locked your
baggage in for safe keeping la la ma'am mistress murder mrs
hussey apoplexy and with these cries she ran towards the kitchen i
following

mrs hussey soon appeared with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
vinegar-cruet in the other having just broken away from the occupation
of attending to the castors and scolding her little black boy meantime

wood-house cried i which way to it run for god's sake and fetch
something to pry open the door the axe the axe he's had a stroke
depend upon it and so saying i was unmethodically rushing up stairs
again empty-handed when mrs hussey interposed the mustard-pot and
vinegar-cruet and the entire castor of her countenance

what's the matter with you young man

get the axe for god's sake run for the doctor some one while i pry
it open

look here said the landlady quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet
so as to have one hand free look here are you talking about prying
open any of my doors and with that she seized my arm what's the
matter with you what's the matter with you shipmate

in as calm but rapid a manner as possible i gave her to understand the
whole case unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of her
nose she ruminated for an instant then exclaimed no i haven't seen
it since i put it there running to a little closet under the landing
of the stairs she glanced in and returning told me that queequeg's
harpoon was missing he's killed himself she cried it's unfort'nate
stiggs done over again there goes another counterpane god pity his poor
mother it will be the ruin of my house has the poor lad a sister
where's that girl there betty go to snarles the painter and tell
him to paint me a sign with no suicides permitted here and no
smoking in the parlor might as well kill both birds at once kill
the lord be merciful to his ghost what's that noise there you young
man avast there

and running up after me she caught me as i was again trying to force
open the door

i don't allow it i won't have my premises spoiled go for the
locksmith there's one about a mile from here but avast putting her
hand in her side-pocket here's a key that'll fit i guess let's
see and with that she turned it in the lock but alas queequeg's
supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within

have to burst it open said i and was running down the entry a
little for a good start when the landlady caught at me again vowing
i should not break down her premises but i tore from her and with a
sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark

with a prodigious noise the door flew open and the knob slamming
against the wall sent the plaster to the ceiling and there good
heavens there sat queequeg altogether cool and self-collected right
in the middle of the room squatting on his hams and holding yojo on
top of his head he looked neither one way nor the other way but sat
like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life

queequeg said i going up to him queequeg what's the matter with
you

he hain't been a sittin so all day has he said the landlady

but all we said not a word could we drag out of him i almost felt
like pushing him over so as to change his position for it was almost
intolerable it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained
especially as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of
eight or ten hours going too without his regular meals

mrs hussey said i he's alive at all events so leave us if you
please and i will see to this strange affair myself

closing the door upon the landlady i endeavored to prevail upon
queequeg to take a chair but in vain there he sat and all he could
do for all my polite arts and blandishments he would not move a peg
nor say a single word nor even look at me nor notice my presence in
the slightest way

i wonder thought i if this can possibly be a part of his ramadan do
they fast on their hams that way in his native island it must be so
yes it's part of his creed i suppose well then let him rest he'll
get up sooner or later no doubt it can't last for ever thank god
and his ramadan only comes once a year and i don't believe it's very
punctual then

i went down to supper after sitting a long time listening to the long
stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage as
they called it that is a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig
confined to the north of the line in the atlantic ocean only after
listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock i went
up stairs to go to bed feeling quite sure by this time queequeg must
certainly have brought his ramadan to a termination but no there he
was just where i had left him he had not stirred an inch i began to
grow vexed with him it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be
sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room
holding a piece of wood on his head

for heaven's sake queequeg get up and shake yourself get up and have
some supper you'll starve you'll kill yourself queequeg but not a
word did he reply

despairing of him therefore i determined to go to bed and to sleep
and no doubt before a great while he would follow me but previous to
turning in i took my heavy bearskin jacket and threw it over him as
it promised to be a very cold night and he had nothing but his ordinary
round jacket on for some time do all i would i could not get into
the faintest doze i had blown out the candle and the mere thought
of queequeg not four feet off sitting there in that uneasy position
stark alone in the cold and dark this made me really wretched think of
it sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his
hams in this dreary unaccountable ramadan

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

now as i before hinted i have no objection to any person's religion
be it what it may so long as that person does not kill or insult any
other person because that other person don't believe it also but when
a man's religion becomes really frantic when it is a positive torment
to him and in fine makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to
lodge in then i think it high time to take that individual aside and
argue the point with him

and just so i now did with queequeg queequeg said i get into bed
now and lie and listen to me i then went on beginning with the rise
and progress of the primitive religions and coming down to the various
religions of the present time during which time i labored to show
queequeg that all these lents ramadans and prolonged ham-squattings in
cold cheerless rooms were stark nonsense bad for the health useless
for the soul opposed in short to the obvious laws of hygiene and
common sense i told him too that he being in other things such an
extremely sensible and sagacious savage it pained me very badly pained
me to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous ramadan
of his besides argued i fasting makes the body cave in hence the
spirit caves in and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be
half-starved this is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish
such melancholy notions about their hereafters in one word queequeg
said i rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested
apple-dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary
dyspepsias nurtured by ramadans

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

no more queequeg said i shuddering that will do for i knew the
inferences without his further hinting them i had seen a sailor who had
visited that very island and he told me that it was the custom when
a great battle had been gained there to barbecue all the slain in the
yard or garden of the victor and then one by one they were placed
in great wooden trenchers and garnished round like a pilau with
breadfruit and cocoanuts and with some parsley in their mouths were
sent round with the victor's compliments to all his friends just as
though these presents were so many christmas turkeys

after all i do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon queequeg because in the first place he somehow seemed
dull of hearing on that important subject unless considered from his
own point of view and in the second place he did not more than one
third understand me couch my ideas simply as i would and finally he
no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than
i did he looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and
compassion as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible
young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety

at last we rose and dressed and queequeg taking a prodigiously hearty
breakfast of chowders of all sorts so that the landlady should not
make much profit by reason of his ramadan we sallied out to board the
pequod sauntering along and picking our teeth with halibut bones



chapter his mark


as we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship queequeg
carrying his harpoon captain peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us
from his wigwam saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal
and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft
unless they previously produced their papers

what do you mean by that captain peleg said i now jumping on the
bulwarks and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf

i mean he replied he must show his papers

yes said captain bildad in his hollow voice sticking his head from
behind peleg's out of the wigwam he must show that he's converted
son of darkness he added turning to queequeg art thou at present in
communion with any christian church

why said i he's a member of the first congregational church here
be it said that many tattooed savages sailing in nantucket ships at
last come to be converted into the churches

first congregational church cried bildad what that worships in
deacon deuteronomy coleman's meeting-house and so saying taking
out his spectacles he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
handkerchief and putting them on very carefully came out of the
wigwam and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks took a good long look at
queequeg

how long hath he been a member he then said turning to me not very
long i rather guess young man

no said peleg and he hasn't been baptized right either or it would
have washed some of that devil's blue off his face

do tell now cried bildad is this philistine a regular member of
deacon deuteronomy's meeting i never saw him going there and i pass it
every lord's day

i don't know anything about deacon deuteronomy or his meeting said
i all i know is that queequeg here is a born member of the first
congregational church he is a deacon himself queequeg is

young man said bildad sternly thou art skylarking with me explain
thyself thou young hittite what church dost thee mean answer me

finding myself thus hard pushed i replied i mean sir the same
ancient catholic church to which you and i and captain peleg there
and queequeg here and all of us and every mother's son and soul of
us belong the great and everlasting first congregation of this whole
worshipping world we all belong to that only some of us cherish some
queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief in that we all join
hands

splice thou mean'st splice hands cried peleg drawing nearer young
man you'd better ship for a missionary instead of a fore-mast hand
i never heard a better sermon deacon deuteronomy why father mapple
himself couldn't beat it and he's reckoned something come aboard come
aboard never mind about the papers i say tell quohog there what's
that you call him tell quohog to step along by the great anchor what
a harpoon he's got there looks like good stuff that and he handles it
about right i say quohog or whatever your name is did you ever stand
in the head of a whale-boat did you ever strike a fish

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

cap'ain you see him small drop tar on water dere you see him well
spose him one whale eye well den and taking sharp aim at it he
darted the iron right over old bildad's broad brim clean across the
ship's decks and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight

now said queequeg quietly hauling in the line spos-ee him whale-e
eye why dad whale dead

quick bildad said peleg his partner who aghast at the close
vicinity of the flying harpoon had retreated towards the cabin gangway
quick i say you bildad and get the ship's papers we must have
hedgehog there i mean quohog in one of our boats look ye quohog
we'll give ye the ninetieth lay and that's more than ever was given a
harpooneer yet out of nantucket

so down we went into the cabin and to my great joy queequeg was soon
enrolled among the same ship's company to which i myself belonged

when all preliminaries were over and peleg had got everything ready for
signing he turned to me and said i guess quohog there don't know how
to write does he i say quohog blast ye dost thou sign thy name or
make thy mark

but at this question queequeg who had twice or thrice before taken
part in similar ceremonies looked no ways abashed but taking the
offered pen copied upon the paper in the proper place an exact
counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm so
that through captain peleg's obstinate mistake touching his appellative
it stood something like this 

quohog his x mark

meanwhile captain bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing queequeg
and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his
broad-skirted drab coat took out a bundle of tracts and selecting
one entitled the latter day coming or no time to lose placed it in
queequeg's hands and then grasping them and the book with both his
looked earnestly into his eyes and said son of darkness i must do my
duty by thee i am part owner of this ship and feel concerned for the
souls of all its crew if thou still clingest to thy pagan ways which i
sadly fear i beseech thee remain not for aye a belial bondsman spurn
the idol bell and the hideous dragon turn from the wrath to come mind
thine eye i say oh goodness gracious steer clear of the fiery pit

something of the salt sea yet lingered in old bildad's language
heterogeneously mixed with scriptural and domestic phrases

avast there avast there bildad avast now spoiling our harpooneer
cried peleg pious harpooneers never make good voyagers it takes the shark
out of em no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish
there was young nat swaine once the bravest boat-header out of all
nantucket and the vineyard he joined the meeting and never came to
good he got so frightened about his plaguy soul that he shrinked and
sheered away from whales for fear of after-claps in case he got stove
and went to davy jones

peleg peleg said bildad lifting his eyes and hands thou thyself
as i myself hast seen many a perilous time thou knowest peleg what
it is to have the fear of death how then can'st thou prate in this
ungodly guise thou beliest thine own heart peleg tell me when this
same pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on japan
that same voyage when thou went mate with captain ahab did'st thou not
think of death and the judgment then

hear him hear him now cried peleg marching across the cabin and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets hear him all of ye
think of that when every moment we thought the ship would sink
death and the judgment then what with all three masts making such an
everlasting thundering against the side and every sea breaking over us
fore and aft think of death and the judgment then no no time to think
about death then life was what captain ahab and i was thinking of
and how to save all hands how to rig jury-masts how to get into the
nearest port that was what i was thinking of

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



chapter the prophet


shipmates have ye shipped in that ship

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

have ye shipped in her he repeated

you mean the ship pequod i suppose said i trying to gain a little
more time for an uninterrupted look at him

aye the pequod that ship there he said drawing back his whole
arm and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him with the fixed
bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object

yes said i we have just signed the articles

anything down there about your souls

about what

oh perhaps you hav'n't got any he said quickly no matter though
i know many chaps that hav'n't got any good luck to em and they are
all the better off for it a soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon

what are you jabbering about shipmate said i

he's got enough though to make up for all deficiencies of that sort
in other chaps abruptly said the stranger placing a nervous emphasis
upon the word he

queequeg said i let's go this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere he's talking about something and somebody we don't know

stop cried the stranger ye said true ye hav'n't seen old thunder
yet have ye

who's old thunder said i again riveted with the insane earnestness
of his manner

captain ahab

what the captain of our ship the pequod

aye among some of us old sailor chaps he goes by that name ye
hav'n't seen him yet have ye

no we hav'n't he's sick they say but is getting better and will be
all right again before long

all right again before long laughed the stranger with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh look ye when captain ahab is all right then
this left arm of mine will be all right not before

what do you know about him

what did they tell you about him say that

they didn't tell much of anything about him only i've heard that he's
a good whale-hunter and a good captain to his crew

that's true that's true yes both true enough but you must jump when
he gives an order step and growl growl and go that's the word with
captain ahab but nothing about that thing that happened to him off cape
horn long ago when he lay like dead for three days and nights
nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the spaniard afore the altar in
santa heard nothing about that eh nothing about the silver calabash
he spat into and nothing about his losing his leg last voyage
according to the prophecy didn't ye hear a word about them matters and
something more eh no i don't think ye did how could ye who knows
it not all nantucket i guess but hows'ever mayhap ye've heard tell
about the leg and how he lost it aye ye have heard of that i dare
say oh yes that every one knows a'most i mean they know he's only one
leg and that a parmacetti took the other off

my friend said i what all this gibberish of yours is about i
don't know and i don't much care for it seems to me that you must be a
little damaged in the head but if you are speaking of captain ahab of
that ship there the pequod then let me tell you that i know all about
the loss of his leg

all about it eh sure you do all

pretty sure

with finger pointed and eye levelled at the pequod the beggar-like
stranger stood a moment as if in a troubled reverie then starting a
little turned and said ye've shipped have ye names down on the
papers well well what's signed is signed and what's to be will be
and then again perhaps it won't be after all anyhow it's all fixed
and arranged a'ready and some sailors or other must go with him i
suppose as well these as any other men god pity em morning to ye
shipmates morning the ineffable heavens bless ye i'm sorry i stopped
ye

look here friend said i if you have anything important to tell
us out with it but if you are only trying to bamboozle us you are
mistaken in your game that's all i have to say

and it's said very well and i like to hear a chap talk up that way
you are just the man for him the likes of ye morning to ye shipmates
morning oh when ye get there tell em i've concluded not to make one
of em

ah my dear fellow you can't fool us that way you can't fool us it
is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great
secret in him

morning to ye shipmates morning

morning it is said i come along queequeg let's leave this crazy
man but stop tell me your name will you

elijah

elijah thought i and we walked away both commenting after each
other's fashion upon this ragged old sailor and agreed that he was
nothing but a humbug trying to be a bugbear but we had not gone
perhaps above a hundred yards when chancing to turn a corner and
looking back as i did so who should be seen but elijah following us
though at a distance somehow the sight of him struck me so that i
said nothing to queequeg of his being behind but passed on with my
comrade anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
that we did he did and then it seemed to me that he was dogging
us but with what intent i could not for the life of me imagine this
circumstance coupled with his ambiguous half-hinting half-revealing
shrouded sort of talk now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments
and half-apprehensions and all connected with the pequod and captain
ahab and the leg he had lost and the cape horn fit and the silver
calabash and what captain peleg had said of him when i left the ship
the day previous and the prediction of the squaw tistig and the voyage
we had bound ourselves to sail and a hundred other shadowy things

i was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged elijah was really
dogging us or not and with that intent crossed the way with queequeg
and on that side of it retraced our steps but elijah passed on without
seeming to notice us this relieved me and once more and finally as it
seemed to me i pronounced him in my heart a humbug



chapter all astir


a day or two passed and there was great activity aboard the pequod
not only were the old sails being mended but new sails were coming on
board and bolts of canvas and coils of rigging in short everything
betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close captain
peleg seldom or never went ashore but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp
look-out upon the hands bildad did all the purchasing and providing
at the stores and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were
working till long after night-fall

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

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

at the period of our arrival at the island the heaviest storage of the
pequod had been almost completed comprising her beef bread water
fuel and iron hoops and staves but as before hinted for some time
there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and
ends of things both large and small

chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was captain
bildad's sister a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable
spirit but withal very kindhearted who seemed resolved that if she
could help it nothing should be found wanting in the pequod after once
fairly getting to sea at one time she would come on board with a jar
of pickles for the steward's pantry another time with a bunch of quills
for the chief mate's desk where he kept his log a third time with a
roll of flannel for the small of some one's rheumatic back never did
any woman better deserve her name which was charity aunt charity as
everybody called her and like a sister of charity did this charitable
aunt charity bustle about hither and thither ready to turn her hand
and heart to anything that promised to yield safety comfort and
consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother
bildad was concerned and in which she herself owned a score or two of
well-saved dollars

but it was startling to see this excellent hearted quakeress coming on
board as she did the last day with a long oil-ladle in one hand and
a still longer whaling lance in the other nor was bildad himself nor
captain peleg at all backward as for bildad he carried about with him
a long list of the articles needed and at every fresh arrival down
went his mark opposite that article upon the paper every once in a
while peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den roaring at the men
down the hatchways roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head and then
concluded by roaring back into his wigwam

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

at last it was given out that some time next day the ship would
certainly sail so next morning queequeg and i took a very early start



chapter going aboard


it was nearly six o'clock but only grey imperfect misty dawn when we
drew nigh the wharf

there are some sailors running ahead there if i see right said i to
queequeg it can't be shadows she's off by sunrise i guess come on

avast cried a voice whose owner at the same time coming close behind
us laid a hand upon both our shoulders and then insinuating himself
between us stood stooping forward a little in the uncertain twilight
strangely peering from queequeg to me it was elijah

going aboard

hands off will you said i

lookee here said queequeg shaking himself go way

ain't going aboard then

yes we are said i but what business is that of yours do you know
mr elijah that i consider you a little impertinent

no no no i wasn't aware of that said elijah slowly and
wonderingly looking from me to queequeg with the most unaccountable
glances

elijah said i you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing we
are going to the indian and pacific oceans and would prefer not to be
detained

ye be be ye coming back afore breakfast

he's cracked queequeg said i come on

holloa cried stationary elijah hailing us when we had removed a few
paces

never mind him said i queequeg come on

but he stole up to us again and suddenly clapping his hand on my
shoulder said did ye see anything looking like men going towards that
ship a while ago

struck by this plain matter-of-fact question i answered saying yes
i thought i did see four or five men but it was too dim to be sure

very dim very dim said elijah morning to ye

once more we quitted him but once more he came softly after us and
touching my shoulder again said see if you can find em now will ye

find who

morning to ye morning to ye he rejoined again moving off oh i
was going to warn ye against but never mind never mind it's all one
all in the family too sharp frost this morning ain't it good-bye to
ye shan't see ye again very soon i guess unless it's before the grand
jury and with these cracked words he finally departed leaving me for
the moment in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence

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

those sailors we saw queequeg where can they have gone to said i
looking dubiously at the sleeper but it seemed that when on the wharf
queequeg had not at all noticed what i now alluded to hence i would
have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter
were it not for elijah's otherwise inexplicable question but i beat the
thing down and again marking the sleeper jocularly hinted to queequeg
that perhaps we had best sit up with the body telling him to establish
himself accordingly he put his hand upon the sleeper's rear as though
feeling if it was soft enough and then without more ado sat quietly
down there

gracious queequeg don't sit there said i

oh perry dood seat said queequeg my country way won't hurt him
face

face said i call that his face very benevolent countenance then
but how hard he breathes he's heaving himself get off queequeg you
are heavy it's grinding the face of the poor get off queequeg look
he'll twitch you off soon i wonder he don't wake

queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper and
lighted his tomahawk pipe i sat at the feet we kept the pipe passing
over the sleeper from one to the other meanwhile upon questioning him
in his broken fashion queequeg gave me to understand that in his
land owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts the king
chiefs and great people generally were in the custom of fattening some
of the lower orders for ottomans and to furnish a house comfortably in
that respect you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows and lay
them round in the piers and alcoves besides it was very convenient on
an excursion much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible
into walking-sticks upon occasion a chief calling his attendant and
desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree perhaps
in some damp marshy place

while narrating these things every time queequeg received the tomahawk
from me he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper's head

what's that for queequeg

perry easy kill-e oh perry easy

he was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe
which it seemed had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed
his soul when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger the
strong vapour now completely filling the contracted hole it began
to tell upon him he breathed with a sort of muffledness then seemed
troubled in the nose then revolved over once or twice then sat up and
rubbed his eyes

holloa he breathed at last who be ye smokers

shipped men answered i when does she sail

aye aye ye are going in her be ye she sails to-day the captain
came aboard last night

what captain ahab

who but him indeed

i was going to ask him some further questions concerning ahab when we
heard a noise on deck

holloa starbuck's astir said the rigger he's a lively chief mate
that good man and a pious but all alive now i must turn to and so
saying he went on deck and we followed

it was now clear sunrise soon the crew came on board in twos and
threes the riggers bestirred themselves the mates were actively
engaged and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various
last things on board meanwhile captain ahab remained invisibly
enshrined within his cabin



chapter merry christmas


at length towards noon upon the final dismissal of the ship's riggers
and after the pequod had been hauled out from the wharf and after the
ever-thoughtful charity had come off in a whale-boat with her last
gift a night-cap for stubb the second mate her brother-in-law and a
spare bible for the steward after all this the two captains peleg
and bildad issued from the cabin and turning to the chief mate peleg
said

now mr starbuck are you sure everything is right captain ahab is
all ready just spoke to him nothing more to be got from shore eh
well call all hands then muster em aft here blast em

no need of profane words however great the hurry peleg said bildad
but away with thee friend starbuck and do our bidding

how now here upon the very point of starting for the voyage captain
peleg and captain bildad were going it with a high hand on the
quarter-deck just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea as
well as to all appearances in port and as for captain ahab no sign of
him was yet to be seen only they said he was in the cabin but then
the idea was that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the
ship under weigh and steering her well out to sea indeed as that was
not at all his proper business but the pilot's and as he was not
yet completely recovered so they said therefore captain ahab stayed
below and all this seemed natural enough especially as in the merchant
service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable
time after heaving up the anchor but remain over the cabin table
having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends before they
quit the ship for good with the pilot

but there was not much chance to think over the matter for captain
peleg was now all alive he seemed to do most of the talking and
commanding and not bildad

aft here ye sons of bachelors he cried as the sailors lingered at
the main-mast mr starbuck drive'em aft

strike the tent there was the next order as i hinted before this
whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port and on board the
pequod for thirty years the order to strike the tent was well known to
be the next thing to heaving up the anchor

man the capstan blood and thunder jump was the next command and
the crew sprang for the handspikes

now in getting under weigh the station generally occupied by the pilot
is the forward part of the ship and here bildad who with peleg be it
known in addition to his other officers was one of the licensed pilots
of the port he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in
order to save the nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned
in for he never piloted any other craft bildad i say might now
be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching
anchor and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody
to cheer the hands at the windlass who roared forth some sort of
a chorus about the girls in booble alley with hearty good will
nevertheless not three days previous bildad had told them that no
profane songs would be allowed on board the pequod particularly in
getting under weigh and charity his sister had placed a small choice
copy of watts in each seaman's berth

meantime overseeing the other part of the ship captain peleg ripped
and swore astern in the most frightful manner i almost thought he would
sink the ship before the anchor could be got up involuntarily i paused
on my handspike and told queequeg to do the same thinking of the
perils we both ran in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a
pilot i was comforting myself however with the thought that in pious
bildad might be found some salvation spite of his seven hundred and
seventy-seventh lay when i felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear and
turning round was horrified at the apparition of captain peleg in the
act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity that was my first
kick

is that the way they heave in the marchant service he roared
spring thou sheep-head spring and break thy backbone why don't ye
spring i say all of ye spring quohog spring thou chap with the red
whiskers spring there scotch-cap spring thou green pants spring i
say all of ye and spring your eyes out and so saying he moved
along the windlass here and there using his leg very freely while
imperturbable bildad kept leading off with his psalmody thinks i
captain peleg must have been drinking something to-day

at last the anchor was up the sails were set and off we glided it
was a short cold christmas and as the short northern day merged into
night we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean whose
freezing spray cased us in ice as in polished armor the long rows of
teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight and like the white
ivory tusks of some huge elephant vast curving icicles depended from
the bows

lank bildad as pilot headed the first watch and ever and anon as the
old craft deep dived into the green seas and sent the shivering frost
all over her and the winds howled and the cordage rang his steady
notes were heard 

sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in living green
so to the jews old canaan stood while jordan rolled between


never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then they
were full of hope and fruition spite of this frigid winter night in the
boisterous atlantic spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket there was
yet it then seemed to me many a pleasant haven in store and meads
and glades so eternally vernal that the grass shot up by the spring
untrodden unwilted remains at midsummer

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

it was curious and not unpleasing how peleg and bildad were affected at
this juncture especially captain bildad for loath to depart yet
very loath to leave for good a ship bound on so long and perilous a
voyage beyond both stormy capes a ship in which some thousands of
his hard earned dollars were invested a ship in which an old shipmate
sailed as captain a man almost as old as he once more starting to
encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw loath to say good-bye to
a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him poor old bildad
lingered long paced the deck with anxious strides ran down into the
cabin to speak another farewell word there again came on deck and
looked to windward looked towards the wide and endless waters only
bounded by the far-off unseen eastern continents looked towards
the land looked aloft looked right and left looked everywhere
and nowhere and at last mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin
convulsively grasped stout peleg by the hand and holding up a lantern
for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face as much as to say
nevertheless friend peleg i can stand it yes i can

as for peleg himself he took it more like a philosopher but for all
his philosophy there was a tear twinkling in his eye when the lantern
came too near and he too did not a little run from cabin to deck now
a word below and now a word with starbuck the chief mate

but at last he turned to his comrade with a final sort of look
about him captain bildad come old shipmate we must go back the
main-yard there boat ahoy stand by to come close alongside now
careful careful come bildad boy say your last luck to ye
starbuck luck to ye mr stubb luck to ye mr flask good-bye and
good luck to ye all and this day three years i'll have a hot supper
smoking for ye in old nantucket hurrah and away

god bless ye and have ye in his holy keeping men murmured old
bildad almost incoherently i hope ye'll have fine weather now so
that captain ahab may soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun is all
he needs and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go
be careful in the hunt ye mates don't stave the boats needlessly
ye harpooneers good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent
within the year don't forget your prayers either mr starbuck mind
that cooper don't waste the spare staves oh the sail-needles are in
the green locker don't whale it too much a lord's days men but don't
miss a fair chance either that's rejecting heaven's good gifts have an
eye to the molasses tierce mr stubb it was a little leaky i thought
if ye touch at the islands mr flask beware of fornication good-bye
good-bye don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold mr
starbuck it'll spoil be careful with the butter twenty cents the
pound it was and mind ye if 

come come captain bildad stop palavering away and with that
peleg hurried him over the side and both dropt into the boat

ship and boat diverged the cold damp night breeze blew between a
screaming gull flew overhead the two hulls wildly rolled we gave
three heavy-hearted cheers and blindly plunged like fate into the lone
atlantic



chapter the lee shore


some chapters back one bulkington was spoken of a tall newlanded
mariner encountered in new bedford at the inn

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

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

but as in landlessness alone resides highest truth shoreless
indefinite as god so better is it to perish in that howling infinite
than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee even if that were safety
for worm-like then oh who would craven crawl to land terrors of
the terrible is all this agony so vain take heart take heart
o bulkington bear thee grimly demigod up from the spray of thy
ocean-perishing straight up leaps thy apotheosis



chapter 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 swf sperm
whale fishery to his visiting card such a procedure would be deemed
pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous

doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us
whalemen is this they think that at best our vocation amounts to a
butchering sort of business and that when actively engaged therein we
are surrounded by all manner of defilements butchers we are that is
true but butchers also and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been
all martial commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour and
as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business ye shall
soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown
and which upon the whole will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship
at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth but even
granting the charge in question to be true what disordered slippery
decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those
battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies
plaudits and if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit
of the soldier's profession let me assure ye that many a veteran
who has freely marched up to a battery would quickly recoil at the
apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail fanning into eddies the air
over his head for what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared
with the interlinked terrors and wonders of god

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

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

why did the dutch in de witt's time have admirals of their whaling
fleets why did louis xvi of france at his own personal expense fit
out whaling ships from dunkirk and politely invite to that town some
score or two of families from our own island of nantucket why did
britain between the years and pay to her whalemen in bounties
upwards of l 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 of dollars the ships worth
at the time of sailing and every year importing into our
harbors a well reaped harvest of 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 honour and glory of the
whale-ship which originally showed them the way and first interpreted
between them and the savages they may celebrate as they will the heroes
of exploring expeditions your cooks your krusensterns but i say that
scores of anonymous captains have sailed out of nantucket that were
as great and greater than your cook and your krusenstern for in their
succourless empty-handedness they in the heathenish sharked waters
and by the beaches of unrecorded javelin islands battled with virgin
wonders and terrors that cook with all his marines and muskets would
not willingly have dared all that is made such a flourish of in the old
south sea voyages those things were but the life-time commonplaces of
our heroic nantucketers often adventures which vancouver dedicates
three chapters to these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the
ship's common log ah the world oh the world

until the whale fishery rounded cape horn no commerce but colonial
scarcely any intercourse but colonial was carried on between europe and
the long line of the opulent spanish provinces on the pacific coast
it was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the
spanish crown touching those colonies and if space permitted it
might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the
liberation of peru chili and bolivia from the yoke of old spain and
the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts

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

but if in the face of all this you still declare that whaling has no
aesthetically noble associations connected with it then am i ready to
shiver fifty lances with you there and unhorse you with a split helmet
every time

the whale has no famous author and whaling no famous chronicler you
will say

the whale no famous author and whaling no famous chronicler who wrote
the first account of our leviathan who but mighty job and who composed
the first narrative of a whaling-voyage who but no less a prince than
alfred the great who with his own royal pen took down the words from
other the norwegian whale-hunter of those times and who pronounced our
glowing eulogy in parliament who but edmund burke

true enough but then whalemen themselves are poor devils they have no
good blood in their veins

no good blood in their veins they have something better than royal
blood there the grandmother of benjamin franklin was mary morrel
afterwards by marriage mary folger one of the old settlers
of nantucket and the ancestress to a long line of folgers and
harpooneers all kith and kin to noble benjamin this day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other

good again but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable

whaling not respectable whaling is imperial by old english statutory
law the whale is declared a royal fish

oh that's only nominal the whale himself has never figured in any
grand imposing way

the whale never figured in any grand imposing way in one of the mighty
triumphs given to a roman general upon his entering the world's capital
the bones of a whale brought all the way from the syrian coast were
the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession


see subsequent chapters for something more on this head


grant it since you cite it but say what you will there is no real
dignity in whaling

no dignity in whaling the dignity of our calling the very heavens
attest cetus is a constellation in the south no more drive down your
hat in presence of the czar and take it off to queequeg no more i
know a man that in his lifetime has taken three hundred and fifty
whales i account that man more honourable than that great captain of
antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns

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



chapter postscript


in behalf of the dignity of whaling i would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts but after embattling his facts an advocate who
should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise which might
tell eloquently upon his cause such an advocate would he not be
blameworthy

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

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

think of that ye loyal britons we whalemen supply your kings and
queens with coronation stuff



chapter knights and squires


the chief mate of the pequod was starbuck a native of nantucket and a
quaker by descent he was a long earnest man and though born on an icy
coast seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes his flesh being hard
as twice-baked biscuit transported to the indies his live blood would
not spoil like bottled ale he must have been born in some time of
general drought and famine or upon one of those fast days for which
his state is famous only some thirty arid summers had he seen those
summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness but this his
thinness so to speak seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and
cares than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight it was merely
the condensation of the man he was by no means ill-looking quite the
contrary his pure tight skin was an excellent fit and closely wrapped
up in it and embalmed with inner health and strength like a revivified
egyptian this starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come
and to endure always as now for be it polar snow or torrid sun like
a patent chronometer his interior vitality was warranted to do well
in all climates looking into his eyes you seemed to see there the yet
lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted
through life a staid steadfast man whose life for the most part was a
telling pantomime of action and not a tame chapter of sounds yet for
all his hardy sobriety and fortitude there were certain qualities
in him which at times affected and in some cases seemed well nigh to
overbalance all the rest uncommonly conscientious for a seaman and
endued with a deep natural reverence the wild watery loneliness of his
life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition but to that
sort of superstition which in some organizations seems rather to
spring somehow from intelligence than from ignorance outward portents
and inward presentiments were his and if at times these things bent the
welded iron of his soul much more did his far-away domestic memories
of his young cape wife and child tend to bend him still more from the
original ruggedness of his nature and open him still further to those
latent influences which in some honest-hearted men restrain the gush
of dare-devil daring so often evinced by others in the more perilous
vicissitudes of the fishery i will have no man in my boat said
starbuck who is not afraid of a whale by this he seemed to mean
not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises
from the fair estimation of the encountered peril but that an utterly
fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward

aye aye said stubb the second mate starbuck there is as careful
a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery but we shall ere long
see what that word careful precisely means when used by a man like
stubb or almost any other whale hunter

starbuck was no crusader after perils in him courage was not a
sentiment but a thing simply useful to him and always at hand upon all
mortally practical occasions besides he thought perhaps that in this
business of whaling courage was one of the great staple outfits of
the ship like her beef and her bread and not to be foolishly wasted
wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down nor
for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting
him for thought starbuck i am here in this critical ocean to kill
whales for my living and not to be killed by them for theirs and that
hundreds of men had been so killed starbuck well knew what doom was
his own father's where in the bottomless deeps could he find the torn
limbs of his brother

with memories like these in him and moreover given to a certain
superstitiousness as has been said the courage of this starbuck which
could nevertheless still flourish must indeed have been extreme but
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had it was not in nature
that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in
him which under suitable circumstances would break out from its
confinement and burn all his courage up and brave as he might be it
was that sort of bravery chiefly visible in some intrepid men which
while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas or winds or
whales or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world yet
cannot withstand those more terrific because more spiritual terrors
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and
mighty man

but were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance the complete
abasement of poor starbuck's fortitude scarce might i have the heart to
write it for it is a thing most sorrowful nay shocking to expose
the fall of valour in the soul men may seem detestable as joint
stock-companies and nations knaves fools and murderers there may be
men may have mean and meagre faces but man in the ideal is so noble
and so sparkling such a grand and glowing creature that over any
ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their
costliest robes that immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves
so far within us that it remains intact though all the outer character
seem gone bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of
a valor-ruined man nor can piety itself at such a shameful sight
completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars but this
august dignity i treat of is not the dignity of kings and robes but
that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture thou shalt see it
shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike that democratic
dignity which on all hands radiates without end from god himself the
great god absolute the centre and circumference of all democracy his
omnipresence our divine equality

if then to meanest mariners and renegades and castaways i shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities though dark weave round them tragic
graces if even the most mournful perchance the most abased among them
all shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts if i shall touch
that workman's arm with some ethereal light if i shall spread a rainbow
over his disastrous set of sun then against all mortal critics bear
me out in it thou just spirit of equality which hast spread one royal
mantle of humanity over all my kind bear me out in it thou great
democratic god who didst not refuse to the swart convict bunyan the
pale poetic pearl thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves
of finest gold the stumped and paupered arm of old cervantes thou who
didst pick up andrew jackson from the pebbles who didst hurl him upon a
war-horse who didst thunder him higher than a throne thou who in all
thy mighty earthly marchings ever cullest thy selectest champions from
the kingly commons bear me out in it o god



chapter knights and squires


stubb was the second mate he was a native of cape cod and hence
according to local usage was called a cape-cod-man a happy-go-lucky
neither craven nor valiant taking perils as they came with an
indifferent air and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the
chase toiling away calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged
for the year good-humored easy and careless he presided over his
whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner and his
crew all invited guests he was as particular about the comfortable
arrangement of his part of the boat as an old stage-driver is about the
snugness of his box when close to the whale in the very death-lock of
the fight he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly as
a whistling tinker his hammer he would hum over his old rigadig tunes
while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster long usage had
for this stubb converted the jaws of death into an easy chair what he
thought of death itself there is no telling whether he ever thought of
it at all might be a question but if he ever did chance to cast his
mind that way after a comfortable dinner no doubt like a good sailor
he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft and bestir
themselves there about something which he would find out when he obeyed
the order and not sooner

what perhaps with other things made stubb such an easy-going
unfearing man so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave pedlars all bowed to the ground with their packs
what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his that
thing must have been his pipe for like his nose his short black
little pipe was one of the regular features of his face you would
almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his
nose as without his pipe he kept a whole row of pipes there ready
loaded stuck in a rack within easy reach of his hand and whenever he
turned in he smoked them all out in succession lighting one from
the other to the end of the chapter then loading them again to be in
readiness anew for when stubb dressed instead of first putting his
legs into his trowsers he put his pipe into his mouth

i say this continual smoking must have been one cause at least of his
peculiar disposition for every one knows that this earthly air whether
ashore or afloat is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of
the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it and as in time of the
cholera some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their
mouths so likewise against all mortal tribulations stubb's tobacco
smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent

the third mate was flask a native of tisbury in martha's vineyard a
short stout ruddy young fellow very pugnacious concerning whales
who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally
and hereditarily affronted him and therefore it was a sort of point of
honour with him to destroy them whenever encountered so utterly lost
was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic
bulk and mystic ways and so dead to anything like an apprehension of
any possible danger from encountering them that in his poor opinion
the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse or at least
water-rat requiring only a little circumvention and some small
application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil this
ignorant unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in
the matter of whales he followed these fish for the fun of it and a
three years voyage round cape horn was only a jolly joke that lasted
that length of time as a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought
nails and cut nails so mankind may be similarly divided little flask
was one of the wrought ones made to clinch tight and last long they
called him king-post on board of the pequod because in form he could
be well likened to the short square timber known by that name in arctic
whalers and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted
into it serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those
battering seas

now these three mates starbuck stubb and flask were momentous
men they it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the
pequod's boats as headsmen in that grand order of battle in which
captain ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales
these three headsmen were as captains of companies or being armed with
their long keen whaling spears they were as a picked trio of lancers
even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins

and since in this famous fishery each mate or headsman like a gothic
knight of old is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer
who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance when
the former one has been badly twisted or elbowed in the assault and
moreover as there generally subsists between the two a close intimacy
and friendliness it is therefore but meet that in this place we set
down who the pequod's harpooneers were and to what headsman each of
them belonged

first of all was queequeg whom starbuck the chief mate had selected
for his squire but queequeg is already known

next was tashtego an unmixed indian from gay head the most westerly
promontory of martha's vineyard where there still exists the last
remnant of a village of red men which has long supplied the neighboring
island of nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers in the
fishery they usually go by the generic name of gay-headers tashtego's
long lean sable hair his high cheek bones and black rounding
eyes for an indian oriental in their largeness but antarctic in their
glittering expression all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor
of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters who in quest
of the great new england moose had scoured bow in hand the aboriginal
forests of the main but no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild
beasts of the woodland tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great
whales of the sea the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the
infallible arrow of the sires to look at the tawny brawn of his lithe
snaky limbs you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of
the earlier puritans and half-believed this wild indian to be a son
of the prince of the powers of the air tashtego was stubb the second
mate's squire

third among the harpooneers was daggoo a gigantic coal-black
negro-savage with a lion-like tread an ahasuerus to behold suspended
from his ears were two golden hoops so large that the sailors called
them ring-bolts and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to
them in his youth daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler
lying in a lonely bay on his native coast and never having been
anywhere in the world but in africa nantucket and the pagan harbors
most frequented by whalemen and having now led for many years the bold
life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what
manner of men they shipped daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues
and erect as a giraffe moved about the decks in all the pomp of six
feet five in his socks there was a corporeal humility in looking up at
him and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to
beg truce of a fortress curious to tell this imperial negro ahasuerus
daggoo was the squire of little flask who looked like a chess-man
beside him as for the residue of the pequod's company be it said that
at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the
mast employed in the american whale fishery are americans born though
pretty nearly all the officers are herein it is the same with the
american whale fishery as with the american army and military and
merchant navies and the engineering forces employed in the construction
of the american canals and railroads the same i say because in all
these cases the native american liberally provides the brains the rest
of the world as generously supplying the muscles no small number of
these whaling seamen belong to the azores where the outward bound
nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy
peasants of those rocky shores in like manner the greenland whalers
sailing out of hull or london put in at the shetland islands to
receive the full complement of their crew upon the passage homewards
they drop them there again how it is there is no telling but
islanders seem to make the best whalemen they were nearly all islanders
in the pequod isolatoes too i call such not acknowledging the common
continent of men but each isolato living on a separate continent of his
own yet now federated along one keel what a set these isolatoes were
an anacharsis clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea and all
the ends of the earth accompanying old ahab in the pequod to lay the
world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever
come back black little pip he never did oh no he went before poor
alabama boy on the grim pequod's forecastle ye shall ere long see him
beating his tambourine prelusive of the eternal time when sent for
to the great quarter-deck on high he was bid strike in with angels and
beat his tambourine in glory called a coward here hailed a hero there



chapter ahab


for several days after leaving nantucket nothing above hatches was seen
of captain ahab the mates regularly relieved each other at the watches
and for aught that could be seen to the contrary they seemed to be the
only commanders of the ship only they sometimes issued from the cabin
with orders so sudden and peremptory that after all it was plain they
but commanded vicariously yes their supreme lord and dictator was
there though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate
into the now sacred retreat of the cabin

every time i ascended to the deck from my watches below i instantly
gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible for my first vague
disquietude touching the unknown captain now in the seclusion of the
sea became almost a perturbation this was strangely heightened
at times by the ragged elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly
recurring to me with a subtle energy i could not have before conceived
of but poorly could i withstand them much as in other moods i was
almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish
prophet of the wharves but whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
uneasiness to call it so which i felt yet whenever i came to look
about me in the ship it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such
emotions for though the harpooneers with the great body of the crew
were a far more barbaric heathenish and motley set than any of the
tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me
acquainted with still i ascribed this and rightly ascribed it to the
fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild scandinavian vocation
in which i had so abandonedly embarked but it was especially the aspect
of the three chief officers of the ship the mates which was most
forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings and induce
confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage three
better more likely sea-officers and men each in his own different way
could not readily be found and they were every one of them americans a
nantucketer a vineyarder a cape man now it being christmas when the
ship shot from out her harbor for a space we had biting polar weather
though all the time running away from it to the southward and by every
degree and minute of latitude which we sailed gradually leaving that
merciless winter and all its intolerable weather behind us it was one
of those less lowering but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the
transition when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water
with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity that as i
mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch so soon as i
levelled my glance towards the taffrail foreboding shivers ran over me
reality outran apprehension captain ahab stood upon his quarter-deck

there seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him nor of the
recovery from any he looked like a man cut away from the stake when
the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them
or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness his
whole high broad form seemed made of solid bronze and shaped in an
unalterable mould like cellini's cast perseus threading its way out
from among his grey hairs and continuing right down one side of his
tawny scorched face and neck till it disappeared in his clothing
you saw a slender rod-like mark lividly whitish it resembled that
perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight lofty trunk of
a great tree when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it and
without wrenching a single twig peels and grooves out the bark from top
to bottom ere running off into the soil leaving the tree still greenly
alive but branded whether that mark was born with him or whether it
was the scar left by some desperate wound no one could certainly say
by some tacit consent throughout the voyage little or no allusion was
made to it especially by the mates but once tashtego's senior an old
gay-head indian among the crew superstitiously asserted that not till
he was full forty years old did ahab become that way branded and
then it came upon him not in the fury of any mortal fray but in
an elemental strife at sea yet this wild hint seemed inferentially
negatived by what a grey manxman insinuated an old sepulchral man
who having never before sailed out of nantucket had never ere this
laid eye upon wild ahab nevertheless the old sea-traditions the
immemorial credulities popularly invested this old manxman with
preternatural powers of discernment so that no white sailor seriously
contradicted him when he said that if ever captain ahab should
be tranquilly laid out which might hardly come to pass so he
muttered then whoever should do that last office for the dead would
find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole

so powerfully did the whole grim aspect of ahab affect me and the livid
brand which streaked it that for the first few moments i hardly noted
that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric
white leg upon which he partly stood it had previously come to me that
this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of
the sperm whale's jaw aye he was dismasted off japan said the old
gay-head indian once but like his dismasted craft he shipped another
mast without coming home for it he has a quiver of em

i was struck with the singular posture he maintained upon each side of
the pequod's quarter deck and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds there
was an auger hole bored about half an inch or so into the plank
his bone leg steadied in that hole one arm elevated and holding by a
shroud captain ahab stood erect looking straight out beyond the
ship's ever-pitching prow there was an infinity of firmest fortitude
a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness in the fixed and fearless
forward dedication of that glance not a word he spoke nor did his
officers say aught to him though by all their minutest gestures
and expressions they plainly showed the uneasy if not painful
consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye and not only that
but moody stricken ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his
face in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe

ere long from his first visit in the air he withdrew into his cabin
but after that morning he was every day visible to the crew either
standing in his pivot-hole or seated upon an ivory stool he had or
heavily walking the deck as the sky grew less gloomy indeed began to
grow a little genial he became still less and less a recluse as
if when the ship had sailed from home nothing but the dead wintry
bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded and by and by it
came to pass that he was almost continually in the air but as yet
for all that he said or perceptibly did on the at last sunny deck
he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast but the pequod was
only making a passage now not regularly cruising nearly all whaling
preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to so
that there was little or nothing out of himself to employ or excite
ahab now and thus chase away for that one interval the clouds that
layer upon layer were piled upon his brow as ever all clouds choose the
loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon

nevertheless ere long the warm warbling persuasiveness of the
pleasant holiday weather we came to seemed gradually to charm him from
his mood for as when the red-cheeked dancing girls april and may
trip home to the wintry misanthropic woods even the barest ruggedest
most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green
sprouts to welcome such glad-hearted visitants so ahab did in the
end a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air more
than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look which in any
other man would have soon flowered out in a smile



chapter enter ahab to him stubb


some days elapsed and ice and icebergs all astern the pequod now
went rolling through the bright quito spring which at sea almost
perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal august of the tropic
the warmly cool clear ringing perfumed overflowing redundant days
were as crystal goblets of persian sherbet heaped up flaked up with
rose-water snow the starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in
jewelled velvets nursing at home in lonely pride the memory of their
absent conquering earls the golden helmeted suns for sleeping man
twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights
but all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new
spells and potencies to the outward world inward they turned upon the
soul especially when the still mild hours of eve came on then memory
shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights
and all these subtle agencies more and more they wrought on ahab's
texture

old age is always wakeful as if the longer linked with life the less
man has to do with aught that looks like death among sea-commanders
the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the
night-cloaked deck it was so with ahab only that now of late he
seemed so much to live in the open air that truly speaking his visits
were more to the cabin than from the cabin to the planks it feels
like going down into one's tomb he would mutter to himself for an
old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle to go to my
grave-dug berth

so almost every twenty-four hours when the watches of the night were
set and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below
and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle the sailors
flung it not rudely down as by day but with some cautiousness dropt
it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates when
this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail habitually the
silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle and ere long the old man
would emerge gripping at the iron banister to help his crippled way
some considering touch of humanity was in him for at times like these
he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck because to his
wearied mates seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel such
would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step that
their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks but once
the mood was on him too deep for common regardings and as with heavy
lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast
stubb the old second mate came up from below with a certain
unassured deprecating humorousness hinted that if captain ahab was
pleased to walk the planks then no one could say nay but there might
be some way of muffling the noise hinting something indistinctly and
hesitatingly about a globe of tow and the insertion into it of the
ivory heel ah stubb thou didst not know ahab then

am i a cannon-ball stubb said ahab that thou wouldst wad me that
fashion but go thy ways i had forgot below to thy nightly grave
where such as ye sleep between shrouds to use ye to the filling one at
last down dog and kennel

starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
scornful old man stubb was speechless a moment then said excitedly i
am not used to be spoken to that way sir i do but less than half like
it sir

avast gritted ahab between his set teeth and violently moving away
as if to avoid some passionate temptation

no sir not yet said stubb emboldened i will not tamely be called
a dog sir

then be called ten times a donkey and a mule and an ass and begone
or i'll clear the world of thee

as he said this ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in
his aspect that stubb involuntarily retreated

i was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it
muttered stubb as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle it's
very queer stop stubb somehow now i don't well know whether to go
back and strike him or what's that down here on my knees and pray
for him yes that was the thought coming up in me but it would be the
first time i ever did pray it's queer very queer and he's queer too
aye take him fore and aft he's about the queerest old man stubb ever
sailed with how he flashed at me his eyes like powder-pans is he
mad anyway there's something on his mind as sure as there must be
something on a deck when it cracks he aint in his bed now either more
than three hours out of the twenty-four and he don't sleep then didn't
that dough-boy the steward tell me that of a morning he always finds
the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled and the sheets
down at the foot and the coverlid almost tied into knots and the
pillow a sort of frightful hot as though a baked brick had been on
it a hot old man i guess he's got what some folks ashore call
a conscience it's a kind of tic-dolly-row they say worse nor a
toothache well well i don't know what it is but the lord keep me
from catching it he's full of riddles i wonder what he goes into the
after hold for every night as dough-boy tells me he suspects what's
that for i should like to know who's made appointments with him in
the hold ain't that queer now but there's no telling it's the old
game here goes for a snooze damn me it's worth a fellow's while to be
born into the world if only to fall right asleep and now that i think
of it that's about the first thing babies do and that's a sort of
queer too damn me but all things are queer come to think of em but
that's against my principles think not is my eleventh commandment and
sleep when you can is my twelfth so here goes again but how's that
didn't he call me a dog blazes he called me ten times a donkey and
piled a lot of jackasses on top of that he might as well have kicked
me and done with it maybe he did kick me and i didn't observe it
i was so taken all aback with his brow somehow it flashed like a
bleached bone what the devil's the matter with me i don't stand right
on my legs coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong
side out by the lord i must have been dreaming though how how
how but the only way's to stash it so here goes to hammock again
and in the morning i'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by
daylight



chapter 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 vapour 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 vapours
among mild white hairs not among torn iron-grey locks like mine i'll
smoke no more 

he tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea the fire hissed in the
waves the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
made with slouched hat ahab lurchingly paced the planks



chapter queen mab


next morning stubb accosted flask

such a queer dream king-post i never had you know the old man's
ivory leg well i dreamed he kicked me with it and when i tried to kick
back upon my soul my little man i kicked my leg right off and then
presto ahab seemed a pyramid and i like a blazing fool kept kicking
at it but what was still more curious flask you know how curious all
dreams are through all this rage that i was in i somehow seemed to be
thinking to myself that after all it was not much of an insult that
kick from ahab why thinks i what's the row it's not a real leg
only a false leg and there's a mighty difference between a living
thump and a dead thump that's what makes a blow from the hand flask
fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane the living
member that makes the living insult my little man and thinks i to
myself all the while mind while i was stubbing my silly toes against
that cursed pyramid so confoundedly contradictory was it all all
the while i say i was thinking to myself what's his leg now but
a cane a whalebone cane yes thinks i it was only a playful
cudgelling in fact only a whaleboning that he gave me not a base
kick besides thinks i look at it once why the end of it the foot
part what a small sort of end it is whereas if a broad footed farmer
kicked me there's a devilish broad insult but this insult is whittled
down to a point only but now comes the greatest joke of the
dream flask while i was battering away at the pyramid a sort of
badger-haired old merman with a hump on his back takes me by the
shoulders and slews me round what are you bout says he slid man
but i was frightened such a phiz but somehow next moment i was over
the fright what am i about says i at last and what business is
that of yours i should like to know mr humpback do you want a kick
by the lord flask i had no sooner said that than he turned round his
stern to me bent over and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a
clout what do you think i saw why thunder alive man his stern
was stuck full of marlinspikes with the points out says i on second
thoughts i guess i won't kick you old fellow wise stubb said he
wise stubb and kept muttering it all the time a sort of eating of
his own gums like a chimney hag seeing he wasn't going to stop saying
over his wise stubb wise stubb i thought i might as well fall to
kicking the pyramid again but i had only just lifted my foot for it
when he roared out stop that kicking halloa says i what's
the matter now old fellow look ye here says he let's argue
the insult captain ahab kicked ye didn't he yes he did says
i right here it was very good says he he used his ivory leg
didn't he yes he did says i well then says he wise stubb
what have you to complain of didn't he kick with right good will it
wasn't a common pitch pine leg he kicked with was it no you were
kicked by a great man and with a beautiful ivory leg stubb it's an
honour i consider it an honour listen wise stubb in old england the
greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen and made
garter-knights of but be your boast stubb that ye were kicked by
old ahab and made a wise man of remember what i say be kicked by him
account his kicks honours and on no account kick back for you can't
help yourself wise stubb don't you see that pyramid with that he
all of a sudden seemed somehow in some queer fashion to swim off into
the air i snored rolled over and there i was in my hammock now what
do you think of that dream flask

i don't know it seems a sort of foolish to me tho

may be may be but it's made a wise man of me flask d'ye see ahab
standing there sideways looking over the stern well the best thing
you can do flask is to let the old man alone never speak to him
whatever he says halloa what's that he shouts hark

mast-head there look sharp all of ye there are whales hereabouts

if ye see a white one split your lungs for him

what do you think of that now flask ain't there a small drop of
something queer about that eh a white whale did ye mark that man
look ye there's something special in the wind stand by for it flask
ahab has that that's bloody on his mind but mum he comes this way



chapter 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 ad 

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 ad 

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 linnaeus rondeletius willoughby green artedi sibbald brisson
marten lacepede bonneterre desmarest baron cuvier frederick cuvier
john hunter owen scoresby beale bennett j ross browne the
author of miriam coffin olmstead and the rev t cheever but to what
ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written the above cited
extracts will show

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

there are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living
sperm whale before you and at the same time in the remotest degree
succeed in the attempt those books are beale's and bennett's both in
their time surgeons to english south-sea whale-ships and both exact and
reliable men the original matter touching the sperm whale to be found
in their volumes is necessarily small but so far as it goes it is of
excellent quality though mostly confined to scientific description as
yet however the sperm whale scientific or poetic lives not complete
in any literature far above all other hunted whales his is an
unwritten life

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

but it is a ponderous task no ordinary letter-sorter in the post-office
is equal to it to grope down into the bottom of the sea after them
to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations ribs and very
pelvis of the world this is a fearful thing what am i that i should
essay to hook the nose of this leviathan the awful tauntings in job
might well appal me will he the leviathan make a covenant with thee
behold the hope of him is vain but i have swam through libraries and
sailed through oceans i have had to do with whales with these visible
hands i am in earnest and i will try there are some preliminaries to
settle

first the uncertain unsettled condition of this science of cetology
is in the very vestibule attested by the fact that in some quarters it
still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish in his system of
nature ad linnaeus declares i hereby separate the whales from
the fish but of my own knowledge i know that down to the year 
sharks and shad alewives and herring against linnaeus's express edict
were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the
leviathan

the grounds upon which linnaeus would fain have banished the whales from
the waters he states as follows on account of their warm bilocular
heart their lungs their movable eyelids their hollow ears penem
intrantem feminam mammis lactantem and finally ex lege naturae jure
meritoque i submitted all this to my friends simeon macey and charley
coffin of nantucket both messmates of mine in a certain voyage and
they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether
insufficient charley profanely hinted they were humbug

be it known that waiving all argument i take the good old fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish and call upon holy jonah to back me
this fundamental thing settled the next point is in what internal
respect does the whale differ from other fish above linnaeus has given
you those items but in brief they are these lungs and warm blood
whereas all other fish are lungless and cold blooded

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

by the above definition of what a whale is i do by no means exclude
from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
with the whale by the best informed nantucketers nor on the other
hand link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien
hence all the smaller spouting and horizontal tailed fish must be
included in this ground-plan of cetology now then come the grand
divisions of the entire whale host


i am aware that down to the present time the fish styled lamatins and
dugongs pig-fish and sow-fish of the coffins of nantucket are included
by many naturalists among the whales but as these pig-fish are a noisy
contemptible set mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers and feeding on
wet hay and especially as they do not spout i deny their credentials
as whales and have presented them with their passports to quit the
kingdom of cetology


first according to magnitude i divide the whales into three primary
books subdivisible into chapters and these shall comprehend them all
both small and large

i the folio whale ii the octavo whale iii the duodecimo whale

as the type of the folio i present the sperm whale of the octavo the
grampus of the duodecimo the porpoise

folios among these i here include the following chapters i the sperm
whale ii the right whale iii the fin-back whale iv the hump-backed
whale v the razor-back whale vi the sulphur-bottom whale

book i folio chapter i sperm whale this whale among the
english of old vaguely known as the trumpa whale and the physeter
whale and the anvil headed whale is the present cachalot of the
french and the pottsfich of the germans and the macrocephalus of the
long words he is without doubt the largest inhabitant of the globe
the most formidable of all whales to encounter the most majestic in
aspect and lastly by far the most valuable in commerce he being
the only creature from which that valuable substance spermaceti is
obtained all his peculiarities will in many other places be enlarged
upon it is chiefly with his name that i now have to do philologically
considered it is absurd some centuries ago when the sperm whale was
almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality and when his oil
was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish in those days
spermaceti it would seem was popularly supposed to be derived from a
creature identical with the one then known in england as the greenland
or right whale it was the idea also that this same spermaceti was that
quickening humor of the greenland whale which the first syllable of
the word literally expresses in those times also spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce not being used for light but only as an ointment
and medicament it was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays
buy an ounce of rhubarb when as i opine in the course of time the
true nature of spermaceti became known its original name was still
retained by the dealers no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so
strangely significant of its scarcity and so the appellation must at
last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti
was really derived

book i folio chapter ii right whale in one respect this is the
most venerable of the leviathans being the one first regularly hunted
by man it yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen and
the oil specially known as whale oil an inferior article in commerce
among the fishermen he is indiscriminately designated by all the
following titles the whale the greenland whale the black whale
the great whale the true whale the right whale there is a deal of
obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously
baptised what then is the whale which i include in the second species
of my folios it is the great mysticetus of the english naturalists the
greenland whale of the english whalemen the baliene ordinaire of the
french whalemen the growlands walfish of the swedes it is the whale
which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the dutch and
english in the arctic seas it is the whale which the american fishermen
have long pursued in the indian ocean on the brazil banks on the nor
west coast and various other parts of the world designated by them
right whale cruising grounds

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

book i folio chapter iii fin-back under this head i reckon
a monster which by the various names of fin-back tall-spout and
long-john has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale
whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
atlantic in the new york packet-tracks in the length he attains and
in his baleen the fin-back resembles the right whale but is of a less
portly girth and a lighter colour approaching to olive his great lips
present a cable-like aspect formed by the intertwisting slanting folds
of large wrinkles his grand distinguishing feature the fin from which
he derives his name is often a conspicuous object this fin is some
three or four feet long growing vertically from the hinder part of the
back of an angular shape and with a very sharp pointed end even if
not the slightest other part of the creature be visible this isolated
fin will at times be seen plainly projecting from the surface when
the sea is moderately calm and slightly marked with spherical ripples
and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled
surface it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it
somewhat resembles a dial with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on
it on that ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back the fin-back is not
gregarious he seems a whale-hater as some men are man-haters very
shy always going solitary unexpectedly rising to the surface in the
remotest and most sullen waters his straight and single lofty jet
rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain gifted with
such wondrous power and velocity in swimming as to defy all present
pursuit from man this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
cain of his race bearing for his mark that style upon his back from
having the baleen in his mouth the fin-back is sometimes included with
the right whale among a theoretic species denominated whalebone whales
that is whales with baleen of these so called whalebone whales there
would seem to be several varieties most of which however are little
known broad-nosed whales and beaked whales pike-headed whales bunched
whales under-jawed whales and rostrated whales are the fishermen's
names for a few sorts

in connection with this appellative of whalebone whales it is of
great importance to mention that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales yet it is
in vain to attempt a clear classification of the leviathan founded upon
either his baleen or hump or fin or teeth notwithstanding that those
marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford
the basis for a regular system of cetology than any other detached
bodily distinctions which the whale in his kinds presents how
then the baleen hump back-fin and teeth these are things whose
peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales
without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other
and more essential particulars thus the sperm whale and the humpbacked
whale each has a hump but there the similitude ceases then this same
humpbacked whale and the greenland whale each of these has baleen
but there again the similitude ceases and it is just the same with the
other parts above mentioned in various sorts of whales they form such
irregular combinations or in the case of any one of them detached
such an irregular isolation as utterly to defy all general
methodization formed upon such a basis on this rock every one of the
whale-naturalists has split

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

book i folio chapter iv hump-back this whale is often seen on
the northern american coast he has been frequently captured there and
towed into harbor he has a great pack on him like a peddler or you
might call him the elephant and castle whale at any rate the popular
name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him since the sperm
whale also has a hump though a smaller one his oil is not very
valuable he has baleen he is the most gamesome and light-hearted of
all the whales making more gay foam and white water generally than any
other of them

book i folio chapter v razor-back of this whale little is known
but his name i have seen him at a distance off cape horn of a retiring
nature he eludes both hunters and philosophers though no coward he
has never yet shown any part of him but his back which rises in a long
sharp ridge let him go i know little more of him nor does anybody
else

book i folio chapter vi sulphur-bottom another retiring
gentleman with a brimstone belly doubtless got by scraping along the
tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings he is seldom seen
at least i have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas
and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance he is
never chased he would run away with rope-walks of line prodigies are
told of him adieu sulphur bottom i can say nothing more that is true
of ye nor can the oldest nantucketer

thus ends book i folio and now begins book ii octavo

octavoes these embrace the whales of middling magnitude among which
present may be numbered i the grampus ii the black fish iii
the narwhale iv the thrasher v the killer


why this book of whales is not denominated the quarto is very plain
because while the whales of this order though smaller than those of
the former order nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them
in figure yet the bookbinder's quarto volume in its dimensioned form
does not preserve the shape of the folio volume but the octavo volume
does


book ii octavo chapter i grampus though this fish whose
loud sonorous breathing or rather blowing has furnished a proverb
to landsmen is so well known a denizen of the deep yet is he not
popularly classed among whales but possessing all the grand distinctive
features of the leviathan most naturalists have recognised him for one
he is of moderate octavo size varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet
in length and of corresponding dimensions round the waist he swims in
herds he is never regularly hunted though his oil is considerable in
quantity and pretty good for light by some fishermen his approach is
regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale

book ii octavo chapter ii black fish i give the popular
fishermen's names for all these fish for generally they are the best
where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive i shall say so
and suggest another i do so now touching the black fish so-called
because blackness is the rule among almost all whales so call him the
hyena whale if you please his voracity is well known and from the
circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards he
carries an everlasting mephistophelean grin on his face this whale
averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length he is found in almost
all latitudes he has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin
in swimming which looks something like a roman nose when not more
profitably employed the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the hyena
whale to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment as
some frugal housekeepers in the absence of company and quite alone by
themselves burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax though their
blubber is very thin some of these whales will yield you upwards of
thirty gallons of oil

book ii octavo chapter iii narwhale that is nostril
whale another instance of a curiously named whale so named i suppose
from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose the
creature is some sixteen feet in length while its horn averages five
feet though some exceed ten and even attain to fifteen feet strictly
speaking this horn is but a lengthened tusk growing out from the jaw
in a line a little depressed from the horizontal but it is only
found on the sinister side which has an ill effect giving its owner
something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man what
precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers it would be hard to
say it does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and
bill-fish though some sailors tell me that the narwhale employs it for
a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food charley coffin
said it was used for an ice-piercer for the narwhale rising to the
surface of the polar sea and finding it sheeted with ice thrusts his
horn up and so breaks through but you cannot prove either of these
surmises to be correct my own opinion is that however this one-sided
horn may really be used by the narwhale however that may be it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets
the narwhale i have heard called the tusked whale the horned whale and
the unicorn whale he is certainly a curious example of the unicornism
to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature from certain
cloistered old authors i have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn
was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison
and as such preparations of it brought immense prices it was also
distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies the same way that the
horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn originally it
was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity black letter tells
me that sir martin frobisher on his return from that voyage when
queen bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window
of greenwich palace as his bold ship sailed down the thames when sir
martin returned from that voyage saith black letter on bended knees
he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the narwhale
which for a long period after hung in the castle at windsor an irish
author avers that the earl of leicester on bended knees did likewise
present to her highness another horn pertaining to a land beast of the
unicorn nature

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

book ii octavo chapter iv killer of this whale little is
precisely known to the nantucketer and nothing at all to the professed
naturalist from what i have seen of him at a distance i should say
that he was about the bigness of a grampus he is very savage a sort of
feegee fish he sometimes takes the great folio whales by the lip and
hangs there like a leech till the mighty brute is worried to death the
killer is never hunted i never heard what sort of oil he has exception
might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale on the ground
of its indistinctness for we are all killers on land and on sea
bonapartes and sharks included

book ii octavo chapter v thrasher this gentleman is famous for
his tail which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes he mounts
the folio whale's back and as he swims he works his passage by
flogging him as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar
process still less is known of the thrasher than of the killer both
are outlaws even in the lawless seas

thus ends book ii octavo and begins book iii duodecimo

duodecimoes these include the smaller whales i the huzza porpoise
ii the algerine porpoise iii the mealy-mouthed porpoise

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

book iii duodecimo chapter huzza porpoise this is the
common porpoise found almost all over the globe the name is of my own
bestowal for there are more than one sort of porpoises and something
must be done to distinguish them i call him thus because he always
swims in hilarious shoals which upon the broad sea keep tossing
themselves to heaven like caps in a fourth-of-july crowd their
appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner full of fine
spirits they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward they
are the lads that always live before the wind they are accounted a
lucky omen if you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding
these vivacious fish then heaven help ye the spirit of godly
gamesomeness is not in ye a well-fed plump huzza porpoise will
yield you one good gallon of good oil but the fine and delicate fluid
extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable it is in request among
jewellers and watchmakers sailors put it on their hones porpoise
meat is good eating you know it may never have occurred to you that
a porpoise spouts indeed his spout is so small that it is not very
readily discernible but the next time you have a chance watch him and
you will then see the great sperm whale himself in 
miniature

book iii duodecimo chapter ii algerine porpoise a pirate very
savage he is only found i think in the pacific he is somewhat larger
than the huzza porpoise but much of the same general make provoke him
and he will buckle to a shark i have lowered for him many times but
never yet saw him captured

book iii duodecimo chapter iii mealy-mouthed porpoise the
largest kind of porpoise and only found in the pacific so far as it is
known the only english name by which he has hitherto been designated
is that of the fishers right-whale porpoise from the circumstance that
he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that folio in shape he differs
in some degree from the huzza porpoise being of a less rotund and jolly
girth indeed he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure he has
no fins on his back most other porpoises have he has a lovely tail
and sentimental indian eyes of a hazel hue but his mealy-mouth spoils
all though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable
yet a boundary line distinct as the mark in a ship's hull called
the bright waist that line streaks him from stem to stern with two
separate colours black above and white below the white comprises part
of his head and the whole of his mouth which makes him look as if he
had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag a most mean and
mealy aspect his oil is much like that of the common porpoise


beyond the duodecimo this system does not proceed inasmuch as
the porpoise is the smallest of the whales above you have all the
leviathans of note but there are a rabble of uncertain fugitive
half-fabulous whales which as an american whaleman i know by
reputation but not personally i shall enumerate them by their
fore-castle appellations for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators who may complete what i have here but begun if
any of the following whales shall hereafter be caught and marked then
he can readily be incorporated into this system according to his folio
octavo or duodecimo magnitude the bottle-nose whale the junk whale
the pudding-headed whale the cape whale the leading whale the cannon
whale the scragg whale the coppered whale the elephant whale the
iceberg whale the quog whale the blue whale etc from icelandic
dutch and old english authorities there might be quoted other lists of
uncertain whales blessed with all manner of uncouth names but i omit
them as altogether obsolete and can hardly help suspecting them for
mere sounds full of leviathanism but signifying nothing

finally it was stated at the outset that this system would not be
here and at once perfected you cannot but plainly see that i have
kept my word but i now leave my cetological system standing thus
unfinished even as the great cathedral of cologne was left with the
crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower for small
erections may be finished by their first architects grand ones true
ones ever leave the copestone to posterity god keep me from ever
completing anything this whole book is but a draught nay but the
draught of a draught oh time strength cash and patience



chapter the specksynder


concerning the officers of the whale-craft this seems as good a place
as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on 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 specksynder literally this word means fat-cutter
usage however in time made it equivalent to chief harpooneer in
those days the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation
and general management of the vessel while over the whale-hunting
department and all its concerns the specksynder or chief harpooneer
reigned supreme in the british greenland fishery under the corrupted
title of specksioneer this old dutch official is still retained but
his former dignity is sadly abridged at present he ranks simply
as senior harpooneer and as such is but one of the captain's more
inferior subalterns nevertheless as upon the good conduct of the
harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends and since
in the american fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat
but under certain circumstances night watches on a whaling ground the
command of the ship's deck is also his therefore the grand political
maxim of the sea demands that he should nominally live apart from
the men before the mast and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior though always by them familiarly regarded as
their social equal

now the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea is
this the first lives aft the last forward hence in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike the mates have their quarters with the captain and
so too in most of the american whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
the after part of the ship that is to say they take their meals in the
captain's cabin and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it

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

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

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

but ahab my captain still moves before me in all his nantucket
grimness and shagginess and in this episode touching emperors and
kings i must not conceal that i have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him and therefore all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me oh ahab what shall be grand in thee it
must needs be plucked at from the skies and dived for in the deep and
featured in the unbodied air



chapter the cabin-table


it is noon and dough-boy the steward thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread
face from the cabin-scuttle announces dinner to his lord and
master who sitting in the lee quarter-boat has just been taking an
observation of the sun and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the
smooth medallion-shaped tablet reserved for that daily purpose on
the upper part of his ivory leg from his complete inattention to the
tidings you would think that moody ahab had not heard his menial but
presently catching hold of the mizen shrouds he swings himself to
the deck and in an even unexhilarated voice saying dinner mr
starbuck disappears into the cabin

when the last echo of his sultan's step has died away and starbuck the
first emir has every reason to suppose that he is seated then starbuck
rouses from his quietude takes a few turns along the planks and after
a grave peep into the binnacle says with some touch of pleasantness
dinner mr stubb and descends the scuttle the second emir lounges
about the rigging awhile and then slightly shaking the main brace to
see whether it will be all right with that important rope he likewise
takes up the old burden and with a rapid dinner mr flask follows
after his predecessors

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

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

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

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

now ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table
in the pequod's cabin after their departure taking place in inverted
order to their arrival the canvas cloth was cleared or rather was
restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward and then the three
harpooneers were bidden to the feast they being its residuary legatees
they made a sort of temporary servants hall of the high and mighty
cabin

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

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

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

in this one matter ahab seemed no exception to most american whale
captains who as a set rather incline to the opinion that by rights
the ship's cabin belongs to them and that it is by courtesy alone that
anybody else is at any time permitted there so that in real truth
the mates and harpooneers of the pequod might more properly be said to
have lived out of the cabin than in it for when they did enter it it
was something as a street-door enters a house turning inwards for
a moment only to be turned out the next and as a permanent thing
residing in the open air nor did they lose much hereby in the cabin
was no companionship socially ahab was inaccessible though nominally
included in the census of christendom he was still an alien to it he
lived in the world as the last of the grisly bears lived in settled
missouri and as when spring and summer had departed that wild logan of
the woods burying himself in the hollow of a tree lived out the winter
there sucking his own paws so in his inclement howling old age
ahab's soul shut up in the caved trunk of his body there fed upon the
sullen paws of its gloom



chapter 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
archaeologists that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical
purposes a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like
formation of all four sides of those edifices whereby with prodigious
long upliftings of their legs those old astronomers were wont to mount
to the apex and sing out for new stars even as the look-outs of a
modern ship sing out for a sail or a whale just bearing in sight in
saint stylites the famous christian hermit of old times who built him
a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of
his life on its summit hoisting his food from the ground with a
tackle in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless
stander-of-mast-heads who was not to be driven from his place by fogs
or frosts rain hail or sleet but valiantly facing everything out to
the last literally died at his post of modern standers-of-mast-heads
we have but a lifeless set mere stone iron and bronze men who
though well capable of facing out a stiff gale are still entirely
incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange
sight there is napoleon who upon the top of the column of vendome
stands with arms folded some one hundred and fifty feet in the air
careless now who rules the decks below whether louis philippe louis
blanc or louis the devil great washington too stands high aloft on
his towering main-mast in baltimore and like one of hercules pillars
his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals
will go admiral nelson also on a capstan of gun-metal stands his
mast-head in trafalgar square and ever when most obscured by that
london smoke token is yet given that a hidden hero is there for
where there is smoke must be fire but neither great washington nor
napoleon nor nelson will answer a single hail from below however
madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks
upon which they gaze however it may be surmised that their spirits
penetrate through the thick haze of the future and descry what shoals
and what rocks must be shunned

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

in one of those southern whalesmen on a long three or four years
voyage as often happens the sum of the various hours you spend at the
mast-head would amount to several entire months and it is much to be
deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion
of the whole term of your natural life should be so sadly destitute
of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness or adapted to breed a
comfortable localness of feeling such as pertains to a bed a hammock
a hearse a sentry box a pulpit a coach or any other of those small
and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves your
most usual point of perch is the head of the t gallant-mast where you
stand upon two thin parallel sticks almost peculiar to whalemen called
the t gallant cross-trees here tossed about by the sea the beginner
feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns to be sure
in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you in the shape of
a watch-coat but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more
of a house than the unclad body for as the soul is glued inside of its
fleshy tabernacle and cannot freely move about in it nor even move out
of it without running great risk of perishing like an ignorant pilgrim
crossing the snowy alps in winter so a watch-coat is not so much of
a house as it is a mere envelope or additional skin encasing you you
cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body and no more can you
make a convenient closet of your watch-coat

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

but if we southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
captain sleet and his greenlandmen were yet that disadvantage is
greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those
seductive seas in which we south fishers mostly float for one i used
to lounge up the rigging very leisurely resting in the top to have a
chat with queequeg or any one else off duty whom i might find there
then ascending a little way further and throwing a lazy leg over the
top-sail yard take a preliminary view of the watery pastures and so at
last mount to my ultimate destination

let me make a clean breast of it here and frankly admit that i kept but
sorry guard with the problem of the universe revolving in me how
could i being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering
altitude how could i but lightly hold my obligations to observe all
whale-ships standing orders keep your weather eye open and sing out
every time

and let me in this place movingly admonish you ye ship-owners of
nantucket beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with
lean brow and hollow eye given to unseasonable meditativeness and who
offers to ship with the phaedon 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 honourable ambition as that in their secret souls they would
rather not see whales than otherwise but all in vain those young
platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect they are
short-sighted what use then to strain the visual nerve they have
left their opera-glasses at home

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

there is no life in thee now except that rocking life imparted by a
gently rolling ship by her borrowed from the sea by the sea from
the inscrutable tides of god but while this sleep this dream is on ye
move your foot or hand an inch slip your hold at all and your identity
comes back in horror over descartian vortices you hover and perhaps
at mid-day in the fairest weather with one half-throttled shriek you
drop through that transparent air into the summer sea no more to rise
for ever heed it well ye pantheists



chapter the quarter-deck


enter ahab then all


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

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

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

d'ye mark him flask whispered stubb the chick that's in him pecks
the shell twill soon be out

the hours wore on ahab now shut up within his cabin anon pacing the
deck with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect

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

sir said the mate astonished at an order seldom or never given on
ship-board except in some extraordinary case

send everybody aft repeated ahab mast-heads there come down

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

what do ye do when ye see a whale men

sing out for him was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed
voices

good cried ahab with a wild approval in his tones observing the
hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically
thrown them

and what do ye next men

lower away and after him

and what tune is it ye pull to men

a dead whale or a stove boat

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

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

all ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white
whale look ye d'ye see this spanish ounce of gold holding up a
broad bright coin to the sun it is a sixteen dollar piece men d'ye
see it mr starbuck hand me yon top-maul

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

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

huzza huzza cried the seamen as with swinging tarpaulins they
hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast

it's a white whale i say resumed ahab as he threw down the topmaul
a white whale skin your eyes for him men look sharp for white water
if ye see but a bubble sing out

all this while tashtego daggoo and queequeg had looked on with even
more intense interest and surprise than the rest and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
separately touched by some specific recollection

captain ahab said tashtego that white whale must be the same that
some call moby dick

moby dick shouted ahab do ye know the white whale then tash

does he fan-tail a little curious sir before he goes down said the
gay-header deliberately

and has he a curious spout too said daggoo very bushy even for a
parmacetty and mighty quick captain ahab

and he have one two three oh good many iron in him hide too
captain cried queequeg disjointedly all twiske-tee be-twisk like
him him faltering hard for a word and screwing his hand round and
round as though uncorking a bottle like him him 

corkscrew cried ahab aye queequeg the harpoons lie all twisted
and wrenched in him aye daggoo his spout is a big one like a whole
shock of wheat and white as a pile of our nantucket wool after the
great annual sheep-shearing aye tashtego and he fan-tails like a
split jib in a squall death and devils men it is moby dick ye have
seen moby dick moby dick

captain ahab said starbuck who with stubb and flask had thus far
been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise but at last seemed
struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder captain
ahab i have heard of moby dick but it was not moby dick that took off
thy leg

who told thee that cried ahab then pausing aye starbuck aye my
hearties all round it was moby dick that dismasted me moby dick that
brought me to this dead stump i stand on now aye aye he shouted with
a terrific loud animal sob like that of a heart-stricken moose
aye aye it was that accursed white whale that razeed me made a poor
pegging lubber of me for ever and a day then tossing both arms with
measureless imprecations he shouted out aye aye and i'll chase him
round good hope and round the horn and round the norway maelstrom and
round perdition's flames before i give him up and this is what ye have
shipped for men to chase that white whale on both sides of land and
over all sides of earth till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out
what say ye men will ye splice hands on it now i think ye do look
brave

aye aye shouted the harpooneers and seamen running closer to the
excited old man a sharp eye for the white whale a sharp lance for
moby dick

god bless ye he seemed to half sob and half shout god bless ye
men steward go draw the great measure of grog but what's this long
face about mr starbuck wilt thou not chase the white whale art not
game for moby dick

i am game for his crooked jaw and for the jaws of death too captain
ahab if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow but i
came here to hunt whales not my commander's vengeance how many barrels
will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it captain ahab it
will not fetch thee much in our nantucket market

nantucket market hoot but come closer starbuck thou requirest
a little lower layer if money's to be the measurer man and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe by
girdling it with guineas one to every three parts of an inch then let
me tell thee that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here

he smites his chest whispered stubb what's that for methinks it
rings most vast but hollow

vengeance on a dumb brute cried starbuck that simply smote thee
from blindest instinct madness to be enraged with a dumb thing
captain ahab seems blasphemous

hark ye yet again the little lower layer all visible objects man
are but as pasteboard masks but in each event in the living act the
undoubted deed there some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth
the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask if man
will strike strike through the mask how can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall to me the white whale is that
wall shoved near to me sometimes i think there's naught beyond but
tis enough he tasks me he heaps me i see in him outrageous strength
with an inscrutable malice sinewing it that inscrutable thing is
chiefly what i hate and be the white whale agent or be the white whale
principal i will wreak that hate upon him talk not to me of blasphemy
man i'd strike the sun if it insulted me for could the sun do that
then could i do the other since there is ever a sort of fair play
herein jealousy presiding over all creations but not my master man
is even that fair play who's over me truth hath no confines take off
thine eye more intolerable than fiends glarings is a doltish
stare so so thou reddenest and palest my heat has melted thee to
anger-glow but look ye starbuck what is said in heat that thing
unsays itself there are men from whom warm words are small indignity i
meant not to incense thee let it go look see yonder turkish cheeks of
spotted tawn living breathing pictures painted by the sun the pagan
leopards the unrecking and unworshipping things that live and seek
and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel the crew man the
crew are they not one and all with ahab in this matter of the whale
see stubb he laughs see yonder chilian he snorts to think of it
stand up amid the general hurricane thy one tost sapling cannot
starbuck and what is it reckon it tis but to help strike a fin no
wondrous feat for starbuck what is it more from this one poor hunt
then the best lance out of all nantucket surely he will not hang back
when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone ah constrainings
seize thee i see the billow lifts thee speak but speak aye aye
thy silence then that voices thee aside something shot from my
dilated nostrils he has inhaled it in his lungs starbuck now is mine
cannot oppose me now without rebellion

god keep me keep us all murmured starbuck lowly

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

the measure the measure cried ahab

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

drink and pass he cried handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman the crew alone now drink round with it round short
draughts long swallows men tis hot as satan's hoof so so it
goes round excellently it spiralizes in ye forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye well done almost drained that way it went this
way it comes hand it me here's a hollow men ye seem the years so
brimming life is gulped and gone steward refill

attend now my braves i have mustered ye all round this capstan and
ye mates flank me with your lances and ye harpooneers stand there
with your irons and ye stout mariners ring me in that i may in some
sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me o men you
will yet see that ha boy come back bad pennies come not sooner hand
it me why now this pewter had run brimming again were'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 honourable gentlemen and noblemen my valiant harpooneers disdain
the task what when the great pope washes the feet of beggars using
his tiara for ewer oh my sweet cardinals your own condescension that
shall bend ye to it i do not order ye ye will it cut your seizings
and draw the poles ye harpooneers

silently obeying the order the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons some three feet long held barbs
up before him

stab me not with that keen steel cant them cant them over know ye
not the goblet end turn up the socket so so now ye cup-bearers
advance the irons take them hold them while i fill forthwith
slowly going from one officer to the other he brimmed the harpoon
sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter

now three to three ye stand commend the murderous chalices bestow
them ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league ha
starbuck but the deed is done yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon
it drink ye harpooneers drink and swear ye men that man the deathful
whaleboat's bow death to moby dick god hunt us all if we do not hunt
moby dick to his death the long barbed steel goblets were lifted
and to cries and maledictions against the white whale the spirits were
simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss starbuck paled and turned and
shivered once more and finally the replenished pewter went the rounds
among the frantic crew when waving his free hand to them they all
dispersed and ahab retired within his cabin



chapter sunset


the cabin by the stern windows ahab sitting alone and gazing out


i leave a white and turbid wake pale waters paler cheeks where'er i
sail the envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track let them
but first i pass

yonder by ever-brimming goblet's rim the warm waves blush like wine
the gold brow plumbs the blue the diver sun slow dived from noon goes
down my soul mounts up she wearies with her endless hill is then
the crown too heavy that i wear this iron crown of lombardy yet is
it bright with many a gem i the wearer see not its far flashings but
darkly feel that i wear that that dazzlingly confounds tis iron that
i know not gold tis split too that i feel the jagged edge galls
me so my brain seems to beat against the solid metal aye steel skull
mine the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight

dry heat upon my brow oh time was when as the sunrise nobly spurred
me so the sunset soothed no more this lovely light it lights not me
all loveliness is anguish to me since i can ne'er enjoy gifted with
the high perception i lack the low enjoying power damned most subtly
and most malignantly damned in the midst of paradise good night good
night waving his hand he moves from the window

twas not so hard a task i thought to find one stubborn at the least
but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels and they
revolve or if you will like so many ant-hills of powder they all
stand before me and i their match oh hard that to fire others the
match itself must needs be wasting what i've dared i've willed and
what i've willed i'll do they think me mad starbuck does but i'm
demoniac i am madness maddened that wild madness that's only calm
to comprehend itself the prophecy was that i should be dismembered
and aye i lost this leg i now prophesy that i will dismember my
dismemberer now then be the prophet and the fulfiller one that's
more than ye ye great gods ever were i laugh and hoot at ye ye
cricket-players ye pugilists ye deaf burkes and blinded bendigoes
i will not say as schoolboys do to bullies take some one of your own
size don't pommel me no ye've knocked me down and i am up again but
ye have run and hidden come forth from behind your cotton bags i have
no long gun to reach ye come ahab's compliments to ye come and see
if ye can swerve me swerve me ye cannot swerve me else ye swerve
yourselves man has ye there swerve me the path to my fixed purpose is
laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run over unsounded
gorges through the rifled hearts of mountains under torrents beds
unerringly i rush naught's an obstacle naught's an angle to the iron
way



chapter dusk


by the mainmast starbuck leaning against it


my soul is more than matched she's overmanned and by a madman
insufferable sting that sanity should ground arms on such a field but
he drilled deep down and blasted all my reason out of me i think i see
his impious end but feel that i must help him to it will i nill i
the ineffable thing has tied me to him tows me with a cable i have no
knife to cut horrible old man who's over him he cries aye he would
be a democrat to all above look how he lords it over all below oh i
plainly see my miserable office to obey rebelling and worse yet
to hate with touch of pity for in his eyes i read some lurid woe would
shrivel me up had i it yet is there hope time and tide flow wide
the hated whale has the round watery world to swim in as the small
gold-fish has its glassy globe his heaven-insulting purpose god may
wedge aside i would up heart were it not like lead but my whole
clock's run down my heart the all-controlling weight i have no key to
lift again


a burst of revelry from the forecastle


oh god to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human
mothers in them whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea the white whale
is their demigorgon hark the infernal orgies that revelry is forward
mark the unfaltering silence aft methinks it pictures life foremost
through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay embattled bantering
bow but only to drag dark ahab after it where he broods within his
sternward cabin builded over the dead water of the wake and further
on hunted by its wolfish gurglings the long howl thrills me through
peace ye revellers and set the watch oh life tis in an hour like
this with soul beat down and held to knowledge as wild untutored
things are forced to feed oh life tis now that i do feel the latent
horror in thee but tis not me that horror's out of me and with the
soft feeling of the human in me yet will i try to fight ye ye grim
phantom futures stand by me hold me bind me o ye blessed influences



chapter first night watch

fore-top

stubb solus and mending a brace


ha ha ha ha hem clear my throat i've been thinking over it
ever since and that ha ha's the final consequence why so because a
laugh's the wisest easiest answer to all that's queer and come what
will one comfort's always left that unfailing comfort is it's all
predestinated i heard not all his talk with starbuck but to my poor
eye starbuck then looked something as i the other evening felt be sure
the old mogul has fixed him too i twigged it knew it had had the
gift might readily have prophesied it for when i clapped my eye upon
his skull i saw it well stubb wise stubb that's my title well
stubb what of it stubb here's a carcase i know not all that may be
coming but be it what it will i'll go to it laughing such a waggish
leering as lurks in all your horribles i feel funny fa la lirra
skirra what's my juicy little pear at home doing now crying its eyes
out giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers i dare say gay as
a frigate's pennant and so am i fa la lirra skirra oh 

we'll drink to-night with hearts as light to love as gay and fleeting
as bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim and break on the lips while
meeting


a brave stave that who calls mr starbuck aye aye sir aside he's
my superior he has his too if i'm not mistaken aye aye sir just
through with this job coming



chapter 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 

st 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

nd nantucket sailor avast the chorus eight bells there d'ye hear
bell-boy strike the bell eight thou pip thou blackling and let me
call the watch i've the sort of mouth for that the hogshead mouth
so so thrusts his head down the scuttle star-bo-l-e-e-n-s a-h-o-y
eight bells there below tumble up

dutch sailor grand snoozing to-night maty fat night for that i
mark this in our old mogul's wine it's quite as deadening to some as
filliping to others we sing they sleep aye lie down there like
ground-tier butts at em again there take this copper-pump and hail
em through it tell em to avast dreaming of their lasses tell em
it's the resurrection they must kiss their last and come to judgment
that's the way that's it thy throat ain't spoiled with eating
amsterdam butter

french sailor hist boys let's have a jig or two before we ride to
anchor in blanket bay what say ye there comes the other watch stand
by all legs pip little pip hurrah with your tambourine

pip sulky and sleepy don't know where it is

french sailor beat thy belly then and wag thy ears jig it men
i say merry's the word hurrah damn me won't you dance form now
indian-file and gallop into the double-shuffle throw yourselves legs
legs

iceland sailor i don't like your floor maty it's too springy to my
taste i'm used to ice-floors i'm sorry to throw cold water on the
subject but excuse me

maltese sailor me too where's your girls who but a fool would take
his left hand by his right and say to himself how d'ye do partners i
must have partners

sicilian sailor aye girls and a green then i'll hop with ye yea
turn grasshopper

long-island sailor well well ye sulkies there's plenty more of us
hoe corn when you may say i all legs go to harvest soon ah here
comes the music now for it

azore sailor ascending and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle
here you are pip and there's the windlass-bitts up you mount now
boys the half of them dance to the tambourine some go below some
sleep or lie among the coils of rigging oaths a-plenty

azore sailor dancing go it pip bang it bell-boy rig it dig it
stig it quig it bell-boy make fire-flies break the jinglers

pip jinglers you say there goes another dropped off i pound it so

china sailor rattle thy teeth then and pound away make a pagoda of
thyself


french sailor merry-mad hold up thy hoop pip till i jump through it
split jibs tear yourselves

tashtego quietly smoking that's a white man he calls that fun
humph i save my sweat

old manx sailor i wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what
they are dancing over i'll dance over your grave i will that's
the bitterest threat of your night-women that beat head-winds round
corners o christ to think of the green navies and the green-skulled
crews well well belike the whole world's a ball as you scholars have
it and so tis right to make one ballroom of it dance on lads you're
young i was once

d 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

th nantucket sailor he has his orders mind ye that i heard old
ahab tell him he must always kill a squall something as they burst a
waterspout with a pistol fire your ship right into it

english sailor blood but that old man's a grand old cove we are the
lads to hunt him up his whale

all aye aye

old manx sailor how the three pines shake pines are the hardest sort
of tree to live when shifted to any other soil and here there's none
but the crew's cursed clay steady helmsman steady this is the sort
of weather when brave hearts snap ashore and keeled hulls split at sea
our captain has his birthmark look yonder boys there's another in the
sky lurid-like ye see all else pitch black

daggoo what of that who's afraid of black's afraid of me i'm quarried
out of it

spanish sailor aside he wants to bully ah the old grudge makes
me touchy advancing aye harpooneer thy race is the undeniable dark
side of mankind devilish dark at that no offence

daggoo grimly none

st jago's sailor that spaniard's mad or drunk but that can't be or
else in his one case our old mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in
working

th nantucket sailor what's that i saw lightning yes

spanish sailor no daggoo showing his teeth

daggoo springing swallow thine mannikin white skin white liver

spanish sailor meeting him knife thee heartily big frame small
spirit

all a row a row a row

tashtego with a whiff a row a'low and a row aloft gods and
men both brawlers humph

belfast sailor a row arrah a row the virgin be blessed a row plunge
in with ye

english sailor fair play snatch the spaniard's knife a ring a ring

old manx sailor ready formed there the ringed horizon in that ring
cain struck abel sweet work right work no why then god mad'st thou
the ring

mate's voice from the quarter-deck hands by the halyards in
top-gallant sails stand by to reef topsails

all the squall the squall jump my jollies they scatter


pip shrinking under the windlass jollies lord help such jollies
crish crash there goes the jib-stay blang-whang god duck lower
pip here comes the royal yard it's worse than being in the whirled
woods the last day of the year who'd go climbing after chestnuts now
but there they go all cursing and here i don't fine prospects to em
they're on the road to heaven hold on hard jimmini what a squall
but those chaps there are worse yet they are your white squalls they
white squalls white whale shirr shirr here have i heard all their
chat just now and the white whale shirr shirr but spoken of
once and only this evening it makes me jingle all over like my
tambourine that anaconda of an old man swore em in to hunt him oh
thou big white god aloft there somewhere in yon darkness have mercy on
this small black boy down here preserve him from all men that have no
bowels to feel fear



chapter moby dick


i ishmael was one of that crew my shouts had gone up with the rest
my oath had been welded with theirs and stronger i shouted and more
did i hammer and clinch my oath because of the dread in my soul a
wild mystical sympathetical feeling was in me ahab's quenchless feud
seemed mine with greedy ears i learned the history of that murderous
monster against whom i and all the others had taken our oaths of
violence and revenge

for some time past though at intervals only the unaccompanied
secluded white whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly
frequented by the sperm whale fishermen but not all of them knew of his
existence only a few of them comparatively had knowingly seen him
while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle to
him was small indeed for owing to the large number of whale-cruisers
the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery
circumference many of them adventurously pushing their quest along
solitary latitudes so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or
more on a stretch to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort
the inordinate length of each separate voyage the irregularity of the
times of sailing from home all these with other circumstances direct
and indirect long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide
whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning moby
dick it was hardly to be doubted that several vessels reported to have
encountered at such or such a time or on such or such a meridian
a sperm whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity which whale after
doing great mischief to his assailants had completely escaped them to
some minds it was not an unfair presumption i say that the whale in
question must have been no other than moby dick yet as of late the
sperm whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent
instances of great ferocity cunning and malice in the monster
attacked therefore it was that those who by accident ignorantly gave
battle to moby dick such hunters perhaps for the most part were
content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred more as it were to
the perils of the sperm whale fishery at large than to the individual
cause in that way mostly the disastrous encounter between ahab and
the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded

and as for those who previously hearing of the white whale by chance
caught sight of him in the beginning of the thing they had every one of
them almost as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him as for any other
whale of that species but at length such calamities did ensue in these
assaults not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles broken limbs or
devouring amputations but fatal to the last degree of fatality those
repeated disastrous repulses all accumulating and piling their terrors
upon moby dick those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many
brave hunters to whom the story of the white whale had eventually come

nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate and still the more
horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters for not only do
fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising
terrible events as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi but in
maritime life far more than in that of terra firma wild rumors abound
wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to and as the
sea surpasses the land in this matter so the whale fishery surpasses
every other sort of maritime life in the wonderfulness and fearfulness
of the rumors which sometimes circulate there for not only are whalemen
as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary
to all sailors but of all sailors they are by all odds the most
directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing
in the sea face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels but
hand to jaw give battle to them alone in such remotest waters that
though you sailed a thousand miles and passed a thousand shores you
would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone or aught hospitable beneath
that part of the sun in such latitudes and longitudes pursuing too
such a calling as he does the whaleman is wrapped by influences all
tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth

no wonder then that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over
the widest watery spaces the outblown rumors of the white whale did
in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints
and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies which
eventually invested moby dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything
that visibly appears so that in many cases such a panic did he finally
strike that few who by those rumors at least had heard of the white
whale few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his
jaw

but there were still other and more vital practical influences at work
not even at the present day has the original prestige of the sperm
whale as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the
leviathan died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body there are
those this day among them who though intelligent and courageous
enough in offering battle to the greenland or right whale would
perhaps either from professional inexperience or incompetency or
timidity decline a contest with the sperm whale at any rate there are
plenty of whalemen especially among those whaling nations not sailing
under the american flag who have never hostilely encountered the sperm
whale but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to
the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the north seated on their
hatches these men will hearken with a childish fireside interest
and awe to the wild strange tales of southern whaling nor is the
pre-eminent tremendousness of the great sperm whale anywhere more
feelingly comprehended than on board of those prows which stem him

and as if the now tested reality of his might had in former
legendary times thrown its shadow before it we find some book
naturalists olassen and povelson declaring the sperm whale not only to
be a consternation to every other creature in the sea but also to be so
incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood nor
even down to so late a time as cuvier's were these or almost similar
impressions effaced for in his natural history the baron himself
affirms that at sight of the sperm whale all fish sharks included are
struck with the most lively terrors and often in the precipitancy of
their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to
cause instantaneous death and however the general experiences in the
fishery may amend such reports as these yet in their full terribleness
even to the bloodthirsty item of povelson the superstitious belief in
them is in some vicissitudes of their vocation revived in the minds of
the hunters

so that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him not a few of
the fishermen recalled in reference to moby dick the earlier days
of the sperm whale fishery when it was oftentimes hard to induce long
practised right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring
warfare such men protesting that although other leviathans might be
hopefully pursued yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition
as the sperm whale was not for mortal man that to attempt it would
be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity on this head there are
some remarkable documents that may be consulted

nevertheless some there were who even in the face of these things
were ready to give chase to moby dick and a still greater number who
chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely without the
specific details of any certain calamity and without superstitious
accompaniments were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if
offered

one of the wild suggestions referred to as at last coming to be linked
with the white whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined
was the unearthly conceit that moby dick was ubiquitous that he had
actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same
instant of time

nor credulous as such minds must have been was this conceit altogether
without some faint show of superstitious probability for as the secrets
of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged even to
the most erudite research so the hidden ways of the sperm whale
when beneath the surface remain in great part unaccountable to his
pursuers and from time to time have originated the most curious and
contradictory speculations regarding them especially concerning the
mystic modes whereby after sounding to a great depth he transports
himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points

it is a thing well known to both american and english whale-ships and
as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by scoresby
that some whales have been captured far north in the pacific in whose
bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the greenland
seas nor is it to be gainsaid that in some of these instances it has
been declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could
not have exceeded very many days hence by inference it has been
believed by some whalemen that the nor west passage so long a problem
to man was never a problem to the whale so that here in the real
living experience of living men the prodigies related in old times of
the inland strello mountain in portugal near whose top there was said
to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface
and that still more wonderful story of the arethusa fountain near
syracuse whose waters were believed to have come from the holy land
by an underground passage these fabulous narrations are almost fully
equalled by the realities of the whalemen

forced into familiarity then with such prodigies as these and knowing
that after repeated intrepid assaults the white whale had escaped
alive it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should
go still further in their superstitions declaring moby dick not only
ubiquitous but immortal for immortality is but ubiquity in time that
though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks he would still
swim away unharmed or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick
blood such a sight would be but a ghastly deception for again in
unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away his unsullied jet would
once more be seen

but even stripped of these supernatural surmisings there was enough in
the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike
the imagination with unwonted power for it was not so much his
uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales
but as was elsewhere thrown out a peculiar snow-white wrinkled
forehead and a high pyramidical white hump these were his prominent
features the tokens whereby even in the limitless uncharted seas he
revealed his identity at a long distance to those who knew him

the rest of his body was so streaked and spotted and marbled with
the same shrouded hue that in the end he had gained his distinctive
appellation of the white whale a name indeed literally justified by
his vivid aspect when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue
sea leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam all spangled with golden
gleamings

nor was it his unwonted magnitude nor his remarkable hue nor yet his
deformed lower jaw that so much invested the whale with natural terror
as that unexampled intelligent malignity which according to specific
accounts he had over and over again evinced in his assaults more than
all his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught
else for when swimming before his exulting pursuers with every
apparent symptom of alarm he had several times been known to turn
round suddenly and bearing down upon them either stave their boats to
splinters or drive them back in consternation to their ship

already several fatalities had attended his chase but though similar
disasters however little bruited ashore were by no means unusual
in the fishery yet in most instances such seemed the white whale's
infernal aforethought of ferocity that every dismembering or death
that he caused was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an
unintelligent agent

judge then to what pitches of inflamed distracted fury the minds of
his more desperate hunters were impelled when amid the chips of chewed
boats and the sinking limbs of torn comrades they swam out of the
white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene exasperating
sunlight that smiled on as if at a birth or a bridal

his three boats stove around him and oars and men both whirling in the
eddies one captain seizing the line-knife from his broken prow had
dashed at the whale as an arkansas duellist at his foe blindly seeking
with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale
that captain was ahab and then it was that suddenly sweeping his
sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him moby dick had reaped away ahab's
leg as a mower a blade of grass in the field no turbaned turk no
hired venetian or malay could have smote him with more seeming malice
small reason was there to doubt then that ever since that almost fatal
encounter ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale
all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came
to identify with him not only all his bodily woes but all his
intellectual and spiritual exasperations the white whale swam before
him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which
some deep men feel eating in them till they are left living on with
half a heart and half a lung that intangible malignity which has been
from the beginning to whose dominion even the modern christians ascribe
one-half of the worlds which the ancient ophites of the east reverenced
in their statue devil ahab did not fall down and worship it like them
but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale he
pitted himself all mutilated against it all that most maddens and
torments all that stirs up the lees of things all truth with malice
in it all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain all the subtle
demonisms of life and thought all evil to crazy ahab were visibly
personified and made practically assailable in moby dick he piled upon
the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt
by his whole race from adam down and then as if his chest had been a
mortar he burst his hot heart's shell upon it

it is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at
the precise time of his bodily dismemberment then in darting at the
monster knife in hand he had but given loose to a sudden passionate
corporal animosity and when he received the stroke that tore him he
probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration but nothing more
yet when by this collision forced to turn towards home and for long
months of days and weeks ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
hammock rounding in mid winter that dreary howling patagonian cape
then it was that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another
and so interfusing made him mad that it was only then on the homeward
voyage after the encounter that the final monomania seized him seems
all but certain from the fact that at intervals during the passage
he was a raving lunatic and though unlimbed of a leg yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his egyptian chest and was moreover intensified
by his delirium that his mates were forced to lace him fast even
there as he sailed raving in his hammock in a strait-jacket he swung
to the mad rockings of the gales and when running into more sufferable
latitudes the ship with mild stun'sails spread floated across the
tranquil tropics and to all appearances the old man's delirium seemed
left behind him with the cape horn swells and he came forth from his
dark den into the blessed light and air even then when he bore that
firm collected front however pale and issued his calm orders once
again and his mates thanked god the direful madness was now gone even
then ahab in his hidden self raved on human madness is oftentimes a
cunning and most feline thing when you think it fled it may have but
become transfigured into some still subtler form ahab's full lunacy
subsided not but deepeningly contracted like the unabated hudson
when that noble northman flows narrowly but unfathomably through the
highland gorge but as in his narrow-flowing monomania not one jot of
ahab's broad madness had been left behind so in that broad madness not
one jot of his great natural intellect had perished that before living
agent now became the living instrument if such a furious trope may
stand his special lunacy stormed his general sanity and carried it
and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark so that far
from having lost his strength ahab to that one end did now possess a
thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon
any one reasonable object

this is much yet ahab's larger darker deeper part remains unhinted
but vain to popularize profundities and all truth is profound winding
far down from within the very heart of this spiked hotel de cluny where
we here stand however grand and wonderful now quit it and take your
way ye nobler sadder souls to those vast roman halls of thermes
where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth his root
of grandeur his whole awful essence sits in bearded state an antique
buried beneath antiquities and throned on torsoes so with a broken
throne the great gods mock that captive king so like a caryatid he
patient sits upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of
ages wind ye down there ye prouder sadder souls question that proud
sad king a family likeness aye he did beget ye ye young exiled
royalties and from your grim sire only will the old state-secret come

now in his heart ahab had some glimpse of this namely all my means
are sane my motive and my object mad yet without power to kill or
change or shun the fact he likewise knew that to mankind he did long
dissemble in some sort did still but that thing of his dissembling
was only subject to his perceptibility not to his will determinate
nevertheless so well did he succeed in that dissembling that when
with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last no nantucketer thought him
otherwise than but naturally grieved and that to the quick with the
terrible casualty which had overtaken him

the report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly
ascribed to a kindred cause and so too all the added moodiness which
always afterwards to the very day of sailing in the pequod on the
present voyage sat brooding on his brow nor is it so very unlikely
that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage on
account of such dark symptoms the calculating people of that prudent
isle were inclined to harbor the conceit that for those very reasons he
was all the better qualified and set on edge for a pursuit so full
of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales gnawed within and
scorched without with the infixed unrelenting fangs of some incurable
idea such an one could he be found would seem the very man to dart
his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes
or if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that
yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on
his underlings to the attack but be all this as it may certain it is
that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in
him ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only
and all-engrossing object of hunting the white whale had any one of his
old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him
then how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the
ship from such a fiendish man they were bent on profitable cruises the
profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint he was intent on an
audacious immitigable and supernatural revenge

here then was this grey-headed ungodly old man chasing with curses a
job's whale round the world at the head of a crew too chiefly made
up of mongrel renegades and castaways and cannibals morally enfeebled
also by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in
starbuck the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in
stubb and the pervading mediocrity in flask such a crew so officered
seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him
to his monomaniac revenge how it was that they so aboundingly responded
to the old man's ire by what evil magic their souls were possessed
that at times his hate seemed almost theirs the white whale as much
their insufferable foe as his how all this came to be what the white
whale was to them or how to their unconscious understandings also in
some dim unsuspected way he might have seemed the gliding great demon
of the seas of life all this to explain would be to dive deeper than
ishmael can go the subterranean miner that works in us all how can one
tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting muffled sound of his
pick who does not feel the irresistible arm drag what skiff in tow
of a seventy-four can stand still for one i gave myself up to the
abandonment of the time and the place but while yet all a-rush to
encounter the whale could see naught in that brute but the deadliest
ill



chapter 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 caesarian 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 honour though in many climes
whiteness typifies the majesty of justice in the ermine of the judge
and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by
milk-white steeds though even in the higher mysteries of the most
august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness
and power by the persian fire worshippers the white forked flame being
held the holiest on the altar and in the greek mythologies great jove
himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull and though to the
noble iroquois the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred white dog was
by far the holiest festival of their theology that spotless faithful
creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the great spirit
with the annual tidings of their own 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 honourable
and sublime there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea
of this hue which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness
which affrights in blood

this elusive quality it is which causes the thought of whiteness when
divorced from more kindly associations and coupled with any object
terrible in itself to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds
witness the white bear of the poles and the white shark of the tropics
what but their smooth flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent
horrors they are that ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an
abhorrent mildness even more loathsome than terrific to the dumb
gloating of their aspect so that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his
heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or
shark


with reference to the polar bear it may possibly be urged by him
who would fain go still deeper into this matter that it is not
the whiteness separately regarded which heightens the intolerable
hideousness of that brute for analysed that heightened hideousness
it might be said only rises from the circumstance that the
irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the
fleece of celestial innocence and love and hence by bringing together
two such opposite emotions in our minds the polar bear frightens us
with so unnatural a contrast but even assuming all this to be true
yet were it not for the whiteness you would not have that intensified
terror

as for the white shark the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature when beheld in his ordinary moods strangely tallies with the
same quality in the polar quadruped this peculiarity is most vividly
hit by the french in the name they bestow upon that fish the romish
mass for the dead begins with requiem eternam eternal rest whence
requiem denominating the mass itself and any other funeral music now
in allusion to the white silent stillness of death in this shark and
the mild deadliness of his habits the french call him requin


bethink thee of the albatross whence come those clouds of spiritual
wonderment and pale dread in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations not coleridge first threw that spell but god's great
unflattering laureate nature


i remember the first albatross i ever saw it was during a prolonged
gale in waters hard upon the antarctic seas from my forenoon watch
below i ascended to the overclouded deck and there dashed upon the
main hatches i saw a regal feathery thing of unspotted whiteness and
with a hooked roman bill sublime at intervals it arched forth
its vast archangel wings as if to embrace some holy ark wondrous
flutterings and throbbings shook it though bodily unharmed it uttered
cries as some king's ghost in supernatural distress through its
inexpressible strange eyes methought i peeped to secrets which took
hold of god as abraham before the angels i bowed myself the white
thing was so white its wings so wide and in those for ever exiled
waters i had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of
towns long i gazed at that prodigy of plumage i cannot tell can only
hint the things that darted through me then but at last i awoke and
turning asked a sailor what bird was this a goney he replied goney
never had heard that name before is it conceivable that this glorious
thing is utterly unknown to men ashore never but some time after i
learned that goney was some seaman's name for albatross so that by no
possibility could coleridge's wild rhyme have had aught to do with those
mystical impressions which were mine when i saw that bird upon our
deck for neither had i then read the rhyme nor knew the bird to be
an albatross yet in saying this i do but indirectly burnish a little
brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet

i assert then that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird
chiefly lurks the secret of the spell a truth the more evinced in this
that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses
and these i have frequently seen but never with such emotions as when i
beheld the antarctic fowl

but how had the mystic thing been caught whisper it not and i will
tell with a treacherous hook and line as the fowl floated on the sea
at last the captain made a postman of it tying a lettered leathern
tally round its neck with the ship's time and place and then letting
it escape but i doubt not that leathern tally meant for man was
taken off in heaven when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding
the invoking and adoring cherubim


most famous in our western annals and indian traditions is that of
the white steed of the prairies a magnificent milk-white charger
large-eyed small-headed bluff-chested and with the dignity of a
thousand monarchs in his lofty overscorning carriage he was the
elected xerxes of vast herds of wild horses whose pastures in those
days were only fenced by the rocky mountains and the alleghanies at
their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which
every evening leads on the hosts of light the flashing cascade of his
mane the curving comet of his tail invested him with housings more
resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him a
most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen western
world which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the
glories of those primeval times when adam walked majestic as a god
bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed whether marching amid
his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly
streamed it over the plains like an ohio or whether with his
circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon the white
steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his
cool milkiness in whatever aspect he presented himself always to the
bravest indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe nor
can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble
horse that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly which so clothed him
with divineness and that this divineness had that in it which though
commanding worship at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror

but there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that
accessory and strange glory which invests it in the white steed and
albatross

what is it that in the albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks
the eye as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin it
is that whiteness which invests him a thing expressed by the name
he bears the albino is as well made as other men has no substantive
deformity and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him
more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion why should this be so

nor in quite other aspects does nature in her least palpable but
not the less malicious agencies fail to enlist among her forces
this crowning attribute of the terrible from its snowy aspect the
gauntleted ghost of the southern seas has been denominated the white
squall nor in some historic instances has the art of human malice
omitted so potent an auxiliary how wildly it heightens the effect of
that passage in froissart when masked in the snowy symbol of their
faction the desperate white hoods of ghent murder their bailiff in the
market-place

nor in some things does the common hereditary experience of all
mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue it
cannot well be doubted that the one visible quality in the aspect of
the dead which most appals the gazer is the marble pallor lingering
there as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of
consternation in the other world as of mortal trepidation here and
from that pallor of the dead we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud
in which we wrap them nor even in our superstitions do we fail to
throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms all ghosts rising in a
milk-white fog yea while these terrors seize us let us add that even
the king of terrors when personified by the evangelist rides on his
pallid horse

therefore in his other moods symbolize whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul

but though without dissent this point be fixed how is mortal man to
account for it to analyse it would seem impossible can we then
by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of
whiteness though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped
of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful
but nevertheless is found to exert over us the same sorcery however
modified can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us
to the hidden cause we seek

let us try but in a matter like this subtlety appeals to subtlety
and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls and
though doubtless some at least of the imaginative impressions about
to be presented may have been shared by most men yet few perhaps were
entirely conscious of them at the time and therefore may not be able to
recall them now

why to the man of untutored ideality who happens to be but loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day does the bare mention
of whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long dreary speechless
processions of slow-pacing pilgrims down-cast and hooded with
new-fallen snow or to the unread unsophisticated protestant of the
middle american states why does the passing mention of a white friar or
a white nun evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul

or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and
kings which will not wholly account for it that makes the white
tower of london tell so much more strongly on the imagination of
an untravelled american than those other storied structures its
neighbors the byward tower or even the bloody and those sublimer
towers the white mountains of new hampshire whence in peculiar moods
comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of
that name while the thought of virginia's blue ridge is full of a soft
dewy distant dreaminess or why irrespective of all latitudes and
longitudes does the name of the white sea exert such a spectralness
over the fancy while that of the yellow sea lulls us with mortal
thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves followed by
the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets or to choose a wholly
unsubstantial instance purely addressed to the fancy why in reading
the old fairy tales of central europe does the tall pale man of the
hartz forests whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the
green of the groves why is this phantom more terrible than all the
whooping imps of the blocksburg

nor is it altogether the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
earthquakes nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas nor the
tearlessness of arid skies that never rain nor the sight of her wide
field of leaning spires wrenched cope-stones and crosses all adroop
like canted yards of anchored fleets and her suburban avenues of
house-walls lying over upon each other as a tossed pack of cards it
is not these things alone which make tearless lima the strangest
saddest city thou can'st see for lima has taken the white veil and
there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe old as pizarro
this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new admits not the cheerful
greenness of complete decay spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid
pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions

i know that to the common apprehension this phenomenon of whiteness
is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of
objects otherwise terrible nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught
of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost
solely consists in this one phenomenon especially when exhibited under
any form at all approaching to muteness or universality what i mean
by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the
following examples

first the mariner when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands if by
night he hear the roar of breakers starts to vigilance and feels just
enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties but under precisely
similar circumstances let him be called from his hammock to view his
ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness as if from
encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round
him then he feels a silent superstitious dread the shrouded phantom
of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost in vain the
lead assures him he is still off soundings heart and helm they both go
down he never rests till blue water is under him again yet where is
the mariner who will tell thee sir it was not so much the fear of
striking hidden rocks as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so
stirred me

second to the native indian of peru the continual sight of the
snowhowdahed andes conveys naught of dread except perhaps in the
mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast
altitudes and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be
to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes much the same is it with the
backwoodsman of the west who with comparative indifference views an
unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow no shadow of tree or twig
to break the fixed trance of whiteness not so the sailor beholding the
scenery of the antarctic seas where at times by some infernal trick
of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air he shivering and half
shipwrecked instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery
views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean
ice monuments and splintered crosses

but thou sayest methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is but
a white flag hung out from a craven soul thou surrenderest to a hypo
ishmael

tell me why this strong young colt foaled in some peaceful valley of
vermont far removed from all beasts of prey why is it that upon the
sunniest day if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him so that
he cannot even see it but only smells its wild animal muskiness why
will he start snort and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies
of affright there is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild
creatures in his green northern home so that the strange muskiness he
smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience of
former perils for what knows he this new england colt of the black
bisons of distant oregon

no but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world though thousands of miles from
oregon still when he smells that savage musk the rending goring bison
herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies which
this instant they may be trampling into dust

thus then the muffled rollings of a milky sea the bleak rustlings
of the festooned frosts of mountains the desolate shiftings of the
windrowed snows of prairies all these to ishmael are as the shaking
of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt

though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic
sign gives forth such hints yet with me as with the colt somewhere
those things must exist though in many of its aspects this visible
world seems formed in love the invisible spheres were formed in fright

but not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness and
learned why it appeals with such power to the soul and more strange
and far more portentous why as we have seen it is at once the
most meaning symbol of spiritual things nay the very veil of the
christian's deity and yet should be as it is the intensifying agent in
things the most appalling to mankind

is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids
and immensities of the universe and thus stabs us from behind with the
thought of annihilation when beholding the white depths of the milky
way or is it that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as
the visible absence of colour and at the same time the concrete of all
colours is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness
full of meaning in a wide landscape of snows a colourless all-colour
of atheism from which we shrink and when we consider that other theory
of the natural philosophers that all other earthly hues every stately
or lovely emblazoning the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods yea
and the gilded velvets of butterflies and the butterfly cheeks of
young girls all these are but subtile deceits not actually inherent
in substances but only laid on from without so that all deified nature
absolutely paints like the harlot whose allurements cover nothing but
the charnel-house within and when we proceed further and consider that
the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues the great
principle of light for ever remains white or colourless in itself and
if operating without medium upon matter would touch all objects even
tulips and roses with its own blank tinge pondering all this the
palsied universe lies before us a leper and like wilful travellers in
lapland who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their
eyes so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental
white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him and of all these
things the albino whale was the symbol wonder ye then at the fiery
hunt



chapter hark


hist did you hear that noise cabaco

it was the middle-watch a fair moonlight the seamen were standing in a
cordon extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist to the
scuttle-butt near the taffrail in this manner they passed the buckets
to fill the scuttle-butt standing for the most part on the hallowed
precincts of the quarter-deck they were careful not to speak or rustle
their feet from hand to hand the buckets went in the deepest silence
only broken by the occasional flap of a sail and the steady hum of the
unceasingly advancing keel

it was in the midst of this repose that archy one of the cordon whose
post was near the after-hatches whispered to his neighbor a cholo the
words above

hist did you hear that noise cabaco

take the bucket will ye archy what noise d'ye mean

there it is again under the hatches don't you hear it a cough it
sounded like a cough

cough be damned pass along that return bucket

there again there it is it sounds like two or three sleepers turning
over now

caramba have done shipmate will ye it's the three soaked biscuits
ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye nothing else look to the
bucket

say what ye will shipmate i've sharp ears

aye you are the chap ain't ye that heard the hum of the old
quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from nantucket you're
the chap

grin away we'll see what turns up hark ye cabaco there is somebody
down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck and i suspect
our old mogul knows something of it too i heard stubb tell flask one
morning watch that there was something of that sort in the wind

tish the bucket



chapter the chart


had you followed captain ahab down into his cabin after the squall that
took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose
with his crew you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom
and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts spread
them before him on his screwed-down table then seating himself before
it you would have seen him intently study the various lines and
shadings which there met his eye and with slow but steady pencil trace
additional courses over spaces that before were blank at intervals he
would refer to piles of old log-books beside him wherein were set down
the seasons and places in which on various former voyages of various
ships sperm whales had been captured or seen

while thus employed the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
head continually rocked with the motion of the ship and for ever threw
shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow till it
almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses
on the wrinkled charts some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and
courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead

but it was not this night in particular that in the solitude of his
cabin ahab thus pondered over his charts almost every night they were
brought out almost every night some pencil marks were effaced and
others were substituted for with the charts of all four oceans before
him ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies with a view to
the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul

now to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans
it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary
creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet but not so did it
seem to ahab who knew the sets of all tides and currents and thereby
calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food and also calling
to mind the regular ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular
latitudes could arrive at reasonable surmises almost approaching to
certainties concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground
in search of his prey

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

 since the above was written the statement is happily borne
 out by an official circular issued by lieutenant maury of
 the national observatory washington april th by
 that circular it appears that precisely such a chart is in
 course of completion and portions of it are presented in
 the circular this chart divides the ocean into districts
 of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude
 perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve
 columns for the twelve months and horizontally through each
 of which districts are three lines one to show the number
 of days that have been spent in each month in every
 district and the two others to show the number of days in
 which whales sperm or right have been seen

besides when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another the
sperm whales guided by some infallible instinct say rather secret
intelligence from the deity mostly swim in veins as they are called
continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
exactitude that no ship ever sailed her course by any chart with
one tithe of such marvellous precision though in these cases the
direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel
and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own
unavoidable straight wake yet the arbitrary vein in which at these
times he is said to swim generally embraces some few miles in width
more or less as the vein is presumed to expand or contract but
never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's mast-heads
when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone the sum is that at
particular seasons within that breadth and along that path migrating
whales may with great confidence be looked for

and hence not only at substantiated times upon well known separate
feeding-grounds could ahab hope to encounter his prey but in crossing
the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could by his
art so place and time himself on his way as even then not to be wholly
without prospect of a meeting

there was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
delirious but still methodical scheme but not so in the reality
perhaps though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons
for particular grounds yet in general you cannot conclude that the
herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year
say will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found
there the preceding season though there are peculiar and unquestionable
instances where the contrary of this has proved true in general the
same remark only within a less wide limit applies to the solitaries
and hermits among the matured aged sperm whales so that though moby
dick had in a former year been seen for example on what is called the
seychelle ground in the indian ocean or volcano bay on the japanese
coast yet it did not follow that were the pequod to visit either of
those spots at any subsequent corresponding season she would infallibly
encounter him there so too with some other feeding grounds where
he had at times revealed himself but all these seemed only his casual
stopping-places and ocean-inns so to speak not his places of prolonged
abode and where ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have
hitherto been spoken of allusion has only been made to whatever
way-side antecedent extra prospects were his ere a particular
set time or place were attained when all possibilities would become
probabilities and as ahab fondly thought every possibility the next
thing to a certainty that particular set time and place were conjoined
in the one technical phrase the season-on-the-line for there and then
for several consecutive years moby dick had been periodically descried
lingering in those waters for awhile as the sun in its annual round
loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the zodiac there
it was too that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had
taken place there the waves were storied with his deeds there also was
that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive
to his vengeance but in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering
vigilance with which ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering
hunt he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one
crowning fact above mentioned however flattering it might be to those
hopes nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his
unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest

now the pequod had sailed from nantucket at the very beginning of the
season-on-the-line no possible endeavor then could enable her commander
to make the great passage southwards double cape horn and then running
down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial pacific in time
to cruise there therefore he must wait for the next ensuing season
yet the premature hour of the pequod's sailing had perhaps been
correctly selected by ahab with a view to this very complexion of
things because an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days
and nights was before him an interval which instead of impatiently
enduring ashore he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt if by chance
the white whale spending his vacation in seas far remote from his
periodical feeding-grounds should turn up his wrinkled brow off the
persian gulf or in the bengal bay or china seas or in any other
waters haunted by his race so that monsoons pampas nor-westers
harmattans trades any wind but the levanter and simoon might
blow moby dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the pequod's
circumnavigating wake

but granting all this yet regarded discreetly and coolly seems it not
but a mad idea this that in the broad boundless ocean one solitary
whale even if encountered should be thought capable of individual
recognition from his hunter even as a white-bearded mufti in the
thronged thoroughfares of constantinople yes for the peculiar
snow-white brow of moby dick and his snow-white hump could not but
be unmistakable and have i not tallied the whale ahab would mutter
to himself as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he
would throw himself back in reveries tallied him and shall he escape
his broad fins are bored and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear and
here his mad mind would run on in a breathless race till a weariness
and faintness of pondering came over him and in the open air of the
deck he would seek to recover his strength ah god what trances
of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved
revengeful desire he sleeps with clenched hands and wakes with his own
bloody nails in his palms

often when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid
dreams of the night which resuming his own intense thoughts through
the day carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies and whirled them
round and round and round in his blazing brain till the very throbbing
of his life-spot became insufferable anguish and when as was sometimes
the case these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its
base and a chasm seemed opening in him from which forked flames and
lightnings shot up and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among
them when this hell in himself yawned beneath him a wild cry would be
heard through the ship and with glaring eyes ahab would burst from his
state room as though escaping from a bed that was on fire yet these
perhaps instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent
weakness or fright at his own resolve were but the plainest tokens
of its intensity for at such times crazy ahab the scheming
unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale this ahab that had
gone to his hammock was not the agent that so caused him to burst from
it in horror again the latter was the eternal living principle or
soul in him and in sleep being for the time dissociated from the
characterizing mind which at other times employed it for its outer
vehicle or agent it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching
contiguity of the frantic thing of which for the time it was no
longer an integral but as the mind does not exist unless leagued with
the soul therefore it must have been that in ahab's case yielding up
all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose that purpose
by its own sheer inveteracy of will forced itself against gods and
devils into a kind of self-assumed independent being of its own nay
could grimly live and burn while the common vitality to which it was
conjoined fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth
therefore the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes when
what seemed ahab rushed from his room was for the time but a vacated
thing a formless somnambulistic being a ray of living light to be
sure but without an object to colour and therefore a blankness in
itself god help thee old man thy thoughts have created a creature
in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a prometheus a
vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature
he creates



chapter the affidavit


so far as what there may be of a narrative in this book and indeed as
indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars
in the habits of sperm whales the foregoing chapter in its earlier
part is as important a one as will be found in this volume but the
leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly
enlarged upon in order to be adequately understood and moreover to
take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire
subject may induce in some minds as to the natural verity of the main
points of this affair

i care not to perform this part of my task methodically but shall
be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of
items practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman and from these
citations i take it the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of
itself

first i have personally known three instances where a whale after
receiving a harpoon has effected a complete escape and after an
interval in one instance of three years has been again struck by
the same hand and slain when the two irons both marked by the same
private cypher have been taken from the body in the instance where
three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons and i
think it may have been something more than that the man who darted
them happening in the interval to go in a trading ship on a voyage to
africa went ashore there joined a discovery party and penetrated far
into the interior where he travelled for a period of nearly two years
often endangered by serpents savages tigers poisonous miasmas
with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of
unknown regions meanwhile the whale he had struck must also have
been on its travels no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe
brushing with its flanks all the coasts of africa but to no purpose
this man and this whale again came together and the one vanquished the
other i say i myself have known three instances similar to this that
is in two of them i saw the whales struck and upon the second attack
saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them afterwards
taken from the dead fish in the three-year instance it so fell out
that i was in the boat both times first and last and the last time
distinctly recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale's
eye which i had observed there three years previous i say three years
but i am pretty sure it was more than that here are three instances
then which i personally know the truth of but i have heard of many
other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no
good ground to impeach

secondly it is well known in the sperm whale fishery however ignorant
the world ashore may be of it that there have been several memorable
historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at
distant times and places popularly cognisable why such a whale became
thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily
peculiarities as distinguished from other whales for however peculiar
in that respect any chance whale may be they soon put an end to his
peculiarities by killing him and boiling him down into a peculiarly
valuable oil no the reason was this that from the fatal experiences
of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about
such a whale as there did about rinaldo rinaldini insomuch that
most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their
tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea
without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance like some
poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man they
make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street lest if they
pursued the acquaintance further they might receive a summary thump for
their presumption

but not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity nay you may call it an ocean-wide renown not only was he
famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death
but he was admitted into all the rights privileges and distinctions of
a name had as much a name indeed as cambyses or caesar was it not so
o timor tom thou famed leviathan scarred like an iceberg who so long
did'st lurk in the oriental straits of that name whose spout was oft
seen from the palmy beach of ombay was it not so o new zealand jack
thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of
the tattoo land was it not so o morquan king of japan whose lofty
jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross
against the sky was it not so o don miguel thou chilian whale marked
like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back in plain
prose here are four whales as well known to the students of cetacean
history as marius or sylla to the classic scholar

but this is not all new zealand tom and don miguel after at various
times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels were
finally gone in quest of systematically hunted out chased and killed
by valiant whaling captains who heaved up their anchors with
that express object as much in view as in setting out through the
narragansett woods captain butler of old had it in his mind to capture
that notorious murderous savage annawon the headmost warrior of the
indian king philip

i do not know where i can find a better place than just here to make
mention of one or two other things which to me seem important as in
printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the
whole story of the white whale more especially the catastrophe for
this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full
as much bolstering as error so ignorant are most landsmen of some of
the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world that without
some hints touching the plain facts historical and otherwise of the
fishery they might scout at moby dick as a monstrous fable or still
worse and more detestable a hideous and intolerable allegory

first though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general
perils of the grand fishery yet they have nothing like a fixed vivid
conception of those perils and the frequency with which they recur
one reason perhaps is that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and
deaths by casualties in the fishery ever finds a public record at home
however transient and immediately forgotten that record do you suppose
that that poor fellow there who this moment perhaps caught by the
whale-line off the coast of new guinea is being carried down to the
bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan do you suppose that that
poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read
to-morrow at your breakfast no because the mails are very irregular
between here and new guinea in fact did you ever hear what might be
called regular news direct or indirect from new guinea yet i tell you
that upon one particular voyage which i made to the pacific among many
others we spoke thirty different ships every one of which had had a
death by a whale some of them more than one and three that had each
lost a boat's crew for god's sake be economical with your lamps and
candles not a gallon you burn but at least one drop of man's blood was
spilled for it

secondly people ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is
an enormous creature of enormous power but i have ever found that when
narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness
they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness when i
declare upon my soul i had no more idea of being facetious than moses
when he wrote the history of the plagues of egypt

but fortunately the special point i here seek can be established upon
testimony entirely independent of my own that point is this the sperm
whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful knowing and judiciously
malicious as with direct aforethought to stave in utterly destroy and
sink a large ship and what is more the sperm whale has done it

first in the year 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 manoeuvres which he made were necessary his
aspect was most horrible and such as indicated resentment and fury he
came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered and in
which we had struck three of his companions as if fired with revenge
for their sufferings again at all events the whole circumstances
taken together all happening before my own eyes and producing at the
time impressions in my mind of decided calculating mischief on the
part of the whale many of which impressions i cannot now recall
induce me to be satisfied that i am correct in my opinion

here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship during
a black night in an open boat when almost despairing of reaching any
hospitable shore the dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing the
fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest or dashed
upon hidden rocks with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful
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 he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack
of the animal


secondly the ship union also of nantucket was in the year 
totally lost off the azores by a similar onset but the authentic
particulars of this catastrophe i have never chanced to encounter
though from the whale hunters i have now and then heard casual allusions
to it

thirdly some eighteen or twenty years ago commodore j - then
commanding an american sloop-of-war of the first class happened to be
dining with a party of whaling captains on board a nantucket ship in
the harbor of oahu sandwich islands conversation turning upon whales
the commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength
ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present he peremptorily
denied for example that any whale could so smite his stout sloop-of-war
as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful very good but there
is more coming some weeks after the commodore set sail in this
impregnable craft for valparaiso but he was stopped on the way by a
portly sperm whale that begged a few moments confidential business
with him that business consisted in fetching the commodore's craft such
a thwack that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest
port to heave down and repair i am not superstitious but i consider
the commodore's interview with that whale as providential was not saul
of tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright i tell you the
sperm whale will stand no nonsense

i will now refer you to langsdorff's voyages for a little circumstance
in point peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof langsdorff you
must know by the way was attached to the russian admiral krusenstern's
famous discovery expedition in the beginning of the present century
captain langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter

by the thirteenth of may our ship was ready to sail and the next day
we were out in the open sea on our way to ochotsh the weather was very
clear and fine but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on
our fur clothing for some days we had very little wind it was not
till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up an
uncommon large whale the body of which was larger than the ship itself
lay almost at the surface of the water but was not perceived by any
one on board till the moment when the ship which was in full sail
was almost upon him so that it was impossible to prevent its striking
against him we were thus placed in the most imminent danger as this
gigantic creature setting up its back raised the ship three feet at
least out of the water the masts reeled and the sails fell altogether
while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck concluding
that we had struck upon some rock instead of this we saw the monster
sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity captain d'wolf
applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel
had received any damage from the shock but we found that very happily
it had escaped entirely uninjured

now the captain d'wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question is a new englander who after a long life of unusual
adventures as a sea-captain this day resides in the village of
dorchester near boston i have the honour of being a nephew of his i
have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in langsdorff
he substantiates every word the ship however was by no means a large
one a russian craft built on the siberian coast and purchased by my
uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home

in that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure so full too
of honest wonders the voyage of lionel wafer one of ancient dampier's
old chums i found a little matter set down so like that just quoted
from langsdorff that i cannot forbear inserting it here for a
corroborative example if such be needed

lionel it seems was on his way to john ferdinando as he calls
the modern juan fernandes in our way thither he says about four
o'clock in the morning when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues
from the main of america our ship felt a terrible shock which put our
men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where they were
or what to think but every one began to prepare for death and indeed
the shock was so sudden and violent that we took it for granted the
ship had struck against a rock but when the amazement was a little
over we cast the lead and sounded but found no ground the
suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages and
several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks captain davis who
lay with his head on a gun was thrown out of his cabin lionel then
goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake and seems to substantiate
the imputation by stating that a great earthquake somewhere about
that time did actually do great mischief along the spanish land but
i should not much wonder if in the darkness of that early hour of the
morning the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale vertically
bumping the hull from beneath

i might proceed with several more examples one way or another known to
me of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale in more
than one instance he has been known not only to chase the assailing
boats back to their ships but to pursue the ship itself and long
withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks the english ship
pusie hall can tell a story on that head and as for his strength
let me say that there have been examples where the lines attached to a
running sperm whale have in a calm been transferred to the ship and
secured there the whale towing her great hull through the water as a
horse walks off with a cart again it is very often observed that if
the sperm whale once struck is allowed time to rally he then acts
not so often with blind rage as with wilful deliberate designs of
destruction to his pursuers nor is it without conveying some eloquent
indication of his character that upon being attacked he will frequently
open his mouth and retain it in that dread expansion for several
consecutive minutes but i must be content with only one more and a
concluding illustration a remarkable and most significant one by which
you will not fail to see that not only is the most marvellous event in
this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day but that these
marvels like all marvels are mere repetitions of the ages so that for
the millionth time we say amen with solomon verily there is nothing new
under the sun

in the sixth christian century lived procopius a christian magistrate
of constantinople in the days when justinian was emperor and belisarius
general as many know he wrote the history of his own times a work
every way of uncommon value by the best authorities he has always been
considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian except in
some one or two particulars not at all affecting the matter presently
to be mentioned

now in this history of his procopius mentions that during the term
of his prefecture at constantinople a great sea-monster was captured
in the neighboring propontis or sea of marmora after having destroyed
vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty
years a fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be
gainsaid nor is there any reason it should be of what precise species
this sea-monster was is not mentioned but as he destroyed ships as
well as for other reasons he must have been a whale and i am strongly
inclined to think a sperm whale and i will tell you why for a long
time i fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the
mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it even now i am
certain that those seas are not and perhaps never can be in the
present constitution of things a place for his habitual gregarious
resort but further investigations have recently proved to me that in
modern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the
sperm whale in the mediterranean i am told on good authority that
on the barbary coast a commodore davis of the british navy found
the skeleton of a sperm whale now as a vessel of war readily passes
through the dardanelles hence a sperm whale could by the same route
pass out of the mediterranean into the propontis

in the propontis as far as i can learn none of that peculiar substance
called brit is to be found the aliment of the right whale but i have
every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale squid or
cuttle-fish lurks at the bottom of that sea because large creatures
but by no means the largest of that sort have been found at its
surface if then you properly put these statements together and
reason upon them a bit you will clearly perceive that according to all
human reasoning procopius's sea-monster that for half a century stove
the ships of a roman emperor must in all probability have been a sperm
whale



chapter surmises


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

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

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

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

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

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



chapter the mat-maker


it was a cloudy sultry afternoon the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters
queequeg and i were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat
for an additional lashing to our boat so still and subdued and yet
somehow preluding was all the scene and such an incantation of reverie
lurked in the air that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own
invisible self

i was the attendant or page of queequeg while busy at the mat as i
kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between
the long yarns of the warp using my own hand for the shuttle and as
queequeg standing sideways ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword
between the threads and idly looking off upon the water carelessly and
unthinkingly drove home every yarn i say so strange a dreaminess did
there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea only broken by
the intermitting dull sound of the sword that it seemed as if this were
the loom of time and i myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving
and weaving away at the fates there lay the fixed threads of the warp
subject to but one single ever returning unchanging vibration and
that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending
of other threads with its own this warp seemed necessity and here
thought i with my own hand i ply my own shuttle and weave my own
destiny into these unalterable threads meantime queequeg's impulsive
indifferent sword sometimes hitting the woof slantingly or crookedly
or strongly or weakly as the case might be and by this difference
in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final
aspect of the completed fabric this savage's sword thought i
which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof this
easy indifferent sword must be chance aye chance free will and
necessity nowise incompatible all interweavingly working together
the straight warp of necessity not to be swerved from its ultimate
course its every alternating vibration indeed only tending to that
free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads and
chance though restrained in its play within the right lines of
necessity and sideways in its motions directed by free will though
thus prescribed to by both chance by turns rules either and has the
last featuring blow at events


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

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

there she blows there there there she blows she blows

where-away

on the lee-beam about two miles off a school of them

instantly all was commotion

the sperm whale blows as a clock ticks with the same undeviating and
reliable uniformity and thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from
other tribes of his genus

there go flukes was now the cry from tashtego and the whales
disappeared

quick steward cried ahab time time

dough-boy hurried below glanced at the watch and reported the exact
minute to ahab

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

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



chapter the first lowering


the phantoms for so they then seemed were flitting on the other side
of the deck and with a noiseless celerity were casting loose the
tackles and bands of the boat which swung there this boat had always
been deemed one of the spare boats though technically called the
captain's on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter the
figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart with one white
tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips a rumpled chinese
jacket of black cotton funereally invested him with wide black trowsers
of the same dark stuff but strangely crowning this ebonness was a
glistening white plaited turban the living hair braided and coiled
round and round upon his head less swart in aspect the companions of
this figure were of that vivid tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to
some of the aboriginal natives of the manillas a race notorious for
a certain diabolism of subtilty and by some honest white mariners
supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the
water of the devil their lord whose counting-room they suppose to be
elsewhere

while yet the wondering ship's company were gazing upon these strangers
ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head all ready
there fedallah

ready was the half-hissed reply

lower away then d'ye hear shouting across the deck lower away
there i say

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

hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee when a fourth
keel coming from the windward side pulled round under the stern and
showed the five strangers rowing ahab who standing erect in the stern
loudly hailed starbuck stubb and flask to spread themselves widely
so as to cover a large expanse of water but with all their eyes again
riveted upon the swart fedallah and his crew the inmates of the other
boats obeyed not the command

captain ahab said starbuck

spread yourselves cried ahab give way all four boats thou flask
pull out more to leeward

aye aye sir cheerily cried little king-post sweeping round
his great steering oar lay back addressing his crew
there there there again there she blows right ahead boys lay
back

never heed yonder yellow boys archy

oh i don't mind'em sir said archy i knew it all before now
didn't i hear em in the hold and didn't i tell cabaco here of it what
say ye cabaco they are stowaways mr flask

pull pull my fine hearts-alive pull my children pull my little
ones drawlingly and soothingly sighed stubb to his crew some of whom
still showed signs of uneasiness why don't you break your backbones
my boys what is it you stare at those chaps in yonder boat tut they
are only five more hands come to help us never mind from where the
more the merrier pull then do pull never mind the brimstone devils
are good fellows enough so so there you are now that's the stroke
for a thousand pounds that's the stroke to sweep the stakes hurrah
for the gold cup of sperm oil my heroes three cheers men all hearts
alive easy easy don't be in a hurry don't be in a hurry why don't
you snap your oars you rascals bite something you dogs so so so
then softly softly that's it that's it long and strong give way
there give way the devil fetch ye ye ragamuffin rapscallions ye are
all asleep stop snoring ye sleepers and pull pull will ye pull
can't ye pull won't ye why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes
don't ye pull pull and break something pull and start your eyes out
here whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle every mother's son
of ye draw his knife and pull with the blade between his teeth that's
it that's it now ye do something that looks like it my steel-bits
start her start her my silver-spoons start her marling-spikes

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

in obedience to a sign from ahab starbuck was now pulling obliquely
across stubb's bow and when for a minute or so the two boats were
pretty near to each other stubb hailed the mate

mr starbuck larboard boat there ahoy a word with ye sir if ye
please

halloa returned starbuck turning round not a single inch as he
spoke still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew his face set
like a flint from stubb's

what think ye of those yellow boys sir

smuggled on board somehow before the ship sailed strong strong
boys in a whisper to his crew then speaking out loud again a sad
business mr stubb seethe her seethe her my lads but never mind
mr stubb all for the best let all your crew pull strong come what
will spring my men spring there's hogsheads of sperm ahead mr
stubb and that's what ye came for pull my boys sperm sperm's the
play this at least is duty duty and profit hand in hand

aye aye i thought as much soliloquized stubb when the boats
diverged as soon as i clapt eye on em i thought so aye and that's
what he went into the after hold for so often as dough-boy long
suspected they were hidden down there the white whale's at the bottom
of it well well so be it can't be helped all right give way men
it ain't the white whale to-day give way

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

meantime ahab out of hearing of his officers having sided the
furthest to windward was still ranging ahead of the other boats a
circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him those tiger
yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone like five
trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength which
periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst
boiler out of a mississippi steamer as for fedallah who was seen
pulling the harpooneer oar he had thrown aside his black jacket and
displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the
gunwale clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery
horizon while at the other end of the boat ahab with one arm like a
fencer's thrown half backward into the air as if to counterbalance any
tendency to trip ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in
a thousand boat lowerings ere the white whale had torn him all at once
the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed
while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked boat and
crew sat motionless on the sea instantly the three spread boats in the
rear paused on their way the whales had irregularly settled bodily
down into the blue thus giving no distantly discernible token of the
movement though from his closer vicinity ahab had observed it

every man look out along his oars cried starbuck thou queequeg
stand up

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

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

i can't see three seas off tip us up an oar there and let me on to
that

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

good a mast-head as any sir will you mount

that i will and thank ye very much my fine fellow only i wish you
fifty feet taller

whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the
boat the gigantic negro stooping a little presented his flat palm to
flask's foot and then putting flask's hand on his hearse-plumed head
and bidding him spring as he himself should toss with one dexterous
fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders and here was
flask now standing daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a
breastband to lean against and steady himself by

at any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous
habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect
posture in his boat even when pitched about by the most riotously
perverse and cross-running seas still more strange to see him giddily
perched upon the loggerhead itself under such circumstances but the
sight of little flask mounted upon gigantic daggoo was yet more curious
for sustaining himself with a cool indifferent easy unthought of
barbaric majesty the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously
rolled his fine form on his broad back flaxen-haired flask seemed
a snow-flake the bearer looked nobler than the rider though truly
vivacious tumultuous ostentatious little flask would now and then
stamp with impatience but not one added heave did he thereby give to
the negro's lordly chest so have i seen passion and vanity stamping the
living magnanimous earth but the earth did not alter her tides and her
seasons for that

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

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

all four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
water and air but it bade fair to outstrip them it flew on and on
as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the
hills

pull pull my good boys said starbuck in the lowest possible but
intensest concentrated whisper to his men while the sharp fixed glance
from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow almost seemed as two
visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses he did not say much
to his crew though nor did his crew say anything to him only the
silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his
peculiar whispers now harsh with command now soft with entreaty

how different the loud little king-post sing out and say something
my hearties roar and pull my thunderbolts beach me beach me on their
black backs boys only do that for me and i'll sign over to you my
martha's vineyard plantation boys including wife and children boys
lay me on lay me on o lord lord but i shall go stark staring mad
see see that white water and so shouting he pulled his hat from his
head and stamped up and down on it then picking it up flirted it far
off upon the sea and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's
stern like a crazed colt from the prairie

look at that chap now philosophically drawled stubb who with his
unlighted short pipe mechanically retained between his teeth at a
short distance followed after he's got fits that flask has fits
yes give him fits that's the very word pitch fits into em merrily
merrily hearts-alive pudding for supper you know merry's the word
pull babes pull sucklings pull all but what the devil are you
hurrying about softly softly and steadily my men only pull and
keep pulling nothing more crack all your backbones and bite your
knives in two that's all take it easy why don't ye take it easy i
say and burst all your livers and lungs

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

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

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

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

the dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more
visible owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows
flung upon the sea the jets of vapour no longer blended but tilted
everywhere to right and left the whales seemed separating their wakes
the boats were pulled more apart starbuck giving chase to three whales
running dead to leeward our sail was now set and with the still
rising wind we rushed along the boat going with such madness through
the water that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to
escape being torn from the 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 vapour shot up near by
something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us the whole
crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the
white curdling cream of the squall squall whale and harpoon had all
blended together and the whale merely grazed by the iron escaped

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

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

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

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



chapter the hyena


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

queequeg said i when they had dragged me the last man to the deck
and i was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water
queequeg my fine friend does this sort of thing often happen
without much emotion though soaked through just like me he gave me to
understand that such things did often happen

mr stubb said i turning to that worthy who buttoned up in his
oil-jacket was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain mr stubb i
think i have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met our chief
mate mr starbuck is by far the most careful and prudent i suppose
then that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy
squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion

certain i've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off cape
horn

mr flask said i turning to little king-post who was standing close
by you are experienced in these things and i am not will you tell
me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery mr flask for an
oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's
jaws

can't you twist that smaller said flask yes that's the law
i should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face
foremost ha ha the whale would give them squint for squint mind
that

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

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

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



chapter ahab's boat and crew fedallah


who would have thought it flask cried stubb if i had but one leg
you would not catch me in a boat unless maybe to stop the plug-hole
with my timber toe oh he's a wonderful old man

i don't think it so strange after all on that account said flask
if his leg were off at the hip now it would be a different thing
that would disable him but he has one knee and good part of the other
left you know

i don't know that my little man i never yet saw him kneel


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

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

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

now with the subordinate phantoms what wonder remained soon waned
away for in a whaler wonders soon wane besides now and then such
unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown
nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of
whalers and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway
creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks bits of wreck
oars whaleboats canoes blown-off japanese junks and what not that
beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin
to chat with the captain and it would not create any unsubduable
excitement in the forecastle

but be all this as it may certain it is that while the subordinate
phantoms soon found their place among the crew though still as it were
somehow distinct from them yet that hair-turbaned fedallah remained
a muffled mystery to the last whence he came in a mannerly world like
this by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be
linked with ahab's peculiar fortunes nay so far as to have some sort
of a half-hinted influence heaven knows but it might have been even
authority over him all this none knew but one cannot sustain
an indifferent air concerning fedallah he was such a creature as
civilized domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams and that but dimly but the like of whom now and then glide
among the unchanging asiatic communities especially the oriental isles
to the east of the continent those insulated immemorial unalterable
countries which even in these modern days still preserve much of the
ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal generations when the memory of
the first man was a distinct recollection and all men his descendants
unknowing whence he came eyed each other as real phantoms and asked of
the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end when though
according to genesis the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of
men the devils also add the uncanonical rabbins indulged in mundane
amours



chapter the spirit-spout


days weeks passed and under easy sail the ivory pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds that off the azores off the
cape de verdes on the plate so called being off the mouth of the
rio de la plata and the carrol ground an unstaked watery locality
southerly from st helena

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


the cabin-compass is called the tell-tale because without going to the
compass at the helm the captain while below can inform himself of the
course of the ship


terrible old man thought starbuck with a shudder sleeping in this
gale still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose



chapter the albatross


south-eastward from the cape off the distant crozetts a good cruising
ground for right whalemen a sail loomed ahead the goney albatross
by name as she slowly drew nigh from my lofty perch at the
fore-mast-head i had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro
in the far ocean fisheries a whaler at sea and long absent from home

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

ship ahoy have ye seen the white whale

but as the strange captain leaning over the pallid bulwarks was in the
act of putting his trumpet to his mouth it somehow fell from his hand
into the sea and the wind now rising amain he in vain strove to make
himself heard without it meantime his ship was still increasing the
distance between while in various silent ways the seamen of the pequod
were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first
mere mention of the white whale's name to another ship ahab for a
moment paused it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat
to board the stranger had not the threatening wind forbade but taking
advantage of his windward position he again seized his trumpet and
knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a nantucketer and
shortly bound home he loudly hailed ahoy there this is the pequod
bound round the world tell them to address all future letters to the
pacific ocean and this time three years if i am not at home tell them
to address them to 

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

swim away from me do ye murmured ahab gazing over into the water
there seemed but little in the words but the tone conveyed more of deep
helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced but
turning to the steersman who thus far had been holding the ship in the
wind to diminish her headway he cried out in his old lion voice up
helm keep her off round the world

round the world there is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings
but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct only through
numberless perils to the very point whence we started where those that
we left behind secure were all the time before us

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



chapter the gam


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

if two strangers crossing the pine barrens in new york state or the
equally desolate salisbury plain in england if casually encountering
each other in such inhospitable wilds these twain for the life of
them cannot well avoid a mutual salutation and stopping for a moment
to interchange the news and perhaps sitting down for a while
and resting in concert then how much more natural that upon the
illimitable pine barrens and salisbury plains of the sea two whaling
vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth off lone
fanning's island or the far away king's mills how much more natural
i say that under such circumstances these ships should not only
interchange hails but come into still closer more friendly and
sociable contact and especially would this seem to be a matter of
course in the case of vessels owned in one seaport and whose captains
officers and not a few of the men are personally known to each other
and consequently have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about

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

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

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

but look at the godly honest unostentatious hospitable sociable
free-and-easy whaler what does the whaler do when she meets another
whaler in any sort of decent weather she has a gam a thing so
utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name
even and if by chance they should hear of it they only grin at it and
repeat gamesome stuff about spouters and blubber-boilers and such
like pretty exclamations why it is that all merchant-seamen and also
all pirates and man-of-war's men and slave-ship sailors cherish such
a scornful feeling towards whale-ships this is a question it would be
hard to answer because in the case of pirates say i should like to
know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about
it it sometimes ends in uncommon elevation indeed but only at the
gallows and besides when a man is elevated in that odd fashion he has
no proper foundation for his superior altitude hence i conclude
that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman in that
assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on

but what is a gam you might wear out your index-finger running up and
down the columns of dictionaries and never find the word dr johnson
never attained to that erudition noah webster's ark does not hold it
nevertheless this same expressive word has now for many years been in
constant use among some fifteen thousand true born yankees certainly
it needs a definition and should be incorporated into the lexicon with
that view let me learnedly define it

gam noun a social meeting of two or more whaleships generally on a
cruising-ground when after exchanging hails they exchange visits by
boats crews the two captains remaining for the time on board of one
ship and the two chief mates on the other

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



chapter the town-ho's story


as told at the golden inn


the cape of good hope and all the watery region round about there is
much like some noted four corners of a great highway where you meet
more travellers than in any other part

it was not very long after speaking the goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman the town-ho was encountered she was manned
almost wholly by polynesians in the short gam that ensued she gave
us strong news of moby dick to some the general interest in the white
whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the town-ho's
story which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain
wondrous inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of god
which at times are said to overtake some men this latter circumstance
with its own particular accompaniments forming what may be called the
secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated never reached the ears
of captain ahab or his mates for that secret part of the story was
unknown to the captain of the town-ho himself it was the private
property of three confederate white seamen of that ship one of whom it
seems communicated it to tashtego with romish injunctions of secrecy
but the following night tashtego rambled in his sleep and revealed
so much of it in that way that when he was wakened he could not well
withhold the rest nevertheless so potent an influence did this thing
have on those seamen in the pequod who came to the full knowledge of
it and by such a strange delicacy to call it so were they governed in
this matter that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never
transpired abaft the pequod's main-mast interweaving in its proper
place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the
ship the whole of this strange affair i now proceed to put on lasting
record


the ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head
still used by whalemen in hunting the famous gallipagos terrapin


for my humor's sake i shall preserve the style in which i once narrated
it at lima to a lounging circle of my spanish friends one saint's eve
smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the golden inn of those
fine cavaliers the young dons pedro and sebastian were on the closer
terms with me and hence the interluding questions they occasionally
put and which are duly answered at the time

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

though no small passage was before her yet if the commonest chance
favoured he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way
because his pumps were of the best and being periodically relieved at
them those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free
never mind if the leak should double on her in truth well nigh the
whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes the
town-ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port
without the occurrence of the least fatality had it not been for the
brutal overbearing of radney the mate a vineyarder and the bitterly
provoked vengeance of steelkilt a lakeman and desperado from buffalo

lakeman buffalo pray what is a lakeman and where is buffalo
said don sebastian rising in his swinging mat of grass

on the eastern shore of our lake erie don but i crave your
courtesy may be you shall soon hear further of all that now
gentlemen in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships well-nigh as
large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old callao to far
manilla this lakeman in the land-locked heart of our america had yet
been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly
connected with the open ocean for in their interflowing aggregate
those grand fresh-water seas of ours erie and ontario and huron and
superior and michigan possess an ocean-like expansiveness with many
of the ocean's noblest traits with many of its rimmed varieties of
races and of climes they contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles
even as the polynesian waters do in large part are shored by two great
contrasting nations as the atlantic is they furnish long maritime
approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the east dotted
all round their banks here and there are frowned upon by batteries
and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty mackinaw they have heard the
fleet thunderings of naval victories at intervals they yield their
beaches to wild barbarians whose red painted faces flash from out
their peltry wigwams for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient
and unentered forests where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines
of kings in gothic genealogies those same woods harboring wild afric
beasts of prey and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes
to tartar emperors they mirror the paved capitals of buffalo and
cleveland as well as winnebago villages they float alike the
full-rigged merchant ship the armed cruiser of the state the steamer
and the beech canoe they are swept by borean and dismasting blasts as
direful as any that lash the salted wave they know what shipwrecks are
for out of sight of land however inland they have drowned full many
a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew thus gentlemen though
an inlander steelkilt was wild-ocean born and wild-ocean nurtured
as much of an audacious mariner as any and for radney though in his
infancy he may have laid him down on the lone nantucket beach to nurse
at his maternal sea though in after life he had long followed our
austere atlantic and your contemplative pacific yet was he quite as
vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman fresh
from the latitudes of buck-horn handled bowie-knives yet was this
nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits and this lakeman a
mariner who though a sort of devil indeed might yet by inflexible
firmness only tempered by that common decency of human recognition
which is the meanest slave's right thus treated this steelkilt had
long been retained harmless and docile at all events he had proved
so thus far but radney was doomed and made mad and steelkilt but
gentlemen you shall hear

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

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

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

espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
rest the lakeman affected not to notice him but unawed went on with
his gay banterings

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

damn your eyes what's that pump stopping for roared radney
pretending not to have heard the sailors talk thunder away at it

aye aye sir said steelkilt merry as a cricket lively boys
lively now and with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines
the men tossed their hats off to it and ere long that peculiar gasping
of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's
utmost energies

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

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

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

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

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

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

mr radney i will not obey you take that hammer away or look to
yourself but the predestinated mate coming still closer to him where
the lakeman stood fixed now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of
his teeth meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions
retreating not the thousandth part of an inch stabbing him in the eye
with the unflinching poniard of his glance steelkilt clenching
his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back told his
persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he steelkilt would
murder him but gentlemen the fool had been branded for the slaughter
by the gods immediately the hammer touched the cheek the next instant
the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head he fell on the hatch
spouting blood like a whale

ere the cry could go aft steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
mastheads they were both canallers

canallers cried don pedro we have seen many whale-ships in our
harbours but never heard of your canallers pardon who and what are
they

canallers don are the boatmen belonging to our grand erie canal you
must have heard of it

nay senor hereabouts in this dull warm most lazy and hereditary
land we know but little of your vigorous north

aye well then don refill my cup your chicha's very fine and
ere proceeding further i will tell ye what our canallers are for such
information may throw side-light upon my story

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

is that a friar passing said don pedro looking downwards into the
crowded plazza with humorous concern

well for our northern friend dame isabella's inquisition wanes in
lima laughed don sebastian proceed senor

a moment pardon cried another of the company in the name of all
us limeese i but desire to express to you sir sailor that we have by
no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present lima
for distant venice in your corrupt comparison oh do not bow and look
surprised you know the proverb all along this coast corrupt as
lima it but bears out your saying too churches more plentiful than
billiard-tables and for ever open and corrupt as lima so too
venice i have been there the holy city of the blessed evangelist st
mark st dominic purge it your cup thanks here i refill now you
pour out again

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

i see i see impetuously exclaimed don pedro spilling his chicha
upon his silvery ruffles no need to travel the world's one lima i
had thought now that at your temperate north the generations were cold
and holy as the hills but the story

i left off gentlemen where the lakeman shook the backstay hardly
had he done so when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the
four harpooneers who all crowded him to the deck but sliding down the
ropes like baleful comets the two canallers rushed into the uproar and
sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle others of the
sailors joined with them in this attempt and a twisted turmoil ensued
while standing out of harm's way the valiant captain danced up and down
with a whale-pike calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious
scoundrel and smoke him along to the quarter-deck at intervals he ran
close up to the revolving border of the confusion and prying into
the heart of it with his pike sought to prick out the object of his
resentment but steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them
all they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck where hastily
slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass
these sea-parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade

come out of that ye pirates roared the captain now menacing them
with a pistol in each hand just brought to him by the steward come
out of that ye cut-throats

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

will you promise not to touch us if we do demanded their
ringleader

turn to turn to i make no promise to your duty do you want to
sink the ship by knocking off at a time like this turn to and he
once more raised a pistol

sink the ship cried steelkilt aye let her sink not a man of us
turns to unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us what say
ye men turning to his comrades a fierce cheer was their response

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

turn to i make no promises turn to i say

look ye now cried the lakeman flinging out his arm towards him
there are a few of us here and i am one of them who have shipped
for the cruise d'ye see now as you well know sir we can claim our
discharge as soon as the anchor is down so we don't want a row it's
not our interest we want to be peaceable we are ready to work but we
won't be flogged

turn to roared the captain

steelkilt glanced round him a moment and then said i tell you what
it is now captain rather than kill ye and be hung for such a shabby
rascal we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us but till
you say the word about not flogging us we don't do a hand's turn

down into the forecastle then down with ye i'll keep ye there till
ye're sick of it down ye go

shall we cried the ringleader to his men most of them were against
it but at length in obedience to steelkilt they preceded him down
into their dark den growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave

as the lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks the captain
and his posse leaped the barricade and rapidly drawing over the slide
of the scuttle planted their group of hands upon it and loudly called
for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the
companionway

then opening the slide a little the captain whispered something
down the crack closed it and turned the key upon them ten in
number leaving on deck some twenty or more who thus far had remained
neutral

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

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

better turn to now said the captain with a heartless jeer

shut us up again will ye cried steelkilt

oh certainly said the captain and the key clicked

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

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

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

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

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

my wrist is sprained with ye he cried at last but there is still
rope enough left for you my fine bantam that wouldn't give up take
that gag from his mouth and let us hear what he can say for himself

for a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his
cramped jaws and then painfully twisting round his head said in a sort
of hiss what i say is this and mind it well if you flog me i murder
you

say ye so then see how ye frighten me and the captain drew off with
the rope to strike

best not hissed the lakeman

but i must and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke

steelkilt here hissed out something inaudible to all but the captain
who to the amazement of all hands started back paced the deck rapidly
two or three times and then suddenly throwing down his rope said i
won't do it let him go cut him down d'ye hear

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

you are a coward hissed the lakeman

so i am but take that the mate was in the very act of striking
when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm he paused and then pausing
no more made good his word spite of steelkilt's threat whatever that
might have been the three men were then cut down all hands were turned
to and sullenly worked by the moody seamen the iron pumps clanged as
before

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

but though the lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct he kept his own counsel at least till all
was over concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who
had stung him in the ventricles of his heart he was in radney the chief
mate's watch and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than
half way to meet his doom after the scene at the rigging he insisted
against the express counsel of the captain upon resuming the head
of his watch at night upon this and one or two other circumstances
steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge

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

what are you making there said a shipmate

what do you think what does it look like

like a lanyard for your bag but it's an odd one seems to me

yes rather oddish said the lakeman holding it at arm's length
before him but i think it will answer shipmate i haven't enough
twine have you any

but there was none in the forecastle

then i must get some from old rad and he rose to go aft

you don't mean to go a begging to him said a sailor

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

but gentlemen a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned yet complete revenge he had and without being the
avenger for by a mysterious fatality heaven itself seemed to step in
to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have
done

it was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second
day when they were washing down the decks that a stupid teneriffe man
drawing water in the main-chains all at once shouted out there she
rolls there she rolls jesu what a whale it was moby dick

moby dick cried don sebastian st dominic sir sailor but do
whales have christenings whom call you moby dick

a very white and famous and most deadly immortal monster don but
that would be too long a story

how how cried all the young spaniards crowding

nay dons dons nay nay i cannot rehearse that now let me get more
into the air sirs

the chicha the chicha cried don pedro our vigorous friend looks
faint fill up his empty glass

no need gentlemen one moment and i proceed now gentlemen
so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
ship forgetful of the compact among the crew in the excitement of the
moment the teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
his voice for the monster though for some little time past it had been
plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads all was now a phrensy
the white whale the white whale was the cry from captain mates
and harpooneers who undeterred by fearful rumours were all anxious
to capture so famous and precious a fish while the dogged crew eyed
askance and with curses the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass
that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun shifted and glistened like
a living opal in the blue morning sea gentlemen a strange fatality
pervades the whole career of these events as if verily mapped out
before the world itself was charted the mutineer was the bowsman of the
mate and when fast to a fish it was his duty to sit next him while
radney stood up with his lance in the prow and haul in or slacken
the line at the word of command moreover when the four boats were
lowered the mate's got the start and none howled more fiercely with
delight than did steelkilt as he strained at his oar after a stiff
pull their harpooneer got fast and spear in hand radney sprang to
the bow he was always a furious man it seems in a boat and now his
bandaged cry was to beach him on the whale's topmost back nothing
loath his bowsman hauled him up and up through a blinding foam that
blent two whitenesses together till of a sudden the boat struck as
against a sunken ledge and keeling over spilled out the standing mate
that instant as he fell on the whale's slippery back the boat righted
and was dashed aside by the swell while radney was tossed over into the
sea on the other flank of the whale he struck out through the spray
and for an instant was dimly seen through that veil wildly seeking to
remove himself from the eye of moby dick but the whale rushed round
in a sudden maelstrom seized the swimmer between his jaws and rearing
high up with him plunged headlong again and went down

meantime at the first tap of the boat's bottom the lakeman had
slackened the line so as to drop astern from the whirlpool calmly
looking on he thought his own thoughts but a sudden terrific
downward jerking of the boat quickly brought his knife to the line he
cut it and the whale was free but at some distance moby dick rose
again with some tatters of radney's red woollen shirt caught in the
teeth that had destroyed him all four boats gave chase again but the
whale eluded them and finally wholly disappeared

in good time the town-ho reached her port a savage solitary
place where no civilized creature resided there headed by the
lakeman all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted
among the palms eventually as it turned out seizing a large double
war-canoe of the savages and setting sail for some other harbor

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

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

what do you want of me cried the captain

where are you bound and for what are you bound demanded steelkilt
no lies

i am bound to tahiti for more men

very good let me board you a moment i come in peace with that he
leaped from the canoe swam to the boat and climbing the gunwale stood
face to face with the captain

cross your arms sir throw back your head now repeat after me
as soon as steelkilt leaves me i swear to beach this boat on yonder
island and remain there six days if i do not may lightning 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-fe's in lima now said one of the company
to another i fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy
let us withdraw more out of the moonlight i see no need of this

excuse me for running after you don sebastian but may i also beg
that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized evangelists
you can

this is the priest he brings you the evangelists said don sebastian
gravely returning with a tall and solemn figure

let me remove my hat now venerable priest further into the light
and hold the holy book before me that i may touch it

so help me heaven and on my honour the story i have told ye
gentlemen is in substance and its great items true i know it to be
true it happened on this ball i trod the ship i knew the crew i have
seen and talked with steelkilt since the death of radney



chapter of the monstrous pictures of whales


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

it may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest hindoo egyptian and grecian sculptures for
ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
panellings of temples the pedestals of statues and on shields
medallions cups and coins the dolphin was drawn in scales of
chain-armor like saladin's and a helmeted head like st george's ever
since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed not
only in most popular pictures of the whale but in many scientific
presentations of him

now by all odds the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to
be the whale's is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of elephanta
in india the brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of
that immemorial pagoda all the trades and pursuits every conceivable
avocation of man were prefigured ages before any of them actually came
into being no wonder then that in some sort our noble profession of
whaling should have been there shadowed forth the hindoo whale
referred to occurs in a separate department of the wall depicting the
incarnation of vishnu in the form of leviathan learnedly known as the
matse avatar but though this sculpture is half man and half whale so
as only to give the tail of the latter yet that small section of him is
all wrong it looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda than the
broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes

but go to the old galleries and look now at a great christian painter's
portrait of this fish for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian
hindoo it is guido's picture of perseus rescuing andromeda from the
sea-monster or whale where did guido get the model of such a strange
creature as that nor does hogarth in painting the same scene in his
own perseus descending make out one whit better the huge corpulence
of that hogarthian monster undulates on the surface scarcely drawing
one inch of water it has a sort of howdah on its back and its
distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling might be
taken for the traitors gate leading from the thames by water into the
tower then there are the prodromus whales of old scotch sibbald and
jonah's whale as depicted in the prints of old bibles and the cuts of
old primers what shall be said of these as for the book-binder's whale
winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor as
stamped and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both
old and new that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature
imitated i take it from the like figures on antique vases
though universally denominated a dolphin i nevertheless call this
book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced it was introduced by an old
italian publisher somewhere about the th 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 ad 
entitled a whaling voyage to spitzbergen in the ship jonas in the
whale peter peterson of friesland master in one of those plates the
whales like great rafts of logs are represented lying among ice-isles
with white bears running over their living backs in another plate the
prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular
flukes

then again there is an imposing quarto written by one captain colnett
a post captain in the english navy entitled a voyage round cape horn
into the south seas for the purpose of extending the spermaceti whale
fisheries in this book is an outline purporting to be a picture of
a physeter or spermaceti whale drawn by scale from one killed on the
coast of mexico august 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 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 bernard germain count de lacepede 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 he published a natural history of whales in which he
gives what he calls a picture of the sperm whale before showing that
picture to any nantucketer you had best provide for your summary
retreat from nantucket in a word frederick cuvier's sperm whale is not
a sperm whale but a squash of course he never had the benefit of
a whaling voyage such men seldom have but whence he derived that
picture who can tell perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor
in the same field desmarest got one of his authentic abortions that
is from a chinese drawing and what sort of lively lads with the pencil
those chinese are many queer cups and saucers inform us

as for the sign-painters whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers what shall be said of them they are generally
richard iii whales with dromedary humps and very savage breakfasting
on three or four sailor tarts that is whaleboats full of mariners
their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint

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

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

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



chapter of the less erroneous pictures of whales and the true
pictures of whaling scenes


in connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales i am strongly
tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of
them which are to be found in certain books both ancient and modern
especially in pliny purchas hackluyt harris cuvier etc but i pass
that matter by

i know of only four published outlines of the great sperm whale
colnett's huggins's frederick cuvier's and beale's in the previous
chapter colnett and cuvier have been referred to huggins's is far
better than theirs but by great odds beale's is the best all beale's
drawings of this whale are good excepting the middle figure in the
picture of three whales in various attitudes capping his second
chapter his frontispiece boats attacking sperm whales though no
doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men is
admirably correct and life-like in its general effect some of the sperm
whale drawings in j ross browne are pretty correct in contour but they
are wretchedly engraved that is not his fault though

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

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

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

who garnery the painter is or was i know not but my life for it he
was either practically conversant with his subject or else marvellously
tutored by some experienced whaleman the french are the lads for
painting action go and gaze upon all the paintings of europe and
where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion
on canvas as in that triumphal hall at versailles where the beholder
fights his way pell-mell through the consecutive great battles of
france where every sword seems a flash of the northern lights and the
successive armed kings and emperors dash by like a charge of crowned
centaurs not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery are these sea
battle-pieces of garnery

the natural aptitude of the french for seizing the picturesqueness of
things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings
they have of their whaling scenes with not one tenth of england's
experience in the fishery and not the thousandth part of that of the
americans they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only
finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of
the whale hunt for the most part the english and american whale
draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline
of things such as the vacant profile of the whale which so far as
picturesqueness of effect is concerned is about tantamount to sketching
the profile of a pyramid even scoresby the justly renowned right
whaleman after giving us a stiff full length of the greenland whale
and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises treats
us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks chopping knives
and grapnels and with the microscopic diligence of a leuwenhoeck
submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of
magnified arctic snow crystals i mean no disparagement to the excellent
voyager i honour him for a veteran but in so important a matter it
was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a
sworn affidavit taken before a greenland justice of the peace

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



chapter 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 ie what is called savagery
your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an iroquois i myself am a
savage owning no allegiance but to the king of the cannibals and ready
at any moment to rebel against him

now one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
hours is his wonderful patience of industry an ancient hawaiian
war-club or spear-paddle in its full multiplicity and elaboration of
carving is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a latin lexicon
for with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth that
miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved and it has
cost steady years of steady application

as with the hawaiian savage so with the white sailor-savage with the
same marvellous patience and with the same single shark's tooth of
his one poor jack-knife he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture not
quite as workmanlike but as close packed in its maziness of design
as the greek savage achilles's shield and full of barbaric spirit
and suggestiveness as the prints of that fine old dutch savage albert
durer

wooden whales or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of
the noble south sea war-wood are frequently met with in the forecastles
of american whalers some of them are done with much accuracy

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

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

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

nor when expandingly lifted by your subject can you fail to trace out
great whales in the starry heavens and boats in pursuit of them as
when long filled with thoughts of war the eastern nations saw armies
locked in battle among the clouds thus at the north have i chased
leviathan round and round the pole with the revolutions of the bright
points that first defined him to me and beneath the effulgent antarctic
skies i have boarded the argo-navis and joined the chase against the
starry cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of hydrus and the flying
fish

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



chapter brit


steering north-eastward from the crozetts we fell in with vast meadows
of brit the minute yellow substance upon which the right whale
largely feeds for leagues and leagues it undulated round us so that we
seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat

on the second day numbers of right whales were seen who secure from
the attack of a sperm whaler like the pequod with open jaws sluggishly
swam through the brit which adhering to the fringing fibres of that
wondrous venetian blind in their mouths was in that manner separated
from the water that escaped at the lip

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


that part of the sea known among whalemen as the brazil banks does
not bear that name as the banks of newfoundland do because of there
being shallows and soundings there but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
floating in those latitudes where the right whale is often chased


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

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

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

the first boat we read of floated on an ocean that with portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow
that same ocean rolls now that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships
of last year yea foolish mortals noah's flood is not yet subsided
two thirds of the fair world it yet covers

wherein differ the sea and the land that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other preternatural terrors rested upon the hebrews
when under the feet of korah and his company the live ground opened
and swallowed them up for ever yet not a modern sun ever sets but in
precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews

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

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

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


chapter squid


slowly wading through the meadows of brit the pequod still held on her
way north-eastward towards the island of java a gentle air impelling
her keel so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering
masts mildly waved to that languid breeze as three mild palms on a
plain and still at wide intervals in the silvery night the lonely
alluring jet would be seen

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

in the distance a great white mass lazily rose and rising higher and
higher and disentangling itself from the azure at last gleamed before
our prow like a snow-slide new slid from the hills thus glistening
for a moment as slowly it subsided and sank then once more arose
and silently gleamed it seemed not a whale and yet is this moby dick
thought daggoo again the phantom went down but on re-appearing once
more with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod the
negro yelled out there there again there she breaches right ahead
the white whale the white whale

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

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

the four boats were soon on the water ahab's in advance and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey soon it went down and while with
oars suspended we were awaiting its reappearance lo in the same
spot where it sank once more it slowly rose almost forgetting for
the moment all thoughts of moby dick we now gazed at the most wondrous
phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind
a vast pulpy mass furlongs in length and breadth of a glancing
cream-colour lay floating on the water innumerable long arms radiating
from its centre and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas as
if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach no perceptible
face or front did it have no conceivable token of either sensation or
instinct but undulated there on the billows an unearthly formless
chance-like apparition of life

as with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again starbuck still
gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk with a wild voice
exclaimed almost rather had i seen moby dick and fought him than to
have seen thee thou white ghost

what was it sir said flask

the great live squid which they say few whale-ships ever beheld and
returned to their ports to tell of it

but ahab said nothing turning his boat he sailed back to the vessel
the rest as silently following

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

there seems some ground to imagine that the great kraken of bishop
pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into squid the manner in
which the bishop describes it as alternately rising and sinking with
some other particulars he narrates in all this the two correspond
but much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he
assigns it

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



chapter 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
vapoured with tar not impregnated with it as in the case of ordinary
ropes for while tar as ordinarily used makes the hemp more pliable to
the rope-maker and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the
sailor for common ship use yet not only would the ordinary quantity
too much stiffen the whale-line for the close 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 aesthetics in all things is much more
handsome and becoming to the boat than hemp hemp is a dusky dark
fellow a sort of indian but manilla is as a golden-haired circassian
to behold

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

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

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

before lowering the boat for the chase the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub and passing round the loggerhead there is again
carried forward the entire length of the boat resting crosswise upon
the loom or handle of every man's oar so that it jogs against his wrist
in rowing and also passing between the men as they alternately sit at
the opposite gunwales to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme
pointed prow of the boat where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a
common quill prevents it from slipping out from the chocks it hangs
in a slight festoon over the bows and is then passed inside the boat
again and some ten or twenty fathoms called box-line being coiled
upon the box in the bows it continues its way to the gunwale still a
little further aft and is then attached to the short-warp the rope
which is immediately connected with the harpoon but previous to that
connexion the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious
to detail

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

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

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



chapter 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 vapoury
jet the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm
afternoon but that pipe poor whale was thy last as if struck by some
enchanter's wand the sleepy 
ship and every sleeper in it all at once
started into wakefulness and more than a score of voices from all parts
of the vessel simultaneously with the three notes from aloft shouted
forth the 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 honour
of the capture it was obvious now that the whale had at length become
aware of his pursuers all silence of cautiousness was therefore no
longer of use paddles were dropped and oars came loudly into play and
still puffing at his pipe stubb cheered on his crew to the assault

yes a mighty change had come over the fish all alive to his jeopardy
he was going head out that part obliquely projecting from the mad
yeast which he brewed


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


start her start her my men don't hurry yourselves take plenty of
time but start her start her like thunder-claps that's all cried
stubb spluttering out the smoke as he spoke start her now give em
the long and strong stroke tashtego start her tash my boy start
her all but keep cool keep cool cucumbers is the word easy
easy only start her like grim death and grinning devils and raise the
buried dead perpendicular out of their graves boys that's all start
her

woo-hoo wa-hee screamed the gay-header in reply raising some
old war-whoop to the skies as every oarsman in the strained boat
involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
which the eager indian gave

but his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild kee-hee
kee-hee yelled daggoo straining forwards and backwards on his seat
like a pacing tiger in his cage

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

wet the line wet the line cried stubb to the tub oarsman him seated
by the tub who snatching off his hat dashed sea-water into it more
turns were taken so that the line began holding its place the boat now
flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins stubb and tashtego
here changed places stem for stern a staggering business truly in that
rocking commotion


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


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

haul in haul in cried stubb to the bowsman and facing round
towards the whale all hands began pulling the boat up to him while yet
the boat was being towed on soon ranging up by his flank stubb firmly
planting his knee in the clumsy cleat darted dart after dart into the
flying fish at the word of command the boat alternately sterning
out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow and then ranging up for
another fling

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

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

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

he's dead mr stubb said daggoo

yes both pipes smoked out and withdrawing his own from his mouth
stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water and for a moment stood
thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made



chapter the dart


a word concerning an incident in the last chapter

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

again if the dart be successful then at the second critical instant
that is when the whale starts to run the boatheader and harpooneer
likewise start to running fore and aft to the imminent jeopardy of
themselves and every one else it is then they change places and
the headsman the chief officer of the little craft takes his proper
station in the bows of the boat

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

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



chapter the crotch


out of the trunk the branches grow out of them the twigs so in
productive subjects grow the chapters

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

but these two harpoons each by its own cord are both connected with
the line the object being this to dart them both if possible one
instantly after the other into the same whale so that if in the coming
drag one should draw out the other may still retain a hold it is a
doubling of the chances but it very often happens that owing to the
instantaneous violent convulsive running of the whale upon receiving
the first iron it becomes impossible for the harpooneer however
lightning-like in his movements to pitch the second iron into him
nevertheless as the second iron is already connected with the line
and the line is running hence that weapon must at all events be
anticipatingly tossed out of the boat somehow and somewhere else the
most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands tumbled into the water
it accordingly is in such cases the spare coils of box line mentioned
in a preceding chapter making this feat in most instances prudently
practicable but this critical act is not always unattended with the
saddest and most fatal casualties

furthermore you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard it thenceforth becomes a dangling sharp-edged terror
skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale entangling the lines
or cutting them and making a prodigious sensation in all directions
nor in general is it possible to secure it again until the whale is
fairly captured and a corpse

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



chapter stubb's supper


stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship it was
a calm so forming a tandem of three boats we commenced the slow
business of towing the trophy to the pequod and now as we eighteen men
with our thirty-six arms and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers
slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert sluggish corpse in the
sea and it seemed hardly to budge at all except at long intervals
good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we
moved for upon the great canal of hang-ho or whatever they call
it in china four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky
freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour but this grand argosy we
towed heavily forged along as if laden with pig-lead in bulk

darkness came on but three lights up and down in the pequod's
main-rigging dimly guided our way till drawing nearer we saw ahab
dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks vacantly eyeing
the heaving whale for a moment he issued the usual orders for securing
it for the night and then handing his lantern to a seaman went his way
into the cabin and did not come forward again until morning

though in overseeing the pursuit of this whale captain ahab had
evinced his customary activity to call it so yet now that the creature
was dead some vague dissatisfaction or impatience or despair seemed
working in him as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that
moby dick was yet to be slain and though a thousand other whales were
brought to his ship all that would not one jot advance his grand
monomaniac object very soon you would have thought from the sound on
the pequod's decks that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in
the deep for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck and thrust
rattling out of the port-holes but by those clanking links the vast
corpse itself not the ship is to be moored tied by the head to the
stern and by the tail to the bows the whale now lies with its black
hull close to the vessel's and seen through the darkness of the night
which obscured the spars and rigging aloft the two ship and whale
seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks whereof one reclines while
the other remains standing


a little item may as well be related here the strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside
is by the flukes or tail and as from its greater density that part
is relatively heavier than any other excepting the side-fins its
flexibility even in death causes it to sink low beneath the surface so
that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat in order to
put the chain round it but this difficulty is ingeniously overcome a
small strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end and
a weight in its middle while the other end is secured to the ship by
adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side
of the mass so that now having girdled the whale the chain is readily
made to follow suit and being slipped along the body is at last locked
fast round the smallest part of the tail at the point of junction with
its broad flukes or lobes


if moody ahab was now all quiescence at least so far as could be known
on deck stubb his second mate flushed with conquest betrayed an
unusual but still good-natured excitement such an unwonted bustle was
he in that the staid starbuck his official superior quietly resigned
to him for the time the sole management of affairs one small helping
cause of all this liveliness in stubb was soon made strangely manifest
stubb was a high liver he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale
as a flavorish thing to his palate

a steak a steak ere i sleep you daggoo overboard you go and cut
me one from his small

here be it known that though these wild fishermen do not as a general
thing and according to the great military maxim make the enemy defray
the current expenses of the war at least before realizing the proceeds
of the voyage yet now and then you find some of these nantucketers
who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the sperm whale
designated by stubb comprising the tapering extremity of the body

about midnight that steak was cut and cooked and lighted by two
lanterns of sperm oil stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper
at the capstan-head as if that capstan were a sideboard nor was stubb
the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night mingling their mumblings
with his own mastications thousands on thousands of sharks swarming
round the dead leviathan smackingly feasted on its fatness the few
sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping
of their tails against the hull within a few inches of the sleepers
hearts peering over the side you could just see them as before you
heard them wallowing in the sullen black waters and turning over on
their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the
bigness of a human head this particular feat of the shark seems all
but miraculous how at such an apparently unassailable surface they
contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls remains a part of the
universal problem of all things the mark they thus leave on the whale
may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking
for a screw

though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight sharks
will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks like hungry dogs
round a table where red meat is being carved ready to bolt down
every killed man that is tossed to them and though while the valiant
butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's
live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled the sharks
also with their jewel-hilted mouths are quarrelsomely carving away
under the table at the dead meat and though were you to turn the whole
affair upside down it would still be pretty much the same thing that
is to say a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties and
though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships
crossing the atlantic systematically trotting alongside to be handy in
case a parcel is to be carried anywhere or a dead slave to be decently
buried and though one or two other like instances might be set down
touching the set terms places and occasions when sharks do most
socially congregate and most hilariously feast yet is there no
conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless
numbers and in gayer or more jovial spirits than around a dead sperm
whale moored by night to a whaleship at sea if you have never
seen that sight then suspend your decision about the propriety of
devil-worship and the expediency of conciliating the devil

but as yet stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was
going on so nigh him no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his
own epicurean lips

cook cook where's that old fleece he cried at length widening
his legs still further as if to form a more secure base for his supper
and at the same time darting his fork into the dish as if stabbing
with his lance cook you cook sail this way cook

the old black not in any very high glee at having been previously
roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour came shambling
along from his galley for like many old blacks there was something
the matter with his knee-pans which he did not keep well scoured like
his other pans this old fleece as they called him came shuffling and
limping along assisting his step with his tongs which after a clumsy
fashion were made of straightened iron hoops this old ebony floundered
along and in obedience to the word of command came to a dead stop on
the opposite side of stubb's sideboard when with both hands folded
before him and resting on his two-legged cane he bowed his arched back
still further over at the same time sideways inclining his head so as
to bring his best ear into play

cook said stubb rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
mouth don't you think this steak is rather overdone you've been
beating this steak too much cook it's too tender don't i always say
that to be good a whale-steak must be tough there are those sharks
now over the side don't you see they prefer it tough and rare what a
shindy they are kicking up cook go and talk to em tell em they are
welcome to help themselves civilly and in moderation but they must
keep quiet blast me if i can hear my own voice away cook and
deliver my message here take this lantern snatching one from his
sideboard now then go and preach to em

sullenly taking the offered lantern old fleece limped across the deck
to the bulwarks and then with one hand dropping his light low over the
sea so as to get a good view of his congregation with the other hand
he solemnly flourished his tongs and leaning far over the side in a
mumbling voice began addressing the sharks while stubb softly crawling
behind overheard all that was said

fellow-critters i'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
noise dare you hear stop dat dam smackin ob de lips massa stubb say
dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings but by gor you
must stop dat dam racket

cook here interposed stubb accompanying the word with a sudden slap
on the shoulder cook why damn your eyes you mustn't swear that way
when you're preaching that's no way to convert sinners cook

who dat den preach to him yourself sullenly turning to go

no cook go on go on

well den belubed fellow-critters 

right exclaimed stubb approvingly coax em to it try that and
fleece continued

do you is all sharks and by natur wery woracious yet i zay to you
fellow-critters dat dat woraciousness top dat dam slappin ob de
tail how you tink to hear spose you keep up such a dam slappin and
bitin dare

cook cried stubb collaring him i won't have that swearing talk to
em gentlemanly

once more the sermon proceeded

your woraciousness fellow-critters i don't blame ye so much for dat
is natur and can't be helped but to gobern dat wicked natur dat is de
pint you is sharks sartin but if you gobern de shark in you why den
you be angel for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned
now look here bred'ren just try wonst to be cibil a helping
yourselbs from dat whale don't be tearin de blubber out your
neighbour's mout i say is not one shark dood right as toder to dat
whale and by gor none on you has de right to dat whale dat whale
belong to some one else i know some o you has berry brig mout brigger
dan oders but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies so dat
de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid but to bit off de blubber
for de small fry ob sharks dat can't get into de scrouge to help
demselves

well done old fleece cried stubb that's christianity go on

no use goin on de dam willains will keep a scougin and slappin each
oder massa stubb dey don't hear one word no use a-preaching 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 the sea go fast to sleep on de coral and
can't hear noting at all no more for eber and eber

upon my soul i am about of the same opinion so give the benediction
fleece and i'll away to my supper

upon this fleece holding both hands over the fishy mob raised his
shrill voice and cried 

cussed fellow-critters kick up de damndest row as ever you can fill
your dam bellies till dey bust and den die

now cook said stubb resuming his supper at the capstan stand
just where you stood before there over against me and pay particular
attention

all dention said fleece again stooping over upon his tongs in the
desired position

well said stubb helping himself freely meanwhile i shall now go
back to the subject of this steak in the first place how old are you
cook

what dat do wid de teak said the old black testily

silence how old are you cook

bout ninety dey say he gloomily muttered

and you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years cook
and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak rapidly bolting another
mouthful at the last word so that morsel seemed a continuation of the
question where were you born cook

hind de hatchway in ferry-boat goin ober de roanoke

born in a ferry-boat that's queer too but i want to know what
country you were born in cook

didn't i say de roanoke country he cried sharply

no you didn't cook but i'll tell you what i'm coming to cook
you must go home and be born over again you don't know how to cook a
whale-steak yet

bress my soul if i cook noder one he growled angrily turning round
to depart

come back here cook here hand me those tongs now take that bit of
steak there and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be
take it i say holding the tongs towards him take it and taste it

faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment the old negro
muttered best cooked teak i eber taste joosy berry joosy

cook said stubb squaring himself once more do you belong to the
church

passed one once in cape-down said the old man sullenly

and you have once in your life passed a holy church in cape-town where
you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his
beloved fellow-creatures have you cook and yet you come here and
tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now eh said stubb where
do you expect to go to cook

go to bed berry soon he mumbled half-turning as he spoke

avast heave to i mean when you die cook it's an awful question now
what's your answer

when dis old brack man dies said the negro slowly changing his whole
air and demeanor he hisself won't go nowhere but some bressed angel
will come and fetch him

fetch him how in a coach and four as they fetched elijah and fetch
him where

up dere said fleece holding his tongs straight over his head and
keeping it there very solemnly

so then you expect to go up into our main-top do you cook when you
are dead but don't you know the higher you climb the colder it gets
main-top eh

didn't say dat t'all said fleece again in the sulks

you said up there didn't you and now look yourself and see where
your tongs are pointing but perhaps you expect to get into heaven by
crawling through the lubber's hole cook but no no cook you don't
get there except you go the regular way round by the rigging it's a
ticklish business but must be done or else it's no go but none of
us are in heaven yet drop your tongs cook and hear my orders do ye
hear hold your hat in one hand and clap t'other a'top of your heart
when i'm giving my orders cook what that your heart there that's
your gizzard aloft aloft that's it now you have it hold it there
now and pay attention

all dention said the old black with both hands placed as desired
vainly wriggling his grizzled head as if to get both ears in front at
one and the same time

well then cook you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad
that i have put it out of sight as soon as possible you see that don't
you well for the future when you cook another whale-steak for my
private table here the capstan i'll tell you what to do so as not to
spoil it by overdoing hold the steak in one hand and show a live coal
to it with the other that done dish it d'ye hear and now to-morrow
cook when we are cutting in the fish be sure you stand by to get
the tips of his fins have them put in pickle as for the ends of the
flukes have them soused cook there now ye may go

but fleece had hardly got three paces off when he was recalled

cook give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch
d'ye hear away you sail then halloa stop make a bow before you
go avast heaving again whale-balls for breakfast don't forget

wish by gor whale eat him stead of him eat whale i'm bressed if
he ain't more of shark dan massa shark hisself muttered the old man
limping away with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock



chapter the whale as a dish


that mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp and
like stubb eat him by his own light as you may say this seems so
outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and
philosophy of it

it is upon record that three centuries ago the tongue of the right
whale was esteemed a great delicacy in france and commanded large
prices there also that in henry viiith's time a certain cook of the
court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be
eaten with barbacued porpoises which you remember are a species of
whale porpoises indeed are to this day considered fine eating the
meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls and being well
seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls
the old monks of dunfermline were very fond of them they had a great
porpoise grant from the crown

the fact is that among his hunters at least the whale would by all
hands be considered a noble dish were there not so much of him but
when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet
long it takes away your appetite only the most unprejudiced of men
like stubb nowadays partake of cooked whales but the esquimaux are not
so fastidious we all know how they live upon whales and have rare
old vintages of prime old train oil zogranda one of their most famous
doctors recommends strips of blubber for infants as being exceedingly
juicy and nourishing and this reminds me that certain englishmen who
long ago were accidentally left in greenland by a whaling vessel that
these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of
whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber among
the dutch whalemen these scraps are called fritters which indeed
they greatly resemble being brown and crisp and smelling something
like old amsterdam housewives dough-nuts or oly-cooks when fresh they
have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly
keep his hands off

but what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish is his
exceeding richness he is the great prize ox of the sea too fat to be
delicately good look at his hump which would be as fine eating as
the buffalo's which is esteemed a rare dish were it not such a solid
pyramid of fat but the spermaceti itself how bland and creamy that
is like the transparent half-jellied white meat of a cocoanut in the
third month of its growth yet far too rich to supply a substitute for
butter nevertheless many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into
some other substance and then partaking of it in the long try
watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their
ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile many
a good supper have i thus made

in the case of a small sperm whale the brains are accounted a fine dish
the casket of the skull is broken into with an axe and the two plump
whitish lobes being withdrawn precisely resembling two large puddings
they are then mixed with flour and cooked into a most delectable mess
in flavor somewhat resembling calves head which is quite a dish among
some epicures and every one knows that some young bucks among the
epicures by continually dining upon calves brains by and by get to
have a little brains of their own so as to be able to tell a
calf's head from their own heads which indeed requires uncommon
discrimination and that is the reason why a young buck with an
intelligent looking calf's head before him is somehow one of the
saddest sights you can see the head looks a sort of reproachfully at
him with an et tu brute expression

it is not perhaps entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence
that appears to result in some way from the consideration before
mentioned ie 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 pate-de-foie-gras

but stubb he eats the whale by its own light does he and that is
adding insult to injury is it look at your knife-handle there my
civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef what is
that handle made of what but the bones of the brother of the very ox
you are eating and what do you pick your teeth with after devouring
that fat goose with a feather of the same fowl and with what quill did
the secretary of the society for the suppression of cruelty to ganders
formally indite his circulars it is only within the last month or two
that that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but steel
pens



chapter the shark massacre


when in the southern fishery a captured sperm whale after long and
weary toil is brought alongside late at night it is not as a general
thing at least customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting
him in for that business is an exceedingly laborious one is not very
soon completed and requires all hands to set about it therefore the
common usage is to take in all sail lash the helm a'lee and then send
every one below to his hammock till daylight with the reservation that
until that time anchor-watches shall be kept that is two and two for
an hour each couple the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see
that all goes well

but sometimes especially upon the line in the pacific this plan will
not answer at all because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather
round the moored carcase that were he left so for six hours say on a
stretch little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning
in most other parts of the ocean however where these fish do not so
largely abound their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably
diminished by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades
a procedure notwithstanding which in some instances only seems to
tickle them into still greater activity but it was not thus in the
present case with the pequod's sharks though to be sure any man
unaccustomed to such sights to have looked over her side that night
would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese and
those sharks the maggots in it

nevertheless upon stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was
concluded and when accordingly queequeg and a forecastle seaman
came on deck no small excitement was created among the sharks for
immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side and lowering
three lanterns so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid
sea these two mariners darting their long whaling-spades kept up an
incessant murdering of the sharks by striking the keen steel deep
into their skulls seemingly their only vital part but in the foamy
confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts the marksmen could not
always hit their mark and this brought about new revelations of the
incredible ferocity of the foe they viciously snapped not only at each
other's disembowelments but like flexible bows bent round and bit
their own till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by
the same mouth to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound nor was
this all it was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these
creatures a sort of generic or pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in
their very joints and bones after what might be called the individual
life had departed killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin
one of these sharks almost took poor queequeg's hand off when he tried
to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw


the whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel
is about the bigness of a man's spread hand and in general shape
corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named only its
sides are perfectly flat and its upper end considerably narrower than
the lower this weapon is always kept as sharp as possible and when
being used is occasionally honed just like a razor in its socket a
stiff pole from twenty to thirty feet long is inserted for a handle


queequeg no care what god made him shark said the savage agonizingly
lifting his hand up and down wedder fejee god or nantucket god but de
god wat made shark must be one dam ingin



chapter cutting in


it was a saturday night and such a sabbath as followed ex officio
professors of sabbath breaking are all whalemen the ivory pequod was
turned into what seemed a shamble every sailor a butcher you would
have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods

in the first place the enormous cutting tackles among other ponderous
things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green and which
no single man can possibly lift this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up
to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head the strongest
point anywhere above a ship's deck the end of the hawser-like rope
winding through these intricacies was then conducted to the windlass
and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale to
this block the great blubber hook weighing some one hundred pounds was
attached and now suspended in stages over the side starbuck and stubb
the mates armed with their long spades began cutting a hole in the
body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two
side-fins this done a broad semicircular line is cut round the hole
the hook is inserted and the main body of the crew striking up a wild
chorus now commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass when
instantly the entire ship careens over on her side every bolt in
her starts like the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather she
trembles quivers and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky more
and more she leans over to the whale while every gasping heave of the
windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows till at last
a swift startling snap is heard with a great swash the ship rolls
upwards and backwards from the whale and the triumphant tackle rises
into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the
first strip of blubber now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely
as the rind does an orange so is it stripped off from the body
precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it for the
strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale
rolling over and over in the water and as the blubber in one strip
uniformly peels off along the line called the scarf simultaneously
cut by the spades of starbuck and stubb the mates and just as fast as
it is thus peeled off and indeed by that very act itself it is all the
time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the
main-top the men at the windlass then cease heaving and for a moment
or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let
down from the sky and every one present must take good heed to dodge
it when it swings else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong
overboard

one of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long keen weapon
called a boarding-sword and watching his chance he dexterously slices
out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass into this
hole the end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked
so as to retain a hold upon the blubber in order to prepare for what
follows whereupon this accomplished swordsman warning all hands to
stand off once more makes a scientific dash at the mass and with a few
sidelong desperate lunging slicings severs it completely in twain
so that while the short lower part is still fast the long upper strip
called a blanket-piece swings clear and is all ready for lowering
the heavers forward now resume their song and while the one tackle is
peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale the other is slowly
slackened away and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway
right beneath into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room into
this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long
blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents
and thus the work proceeds the two tackles hoisting and lowering
simultaneously both whale and windlass heaving the heavers singing
the blubber-room gentlemen coiling the mates scarfing the ship
straining and all hands swearing occasionally by way of assuaging the
general friction



chapter the blanket


i have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject the skin of
the whale i have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen
afloat and learned naturalists ashore my original opinion remains
unchanged but it is only an opinion

the question is what and where is the skin of the whale already you
know what his blubber is that blubber is something of the consistence
of firm close-grained beef but tougher more elastic and compact and
ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness

now however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's
skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness yet in point
of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption because you
cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but
that same blubber and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal if
reasonably dense what can that be but the skin true from the unmarred
dead body of the whale you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely
thin transparent substance somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds
of isinglass only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin that is
previous to being dried when it not only contracts and thickens but
becomes rather hard and brittle i have several such dried bits which
i use for marks in my whale-books it is transparent as i said before
and being laid upon the printed page i have sometimes pleased myself
with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence at any rate it is
pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles as you may
say but what i am driving at here is this that same infinitely thin
isinglass substance which i admit invests the entire body of the
whale is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature as
the skin of the skin so to speak for it were simply ridiculous to say
that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender
than the skin of a new-born child but no more of this

assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale then when this skin
as in the case of a very large sperm whale will yield the bulk of one
hundred barrels of oil and when it is considered that in quantity or
rather weight that oil in its expressed state is only three fourths
and not the entire substance of the coat some idea may hence be had
of the enormousness of that animated mass a mere part of whose mere
integument yields such a lake of liquid as that reckoning ten barrels
to the ton you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters
of the stuff of the whale's skin

in life the visible surface of the sperm whale is not the least among
the many marvels he presents almost invariably it is all over obliquely
crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array
something like those in the finest italian line engravings but these
marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above
mentioned but seem to be seen through it as if they were engraved
upon the body itself nor is this all in some instances to the quick
observant eye those linear marks as in a veritable engraving but
afford the ground for far other delineations these are hieroglyphical
that is if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids
hieroglyphics then that is the proper word to use in the present
connexion by my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one sperm
whale in particular i was much struck with a plate representing the old
indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on
the banks of the upper mississippi like those mystic rocks too the
mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable this allusion to the indian
rocks reminds me of another thing besides all the other phenomena which
the exterior of the sperm whale presents he not seldom displays the
back and more especially his flanks effaced in great part of the
regular linear appearance by reason of numerous rude scratches
altogether of an irregular random aspect i should say that those new
england rocks on the sea-coast which agassiz imagines to bear the marks
of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs i should say
that those rocks must not a little resemble the sperm whale in this
particular it also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are
probably made by hostile contact with other whales for i have most
remarked them in the large full-grown bulls of the species

a word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of
the whale it has already been said that it is stript from him in long
pieces called blanket-pieces like most sea-terms this one is very
happy and significant for the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber
as in a real blanket or counterpane or still better an indian poncho
slipt over his head and skirting his extremity it is by reason of this
cosy blanketing of his body that the whale is enabled to keep himself
comfortable in all weathers in all seas times and tides what would
become of a greenland whale say in those shuddering icy seas of the
north if unsupplied with his cosy surtout true other fish are
found exceedingly brisk in those hyperborean waters but these be it
observed are your cold-blooded lungless fish whose very bellies
are refrigerators creatures that warm themselves under the lee of
an iceberg as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire
whereas like man the whale has lungs and warm blood freeze his blood
and he dies how wonderful is it then except after explanation that
this great monster to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it
is to man how wonderful that he should be found at home immersed
to his lips for life in those arctic waters where when seamen fall
overboard they are sometimes found months afterwards perpendicularly
frozen into the hearts of fields of ice as a fly is found glued
in amber but more surprising is it to know as has been proved by
experiment that the blood of a polar whale is warmer than that of a
borneo negro in summer

it does seem to me that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality and the rare virtue of thick walls and the rare
virtue of interior spaciousness oh man admire and model thyself after
the whale do thou too remain warm among ice do thou too live in
this world without being of it be cool at the equator keep thy blood
fluid at the pole like the great dome of st peter's and like the
great whale retain o man in all seasons a temperature of thine own

but how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things of erections
how few are domed like st peter's of creatures how few vast as the
whale



chapter the funeral


haul in the chains let the carcase go astern

the vast tackles have now done their duty the peeled white body of the
beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre though changed in hue
it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk it is still colossal
slowly it floats more and more away the water round it torn and
splashed by the insatiate sharks and the air above vexed with rapacious
flights of screaming fowls whose beaks are like so many insulting
poniards in the whale the vast white headless phantom floats further
and further from the ship and every rod that it so floats what seem
square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls augment the murderous
din for hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous
sight is seen beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky upon the fair
face of the pleasant sea wafted by the joyous breezes that great mass
of death floats on and on till lost in infinite perspectives

there's a most doleful and most mocking funeral the sea-vultures all in
pious mourning the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled
in life but few of them would have helped the whale i ween if
peradventure he had needed it but upon the banquet of his funeral they
most piously do pounce oh horrible vultureism of earth from which not
the mightiest whale is free

nor is this the end desecrated as the body is a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare espied by some timid man-of-war or
blundering discovery-vessel from afar when the distance obscuring the
swarming fowls nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in
the sun and the white spray heaving high against it straightway the
whale's unharming corpse with trembling fingers is set down in the
log shoals rocks and breakers hereabouts beware and for years
afterwards perhaps ships shun the place leaping over it as silly
sheep leap over a vacuum because their leader originally leaped there
when a stick was held there's your law of precedents there's your
utility of traditions there's the story of your obstinate survival of
old beliefs never bottomed on the earth and now not even hovering in
the air there's orthodoxy

thus while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror
to his foes in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a
world

are you a believer in ghosts my friend there are other ghosts than
the cock-lane one and far deeper men than doctor johnson who believe in
them



chapter the sphynx


it should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping
the body of the leviathan he was beheaded now the beheading of the
sperm whale is a scientific anatomical feat upon which experienced
whale surgeons very much pride themselves and not without reason

consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck
on the contrary where his head and body seem to join there in that
very place is the thickest part of him remember also that the
surgeon must operate from above some eight or ten feet intervening
between him and his subject and that subject almost hidden in a
discoloured rolling and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea bear
in mind too that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many
feet deep in the flesh and in that subterraneous manner without so
much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus
made he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent interdicted parts
and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion
into the skull do you not marvel then at stubb's boast that he
demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale

when first severed the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable
till the body is stripped that done if it belong to a small whale
it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of but with a full
grown leviathan this is impossible for the sperm whale's head embraces
nearly one third of his entire bulk and completely to suspend such a
burden as that even by the immense tackles of a whaler this were as
vain a thing as to attempt weighing a dutch barn in jewellers scales

the pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped the head was
hoisted against the ship's side about half way out of the sea so that
it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element and there
with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it by reason of the
enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head and every yard-arm
on that side projecting like a crane over the waves there that
blood-dripping head hung to the pequod's waist like the giant
holofernes's from the girdle of judith

when this last task was accomplished it was noon and the seamen went
below to their dinner silence reigned over the before tumultuous but
now deserted deck an intense copper calm like a universal yellow
lotus was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon
the sea

a short space elapsed and up into this noiselessness came ahab alone
from his cabin taking a few turns on the quarter-deck he paused to
gaze over the side then slowly getting into the main-chains he
took stubb's long spade still remaining there after the whale's
decapitation and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended
mass placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm and so stood
leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head

it was a black and hooded head and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm it seemed the sphynx's in the desert speak thou vast
and venerable head muttered ahab which though ungarnished with a
beard yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses speak mighty head
and tell us the secret thing that is in thee of all divers thou hast
dived the deepest that head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
moved amid this world's foundations where unrecorded names and navies
rust and untold hopes and anchors rot where in her murderous hold this
frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned there
in that awful water-land there was thy most familiar home thou hast
been where bell or diver never went hast slept by many a sailor's side
where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down thou
saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship heart
to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave true to each other when
heaven seemed false to them thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed
by pirates from the midnight deck for hours he fell into the deeper
midnight of the insatiate maw and his murderers still sailed on
unharmed while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that
would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched longing arms o
head thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of
abraham and not one syllable is thine

sail ho cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head

aye well now that's cheering cried ahab suddenly erecting
himself while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow
that lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better
man where away

three points on the starboard bow sir and bringing down her breeze to
us

better and better man would now st paul would come along that way
and to my breezelessness bring his breeze o nature and o soul of man
how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest
atom stirs or lives on matter but has its cunning duplicate in mind



chapter the jeroboam's story


hand in hand ship and breeze blew on but the breeze came faster than
the ship and soon the pequod began to rock

by and by through the glass the stranger's boats and manned mast-heads
proved her a whale-ship but as she was so far to windward and shooting
by apparently making a passage to some other ground the pequod could
not hope to reach her so the signal was set to see what response would
be made

here be it said that like the vessels of military marines the ships of
the american whale fleet have each a private signal all which signals
being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels
attached every captain is provided with it thereby the whale
commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean even at
considerable distances and with no small facility

the pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's setting
her own which proved the ship to be the jeroboam of nantucket squaring
her yards she bore down ranged abeam under the pequod's lee and
lowered a boat it soon drew nigh but as the side-ladder was being
rigged by starbuck's order to accommodate the visiting captain the
stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's stern in token
of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary it turned out that
the jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board and that mayhew her
captain was fearful of infecting the pequod's company for though
himself and boat's crew remained untainted and though his ship was half
a rifle-shot off and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing
between yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the
land he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the
pequod

but this did by no means prevent all communications preserving an
interval of some few yards between itself and the ship the jeroboam's
boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the
pequod as she heavily forged through the sea for by this time it blew
very fresh with her main-topsail aback though indeed at times by
the sudden onset of a large rolling wave the boat would be pushed some
way ahead but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings
again subject to this and other the like interruptions now and then a
conversation was sustained between the two parties but at intervals not
without still another interruption of a very different sort

pulling an oar in the jeroboam's boat was a man of a singular
appearance even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities
make up all totalities he was a small short youngish man sprinkled
all over his face with freckles and wearing redundant yellow hair a
long-skirted cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped
him the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists a
deep settled fanatic delirium was in his eyes

so soon as this figure had been first descried stubb had
exclaimed that's he that's he the long-togged scaramouch the
town-ho's company told us of stubb here alluded to a strange story
told of the jeroboam and a certain man among her crew some time
previous when the pequod spoke the town-ho according to this account
and what was subsequently learned it seemed that the scaramouch in
question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the
jeroboam his story was this

he had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of neskyeuna
shakers where he had been a great prophet in their cracked secret
meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a
trap-door announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial which he
carried in his vest-pocket but which instead of containing gunpowder
was supposed to be charged with laudanum a strange apostolic whim
having seized him he had left neskyeuna for nantucket where with
that cunning peculiar to craziness he assumed a steady common-sense
exterior and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the
jeroboam's whaling voyage they engaged him but straightway upon
the ship's getting out of sight of land his insanity broke out in a
freshet he announced himself as the archangel gabriel and commanded
the captain to jump overboard he published his manifesto whereby
he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and
vicar-general of all oceanica the unflinching earnestness with which he
declared these things the dark daring play of his sleepless excited
imagination and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium united
to invest this gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant
crew with an atmosphere of sacredness moreover they were afraid of
him as such a man however was not of much practical use in the ship
especially as he refused to work except when he pleased the incredulous
captain would fain have been rid of him but apprised that that
individual's intention was to land him in the first convenient port the
archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials devoting the ship
and all hands to unconditional perdition in case this intention was
carried out so strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew
that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if gabriel
was sent from the ship not a man of them would remain he was therefore
forced to relinquish his plan nor would they permit gabriel to be any
way maltreated say or do what he would so that it came to pass that
gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship the consequence of all
this was that the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and
mates and since the epidemic had broken out he carried a higher hand
than ever declaring that the plague as he called it was at his sole
command nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure
the sailors mostly poor devils cringed and some of them fawned before
him in obedience to his instructions sometimes rendering him personal
homage as to a god such things may seem incredible but however
wondrous they are true nor is the history of fanatics half so striking
in respect to the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself as
his measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others but
it is time to return to the pequod

i fear not thy epidemic man said ahab from the bulwarks to captain
mayhew who stood in the boat's stern come on board

but now gabriel started to his feet

think think of the fevers yellow and bilious beware of the horrible
plague

gabriel gabriel cried captain mayhew thou must either but
that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead and its seethings
drowned all speech

hast thou seen the white whale demanded ahab when the boat drifted
back

think think of thy whale-boat stoven and sunk beware of the horrible
tail

i tell thee again gabriel that but again the boat tore ahead as if
dragged by fiends nothing was said for some moments while a succession
of riotous waves rolled by which by one of those occasional caprices
of the seas were tumbling not heaving it meantime the hoisted sperm
whale's head jogged about very violently and gabriel was seen eyeing
it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to
warrant

when this interlude was over captain mayhew began a dark story
concerning moby dick not however without frequent interruptions from
gabriel whenever his name was mentioned and the crazy sea that seemed
leagued with him

it seemed that the jeroboam had not long left home when upon speaking
a whale-ship her people were reliably apprised of the existence of moby
dick and the havoc he had made greedily sucking in this intelligence
gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the white
whale in case the monster should be seen in his gibbering insanity
pronouncing the white whale to be no less a being than the shaker god
incarnated the shakers receiving the bible but when some year or two
afterwards moby dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads macey the
chief mate burned with ardour to encounter him and the captain himself
being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity despite all
the archangel's denunciations and forewarnings macey succeeded in
persuading five men to man his boat with them he pushed off and after
much weary pulling and many perilous unsuccessful onsets he at last
succeeded in getting one iron fast meantime gabriel ascending to
the main-royal mast-head was tossing one arm in frantic gestures and
hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants
of his divinity now while macey the mate was standing up in his
boat's bow and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting
his wild exclamations upon the whale and essaying to get a fair chance
for his poised lance lo a broad white shadow rose from the sea by its
quick fanning motion temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies
of the oarsmen next instant the luckless mate so full of furious
life was smitten bodily into the air and making a long arc in his
descent fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards not a
chip of the boat was harmed nor a hair of any oarsman's head but the
mate for ever sank

it is well to parenthesize here that of the fatal accidents in the
sperm-whale fishery this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any
sometimes nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated
oftener the boat's bow is knocked off or the thigh-board in which the
headsman stands is torn from its place and accompanies the body but
strangest of all is the circumstance that in more instances than one
when the body has been recovered not a single mark of violence is
discernible the man being stark dead

the whole calamity with the falling form of macey was plainly descried
from the ship raising a piercing shriek the vial the vial gabriel
called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the
whale this terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence
because his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically
fore-announced it instead of only making a general prophecy which any
one might have done and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the
wide margin allowed he became a nameless terror to the ship

mayhew having concluded his narration ahab put such questions to
him that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
intended to hunt the white whale if opportunity should offer to which
ahab answered aye straightway then gabriel once more started
to his feet glaring upon the old man and vehemently exclaimed with
downward pointed finger think think of the blasphemer dead and down
there beware of the blasphemer's end

ahab stolidly turned aside then said to mayhew captain i have
just bethought me of my letter-bag there is a letter for one of thy
officers if i mistake not starbuck look over the bag

every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships
whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed depends
upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans thus
most letters never reach their mark and many are only received after
attaining an age of two or three years or more

soon starbuck returned with a letter in his hand it was sorely tumbled
damp and covered with a dull spotted green mould in consequence
of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin of such a letter death
himself might well have been the post-boy

can'st not read it cried ahab give it me man aye aye it's but
a dim scrawl what's this as he was studying it out starbuck took a
long cutting-spade pole and with his knife slightly split the end to
insert the letter there and in that way hand it to the boat without
its coming any closer to the ship

meantime ahab holding the letter muttered mr har yes mr
harry a woman's pinny hand the man's wife i'll wager aye mr
harry macey ship jeroboam why it's macey and he's dead

poor fellow poor fellow and from his wife sighed mayhew but let
me have it

nay keep it thyself cried gabriel to ahab thou art soon going that
way

curses throttle thee yelled ahab captain mayhew stand by now to
receive it and taking the fatal missive from starbuck's hands he
caught it in the slit of the pole and reached it over towards the boat
but as he did so the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing the boat
drifted a little towards the ship's stern so that as if by magic the
letter suddenly ranged along with gabriel's eager hand he clutched it
in an instant seized the boat-knife and impaling the letter on it
sent it thus loaded back into the ship it fell at ahab's feet then
gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars and in
that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the pequod

as after this interlude the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket
of the whale many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
affair



chapter the monkey-rope


in the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale there
is much running backwards and forwards among the crew now hands are
wanted here and then again hands are wanted there there is no staying
in any one place for at one and the same time everything has to be done
everywhere it is much the same with him who endeavors the description
of the scene we must now retrace our way a little it was mentioned
that upon first breaking ground in the whale's back the blubber-hook
was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the
mates but how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook
get fixed in that hole it was inserted there by my particular friend
queequeg whose duty it was as harpooneer to descend upon the
monster's back for the special purpose referred to but in very many
cases circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the
whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded the
whale be it observed lies almost entirely submerged excepting the
immediate parts operated upon so down there some ten feet below the
level of the deck the poor harpooneer flounders about half on the
whale and half in the water as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill
beneath him on the occasion in question queequeg figured in the
highland costume a shirt and socks in which to my eyes at least
he appeared to uncommon advantage and no one had a better chance to
observe him as will presently be seen

being the savage's bowsman that is the person who pulled the bow-oar
in his boat the second one from forward it was my cheerful duty to
attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead
whale's back you have seen italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by
a long cord just so from the ship's steep side did i hold queequeg
down there in the sea by what is technically called in the fishery
a monkey-rope attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his
waist

it was a humorously perilous business for both of us for before we
proceed further it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
both ends fast to queequeg's broad canvas belt and fast to my narrow
leather one so that for better or for worse we two for the time were
wedded and should poor queequeg sink to rise no more then both usage
and honour demanded that instead of cutting the cord it should drag
me down in his wake so then an elongated siamese ligature united us
queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother nor could i any way get
rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed

so strongly and metaphysically did i conceive of my situation then that
while earnestly watching his motions i seemed distinctly to perceive
that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of
two that my free will had received a mortal wound and that another's
mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster
and death therefore i saw that here was a sort of interregnum in
providence for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an
injustice and yet still further pondering while i jerked him now
and then from between the whale and ship which would threaten to jam
him still further pondering i say i saw that this situation of mine
was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes only in most
cases he one way or other has this siamese connexion with a plurality
of other mortals if your banker breaks you snap if your apothecary by
mistake sends you poison in your pills you die true you may say
that by exceeding caution you may possibly escape these and the
multitudinous other evil chances of life but handle queequeg's
monkey-rope heedfully as i would sometimes he jerked it so that i came
very near sliding overboard nor could i possibly forget that do what i
would i only had the management of one end of it


the monkey-rope is found in all whalers but it was only in the pequod
that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together this improvement
upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than stubb
in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible
guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder


i have hinted that i would often jerk poor queequeg from between the
whale and the ship where he would occasionally fall from the incessant
rolling and swaying of both but this was not the only jamming jeopardy
he was exposed to unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the
night the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent
blood which began to flow from the carcass the rabid creatures swarmed
round it like bees in a beehive

and right in among those sharks was queequeg who often pushed them
aside with his floundering feet a thing altogether incredible were
it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale the otherwise
miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man

nevertheless it may well be believed that since they have such a
ravenous finger in the pie it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them
accordingly besides the monkey-rope with which i now and then jerked
the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed
a peculiarly ferocious shark he was provided with still another
protection suspended over the side in one of the stages tashtego
and daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen
whale-spades wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could
reach this procedure of theirs to be sure was very disinterested and
benevolent of them they meant queequeg's best happiness i admit but
in their hasty zeal to befriend him and from the circumstance that both
he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water
those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg
than a tail but poor queequeg i suppose straining and gasping there
with that great iron hook poor queequeg i suppose only prayed to his
yojo and gave up his life into the hands of his gods

well well my dear comrade and twin-brother thought i as i drew in
and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea what matters
it after all are you not the precious image of each and all of us men
in this whaling world that unsounded ocean you gasp in is life those
sharks your foes those spades your friends and what between sharks
and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril poor lad

but courage there is good cheer in store for you queequeg for now as
with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs
up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over
the side the steward advances and with a benevolent consolatory
glance hands him what some hot cognac no hands him ye gods hands
him a cup of tepid ginger and water

ginger do i smell ginger suspiciously asked stubb coming near
yes this must be ginger peering into the as yet untasted cup then
standing as if incredulous for a while he calmly walked towards the
astonished steward slowly saying ginger ginger and will you have
the goodness to tell me mr dough-boy where lies the virtue of ginger
ginger is ginger the sort of fuel you use dough-boy to kindle a fire
in this shivering cannibal ginger what the devil is ginger
sea-coal firewood lucifer matches tinder gunpowder what the
devil is ginger i say that you offer this cup to our poor queequeg
here

there is some sneaking temperance society movement about this
business he suddenly added now approaching starbuck who had just
come from forward will you look at that kannakin sir smell of it
if you please then watching the mate's countenance he added the
steward mr starbuck had the face to offer that calomel and jalap
to queequeg there this instant off the whale is the steward an
apothecary sir and may i ask whether this is the sort of bitters by
which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man

i trust not said starbuck it is poor stuff enough

aye aye steward cried stubb we'll teach you to drug a
harpooneer none of your apothecary's medicine here you want to poison
us do ye you have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder
us all and pocket the proceeds do ye

it was not me cried dough-boy it was aunt charity that brought the
ginger on board and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits but
only this ginger-jub so she called it

ginger-jub you gingerly rascal take that and run along with ye
to the lockers and get something better i hope i do no wrong mr
starbuck it is the captain's orders grog for the harpooneer on a
whale

enough replied starbuck only don't hit him again but 

oh i never hurt when i hit except when i hit a whale or something of
that sort and this fellow's a weazel what were you about saying sir

only this go down with him and get what thou wantest thyself

when stubb reappeared he came with a dark flask in one hand and a sort
of tea-caddy in the other the first contained strong spirits and was
handed to queequeg the second was aunt charity's gift and that was
freely given to the waves



chapter stubb and flask kill a right whale and then have a talk
over him


it must be borne in mind that all this time we have a sperm whale's
prodigious head hanging to the pequod's side but we must let it
continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it
for the present other matters press and the best we can do now for the
head is to pray heaven the tackles may hold

now during the past night and forenoon the pequod had gradually
drifted into a sea which by its occasional patches of yellow brit
gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of right whales a species of the
leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
anywhere near and though all hands commonly disdained the capture of
those inferior creatures and though the pequod was not commissioned to
cruise for them at all and though she had passed numbers of them near
the crozetts without lowering a boat yet now that a sperm whale
had been brought alongside and beheaded to the surprise of all the
announcement was made that a right whale should be captured that day if
opportunity offered

nor was this long wanting tall spouts were seen to leeward and two
boats stubb's and flask's were detached in pursuit pulling further
and further away they at last became almost invisible to the men at
the mast-head but suddenly in the distance they saw a great heap of
tumultuous white water and soon after news came from aloft that one or
both the boats must be fast an interval passed and the boats were in
plain sight in the act of being dragged right towards the ship by the
towing whale so close did the monster come to the hull that at
first it seemed as if he meant it malice but suddenly going down in a
maelstrom within three rods of the planks he wholly disappeared from
view as if diving under the keel cut cut was the cry from the
ship to the boats which for one instant seemed on the point of being
brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's side but having plenty
of line yet in the tubs and the whale not sounding very rapidly they
paid out abundance of rope and at the same time pulled with all their
might so as to get ahead of the ship for a few minutes the struggle was
intensely critical for while they still slacked out the tightened line
in one direction and still plied their oars in another the contending
strain threatened to take them under but it was only a few feet advance
they sought to gain and they stuck to it till they did gain it when
instantly a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the
keel as the strained line scraping beneath the ship suddenly rose
to view under her bows snapping and quivering and so flinging off its
drippings that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water
while the whale beyond also rose to sight and once more the boats were
free to fly but the fagged whale abated his speed and blindly altering
his course went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
him so that they performed a complete circuit

meantime they hauled more and more upon their lines till close
flanking him on both sides stubb answered flask with lance for
lance and thus round and round the pequod the battle went while the
multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the sperm whale's body
rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled thirstily drinking at every
new gash as the eager israelites did at the new bursting fountains that
poured from the smitten rock

at last his spout grew thick and with a frightful roll and vomit he
turned upon his back a corpse

while the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes
and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing some
conversation ensued between them

i wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard said
stubb not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so
ignoble a leviathan

wants with it said flask coiling some spare line in the boat's bow
did you never hear that the ship which but once has a sperm whale's
head hoisted on her starboard side and at the same time a right whale's
on the larboard did you never hear stubb that that ship can never
afterwards capsize

why not

i don't know but i heard that gamboge ghost of a fedallah saying so
and he seems to know all about ships charms but i sometimes think
he'll charm the ship to no good at last i don't half like that chap
stubb did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into
a snake's head stubb

sink him i never look at him at all but if ever i get a chance of a
dark night and he standing hard by the bulwarks and no one by look
down there flask pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of
both hands aye will i flask i take that fedallah to be the devil in
disguise do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been
stowed away on board ship he's the devil i say the reason why you
don't see his tail is because he tucks it up out of sight he carries
it coiled away in his pocket i guess blast him now that i think of
it he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots

he sleeps in his boots don't he he hasn't got any hammock but i've
seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging

no doubt and it's because of his cursed tail he coils it down do ye
see in the eye of the rigging

what's the old man have so much to do with him for

striking up a swap or a bargain i suppose

bargain about what

why do ye see the old man is hard bent after that white whale and
the devil there is trying to come round him and get him to swap away
his silver watch or his soul or something of that sort and then he'll
surrender moby dick

pooh stubb you are skylarking how can fedallah do that

i don't know flask but the devil is a curious chap and a wicked
one i tell ye why they say as how he went a sauntering into the
old flag-ship once switching his tail about devilish easy and
gentlemanlike and inquiring if the old governor was at home well he
was at home and asked the devil what he wanted the devil switching
his hoofs up and says i want john what for says the old
governor what business is that of yours says the devil getting
mad i want to use him take him says the governor and by the
lord flask if the devil didn't give john the asiatic cholera before
he got through with him i'll eat this whale in one mouthful but look
sharp ain't you all ready there well then pull ahead and let's get
the whale alongside

i think i remember some such story as you were telling said flask
when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
towards the ship but i can't remember where

three spaniards adventures of those three bloody-minded soladoes did
ye read it there flask i guess ye did

no never saw such a book heard of it though but now tell me
stubb do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now was
the same you say is now on board the pequod

am i the same man that helped kill this whale doesn't the devil live
for ever who ever heard that the devil was dead did you ever see
any parson a wearing mourning for the devil and if the devil has a
latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin don't you suppose he can
crawl into a porthole tell me that mr flask

how old do you suppose fedallah is stubb

do you see that mainmast there pointing to the ship well that's
the figure one now take all the hoops in the pequod's hold and string
along in a row with that mast for oughts do you see well that
wouldn't begin to be fedallah's age nor all the coopers in creation
couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough

but see here stubb i thought you a little boasted just now that you
meant to give fedallah a sea-toss if you got a good chance now if
he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to and if he is going
to live for ever what good will it do to pitch him overboard tell me
that

give him a good ducking anyhow

but he'd crawl back

duck him again and keep ducking him

suppose he should take it into his head to duck you though yes and
drown you what then

i should like to see him try it i'd give him such a pair of black eyes
that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin again for
a long while let alone down in the orlop there where he lives and
hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much damn the devil
flask so you suppose i'm afraid of the devil who's afraid of
him except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in
double-darbies as he deserves but lets him go about kidnapping
people aye and signed a bond with him that all the people the devil
kidnapped he'd roast for him there's a governor

do you suppose fedallah wants to kidnap captain ahab

do i suppose it you'll know it before long flask but i am going now
to keep a sharp look-out on him and if i see anything very suspicious
going on i'll just take him by the nape of his neck and say look
here beelzebub you don't do it and if he makes any fuss by the lord
i'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail take it to the capstan
and give him such a wrenching and heaving that his tail will come short
off at the stump do you see and then i rather guess when he finds
himself docked in that queer fashion he'll sneak off without the poor
satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs

and what will you do with the tail stubb

do with it sell it for an ox whip when we get home what else

now do you mean what you say and have been saying all along stubb

mean or not mean here we are at the ship

the boats were here hailed to tow the whale on the larboard side where
fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing
him

didn't i tell you so said flask yes you'll soon see this right
whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti's

in good time flask's saying proved true as before the pequod steeply
leaned over towards the sperm whale's head now by the counterpoise of
both heads she regained her even keel though sorely strained you may
well believe so when on one side you hoist in locke's head you go
over that way but now on the other side hoist in kant's and you come
back again but in very poor plight thus some minds for ever keep
trimming boat oh ye foolish throw all these thunder-heads overboard
and then you will float light and right

in disposing of the body of a right whale when brought alongside the
ship the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the
case of a sperm whale only in the latter instance the head is cut off
whole but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed and
hoisted on deck with all the well known black bone attached to what is
called the crown-piece but nothing like this in the present case
had been done the carcases of both whales had dropped astern and
the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair of
overburdening panniers

meantime fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head and ever
and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own
hand and ahab chanced so to stand that the parsee occupied his shadow
while if the parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to
blend with and lengthen ahab's as the crew toiled on laplandish
speculations were bandied among them concerning all these passing
things



chapter the sperm whale's head contrasted view


here now are two great whales laying their heads together let us
join them and lay together our own

of the grand order of folio leviathans the sperm whale and the right
whale are by far the most noteworthy they are the only whales regularly
hunted by man to the nantucketer they present the two extremes of all
the known varieties of the whale as the external difference between
them is mainly observable in their heads and as a head of each is this
moment hanging from the pequod's side and as we may freely go from one
to the other by merely stepping across the deck where i should like
to know will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology
than here

in the first place you are struck by the general contrast between these
heads both are massive enough in all conscience but there is a certain
mathematical symmetry in the sperm whale's which the right whale's sadly
lacks there is more character in the sperm whale's head as you behold
it you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him in point
of pervading dignity in the present instance too this dignity is
heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the summit
giving token of advanced age and large experience in short he is what
the fishermen technically call a grey-headed whale

let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads namely the two
most important organs the eye and the ear far back on the side of
the head and low down near the angle of either whale's jaw if you
narrowly search you will at last see a lashless eye which you would
fancy to be a young colt's eye so out of all proportion is it to the
magnitude of the head

now from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes it is
plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead no more
than he can one exactly astern in a word the position of the whale's
eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears and you may fancy for
yourself how it would fare with you did you sideways survey objects
through your ears you would find that you could only command some
thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight
and about thirty more behind it if your bitterest foe were walking
straight towards you with dagger uplifted in broad day you would not
be able to see him any more than if he were stealing upon you from
behind in a word you would have two backs so to speak but at the
same time also two fronts side fronts for what is it that makes the
front of a man what indeed but his eyes

moreover while in most other animals that i can now think of the eyes
are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power so as to
produce one picture and not two to the brain the peculiar position of
the whale's eyes effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of
solid head which towers between them like a great mountain separating
two lakes in valleys this of course must wholly separate the
impressions which each independent organ imparts the whale therefore
must see one distinct picture on this side and another distinct
picture on that side while all between must be profound darkness and
nothingness to him man may in effect be said to look out on the world
from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window but with the
whale these two sashes are separately inserted making two distinct
windows but sadly impairing the view this peculiarity of the whale's
eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery and to be
remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes

a curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this
visual matter as touching the leviathan but i must be content with a
hint so long as a man's eyes are open in the light the act of seeing
is involuntary that is he cannot then help mechanically seeing
whatever objects are before him nevertheless any one's experience
will teach him that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of
things at one glance it is quite impossible for him attentively
and completely to examine any two things however large or however
small at one and the same instant of time never mind if they lie side
by side and touch each other but if you now come to separate these two
objects and surround each by a circle of profound darkness then in
order to see one of them in such a manner as to bring your mind to
bear on it the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary
consciousness how is it then with the whale true both his eyes
in themselves must simultaneously act but is his brain so much more
comprehensive combining and subtle than man's that he can at the same
moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects one on one
side of him and the other in an exactly opposite direction if he
can then is it as marvellous a thing in him as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems
in euclid nor strictly investigated is there any incongruity in this
comparison

it may be but an idle whim but it has always seemed to me that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats the timidity and liability to queer
frights so common to such whales i think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them

but the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye if you are an
entire stranger to their race you might hunt over these two heads
for hours and never discover that organ the ear has no external leaf
whatever and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill so
wondrously minute is it it is lodged a little behind the eye with
respect to their ears this important difference is to be observed
between the sperm whale and the right while the ear of the former has
an external opening that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered
over with a membrane so as to be quite imperceptible from without

is it not curious that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye and hear the thunder through an ear which
is smaller than a hare's but if his eyes were broad as the lens of
herschel's great telescope and his ears capacious as the porches of
cathedrals would that make him any longer of sight or sharper of
hearing not at all why then do you try to enlarge your mind
subtilize it

let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand cant
over the sperm whale's head that it may lie bottom up then ascending
by a ladder to the summit have a peep down the mouth and were it not
that the body is now completely separated from it with a lantern we
might descend into the great kentucky mammoth cave of his stomach but
let us hold on here by this tooth and look about us where we are what
a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth from floor to ceiling
lined or rather papered with a glistening white membrane glossy as
bridal satins

but come out now and look at this portentous lower jaw which seems
like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box with the hinge at one
end instead of one side if you pry it up so as to get it overhead
and expose its rows of teeth it seems a terrific portcullis and such
alas it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery upon whom these
spikes fall with impaling force but far more terrible is it to behold
when fathoms down in the sea you see some sulky whale floating there
suspended with his prodigious jaw some fifteen feet long hanging
straight down at right-angles with his body for all the world like a
ship's jib-boom this whale is not dead he is only dispirited out of
sorts perhaps hypochondriac and so supine that the hinges of his
jaw have relaxed leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight a
reproach to all his tribe who must no doubt imprecate lock-jaws upon
him

in most cases this lower jaw being easily unhinged by a practised
artist is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting
the ivory teeth and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone
with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles
including canes umbrella-stocks and handles to riding-whips

with a long weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board as if it were an
anchor and when the proper time comes some few days after the other
work queequeg daggoo and tashtego being all accomplished dentists
are set to drawing teeth with a keen cutting-spade queequeg lances
the gums then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts and a tackle being
rigged from aloft they drag out these teeth as michigan oxen drag
stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands there are generally forty-two
teeth in all in old whales much worn down but undecayed nor filled
after our artificial fashion the jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs and
piled away like joists for building houses



chapter 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 gallons of oil and more

a great pity now that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped
the fissure is about a foot across probably the mother during an
important interval was sailing down the peruvian coast when earthquakes
caused the beach to gape over this lip as over a slippery threshold
we now slide into the mouth upon my word were i at mackinaw i should
take this to be the inside of an indian wigwam good lord is this the
road that jonah went the roof is about twelve feet high and runs to a
pretty sharp angle as if there were a regular ridge-pole there while
these ribbed arched hairy sides present us with those wondrous half
vertical scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone say three hundred on a
side which depending from the upper part of the head or crown
bone form those venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily
mentioned the edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres
through which the right whale strains the water and in whose
intricacies he retains the small fish when openmouthed he goes through
the seas of brit in feeding time in the central blinds of bone as they
stand in their natural order there are certain curious marks curves
hollows and ridges whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age
as the age of an oak by its circular rings though the certainty of this
criterion is far from demonstrable yet it has the savor of analogical
probability at any rate if we yield to it we must grant a far greater
age to the right whale than at first glance will seem reasonable

in old times there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds one voyager in purchas calls them the wondrous
whiskers inside of the whale's mouth another hogs bristles a
third old gentleman in hackluyt uses the following elegant language
there are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his
upper chop which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth


this reminds us that the right whale really has a sort of whisker or
rather a moustache consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the
upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw sometimes these
tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn
countenance


as every one knows these same hogs bristles fins whiskers
blinds or whatever you please furnish to the ladies their busks and
other stiffening contrivances but in this particular the demand has
long been on the decline it was in queen anne's time that the bone was
in its glory the farthingale being then all the fashion and as those
ancient dames moved about gaily though in the jaws of the whale as
you may say even so in a shower with the like thoughtlessness do we
nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection the umbrella being a
tent spread over the same bone

but now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment and standing
in the right whale's mouth look around you afresh seeing all these
colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about would you not think
you were inside of the great haarlem organ and gazing upon its
thousand pipes for a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest
turkey the tongue which is glued as it were to the floor of the
mouth it is very fat and tender and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting
it on deck this particular tongue now before us at a passing glance i
should say it was a six-barreler that is it will yield you about that
amount of oil

ere this you must have plainly seen the truth of what i started
with that the sperm whale and the right whale have almost entirely
different heads to sum up then in the right whale's there is no great
well of sperm no ivory teeth at all no long slender mandible of a
lower jaw like the sperm whale's nor in the sperm whale are there any
of those blinds of bone no huge lower lip and scarcely anything of a
tongue again the right whale has two external spout-holes the sperm
whale only one

look your last now on these venerable hooded heads while they yet lie
together for one will soon sink unrecorded in the sea the other will
not be very long in following

can you catch the expression of the sperm whale's there it is the same
he died with only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem
now faded away i think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like
placidity born of a speculative indifference as to death but mark the
other head's expression see that amazing lower lip pressed by accident
against the vessel's side so as firmly to embrace the jaw does not
this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in
facing death this right whale i take to have been a stoic the sperm
whale a platonian who might have taken up spinoza in his latter years



chapter the battering-ram


ere quitting for the nonce the sperm whale's head i would have
you as a sensible physiologist simply particularly remark its front
aspect in all its compacted collectedness i would have you investigate
it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated
intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged
there here is a vital point for you must either satisfactorily settle
this matter with yourself or for ever remain an infidel as to one of
the most appalling but not the less true events perhaps anywhere to be
found in all recorded history

you observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the sperm whale
the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the
water you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably
backwards so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which
receives the boom-like lower jaw you observe that the mouth is entirely
under the head much in the same way indeed as though your own mouth
were entirely under your chin moreover you observe that the whale has
no external nose and that what nose he has his spout hole is on the
top of his head you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides
of his head nearly one third of his entire length from the front
wherefore you must now have perceived that the front of the sperm
whale's head is a dead blind wall without a single organ or tender
prominence of any sort whatsoever furthermore you are now to consider
that only in the extreme lower backward sloping part of the front of
the head is there the slightest vestige of bone and not till you
get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial
development so that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad
finally though as will soon be revealed its contents partly comprise
the most delicate oil yet you are now to be apprised of the nature of
the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy
in some previous place i have described to you how the blubber wraps the
body of the whale as the rind wraps an orange just so with the head
but with this difference about the head this envelope though not so
thick is of a boneless toughness inestimable by any man who has not
handled it the severest pointed harpoon the sharpest lance darted by
the strongest human arm impotently rebounds from it it is as though
the forehead of the sperm whale were paved with horses hoofs i do not
think that any sensation lurks in it

bethink yourself also of another thing when two large loaded indiamen
chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks what do the
sailors do they do not suspend between them at the point of coming
contact any merely hard substance like iron or wood no they hold
there a large round wad of tow and cork enveloped in the thickest
and toughest of ox-hide that bravely and uninjured takes the jam which
would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars by
itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact i drive at but
supplementary to this it has hypothetically occurred to me that
as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them
capable at will of distension or contraction and as the sperm whale
as far as i know has no such provision in him considering too
the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head
altogether beneath the surface and anon swims with it high elevated out
of the water considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope
considering the unique interior of his head it has hypothetically
occurred to me i say that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there
may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with
the outer air so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and
contraction if this be so fancy the irresistibleness of that might to
which the most impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes

now mark unerringly impelling this dead impregnable uninjurable
wall and this most buoyant thing within there swims behind it all a
mass of tremendous life only to be adequately estimated as piled wood
is by the cord and all obedient to one volition as the smallest
insect so that when i shall hereafter detail to you all the
specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this
expansive monster when i shall show you some of his more inconsiderable
braining feats i trust you will have renounced all ignorant
incredulity and be ready to abide by this that though the sperm whale
stove a passage through the isthmus of darien and mixed the atlantic
with the pacific you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow for
unless you own the whale you are but a provincial and sentimentalist
in truth but clear truth is a thing for salamander giants only to
encounter how small the chances for the provincials then what befell
the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at lais



chapter the great heidelburgh tun


now comes the baling of the case but to comprehend it aright you must
know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated
upon

regarding the sperm whale's head as a solid oblong you may on an
inclined plane sideways divide it into two quoins whereof the lower
is the bony structure forming the cranium and jaws and the upper an
unctuous mass wholly free from bones its broad forward end forming the
expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale at the middle of the
forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin and then you have two
almost equal parts which before were naturally divided by an internal
wall of a thick tendinous substance


quoin is not a euclidean term it belongs to the pure nautical
mathematics i know not that it has been defined before a quoin is a
solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the
steep inclination of one side instead of the mutual tapering of both
sides


the lower subdivided part called the junk is one immense honeycomb
of oil formed by the crossing and recrossing into ten thousand
infiltrated cells of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole
extent the upper part known as the case may be regarded as the great
heidelburgh tun of the sperm whale and as that famous great tierce is
mystically carved in front so the whale's vast plaited forehead forms
innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his
wondrous tun moreover as that of heidelburgh was always replenished
with the most excellent of the wines of the rhenish valleys so the tun
of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages
namely the highly-prized spermaceti in its absolutely pure limpid
and odoriferous state nor is this precious substance found unalloyed
in any other part of the creature though in life it remains perfectly
fluid yet upon exposure to the air after death it soon begins to
concrete sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots as when the
first thin delicate ice is just forming in water a large whale's
case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm though from
unavoidable circumstances considerable of it is spilled leaks and
dribbles away or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business
of securing what you can

i know not with what fine and costly material the heidelburgh tun
was coated within but in superlative richness that coating could not
possibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane like the
lining of a fine pelisse forming the inner surface of the sperm whale's
case

it will have been seen that the heidelburgh tun of the sperm whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head and since as
has been elsewhere set forth the head embraces one third of the whole
length of the creature then setting that length down at eighty feet for
a good sized whale you have more than twenty-six feet for the depth
of the tun when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a ship's
side

as in decapitating the whale the operator's instrument is brought close
to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti
magazine he has therefore to be uncommonly heedful lest a careless
untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its
invaluable contents it is this decapitated end of the head also which
is at last elevated out of the water and retained in that position by
the enormous cutting tackles whose hempen combinations on one side
make quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter

thus much being said attend now i pray you to that marvellous and in
this particular instance almost fatal operation whereby the sperm
whale's great heidelburgh tun is tapped



chapter cistern and buckets


nimble as a cat tashtego mounts aloft and without altering his erect
posture runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm to the
part where it exactly projects over the hoisted tun he has carried
with him a light tackle called a whip consisting of only two parts
travelling through a single-sheaved block securing this block so that
it hangs down from the yard-arm he swings one end of the rope till it
is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck then hand-over-hand down
the other part the indian drops through the air till dexterously he
lands on the summit of the head there still high elevated above the
rest of the company to whom he vivaciously cries he seems some turkish
muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower a
short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him he diligently searches
for the proper place to begin breaking into the tun in this business
he proceeds very heedfully like a treasure-hunter in some old house
sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in by the time
this cautious search is over a stout iron-bound bucket precisely like
a well-bucket has been attached to one end of the whip while the other
end being stretched across the deck is there held by two or three
alert hands these last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the indian
to whom another person has reached up a very long pole inserting this
pole into the bucket tashtego downward guides the bucket into the tun
till it entirely disappears then giving the word to the seamen at the
whip up comes the bucket again all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail
of new milk carefully lowered from its height the full-freighted
vessel is caught by an appointed hand and quickly emptied into a large
tub then remounting aloft it again goes through the same round until
the deep cistern will yield no more towards the end tashtego has to
ram his long pole harder and harder and deeper and deeper into the tun
until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down

now the people of the pequod had been baling some time in this way
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm when all at once a
queer accident happened whether it was that tashtego that wild indian
was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed
hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head or whether the
place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy or whether the evil
one himself would have it to fall out so without stating his particular
reasons how it was exactly there is no telling now but on a sudden
as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up my god poor
tashtego like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well
dropped head-foremost down into this great tun of heidelburgh and with
a horrible oily gurgling went clean out of sight

man overboard cried daggoo who amid the general consternation first
came to his senses swing the bucket this way and putting one foot
into it so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip
itself the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head almost
before tashtego could have reached its interior bottom meantime
there was a terrible tumult looking over the side they saw the before
lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea
as if that moment seized with some momentous idea whereas it was only
the poor indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous
depth to which he had sunk

at this instant while daggoo on the summit of the head was clearing
the whip which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles a
sharp cracking noise was heard and to the unspeakable horror of all
one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out and with
a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung till the drunk ship
reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg the one remaining hook
upon which the entire strain now depended seemed every instant to be
on the point of giving way an event still more likely from the violent
motions of the head

come down come down yelled the seamen to daggoo but with one hand
holding on to the heavy tackles so that if the head should drop he
would still remain suspended the negro having cleared the foul line
rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well meaning that the
buried harpooneer should grasp it and so be hoisted out

in heaven's name man cried stubb are you ramming home a cartridge
there avast how will that help him jamming that iron-bound bucket on
top of his head avast will ye

stand clear of the tackle cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket

almost in the same instant with a thunder-boom the enormous mass
dropped into the sea like niagara's table-rock into the whirlpool the
suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it to far down her glittering
copper and all caught their breath as half swinging now over the
sailors heads and now over the water daggoo through a thick mist of
spray was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles while poor
buried-alive tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea
but hardly had the blinding vapour cleared away when a naked figure
with a boarding-sword in his hand was for one swift moment seen
hovering over the bulwarks the next a loud splash announced that my
brave queequeg had dived to the rescue one packed rush was made to the
side and every eye counted every ripple as moment followed moment and
no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen some hands now
jumped into a boat alongside and pushed a little off from the ship

ha ha cried daggoo all at once from his now quiet swinging perch
overhead and looking further off from the side we saw an arm thrust
upright from the blue waves a sight strange to see as an arm thrust
forth from the grass over a grave

both both it is both cried daggoo again with a joyful shout and
soon after queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand and
with the other clutching the long hair of the indian drawn into the
waiting boat they were quickly brought to the deck but tashtego was
long in coming to and queequeg did not look very brisk

now how had this noble rescue been accomplished why diving after
the slowly descending head queequeg with his keen sword had made
side lunges near its bottom so as to scuttle a large hole there then
dropping his sword had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards
and so hauled out poor tash by the head he averred that upon first
thrusting in for him a leg was presented but well knowing that that
was not as it ought to be and might occasion great trouble he had
thrust back the leg and by a dexterous heave and toss had wrought a
somerset upon the indian so that with the next trial he came forth in
the good old way head foremost as for the great head itself that was
doing as well as could be expected

and thus through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of queequeg
the deliverance or rather delivery of tashtego was successfully
accomplished in the teeth too of the most untoward and apparently
hopeless impediments which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten
midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing
riding and rowing

i know that this queer adventure of the gay-header's will be sure to
seem incredible to some landsmen though they themselves may have either
seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore an accident
which not seldom happens and with much less reason too than the
indian's considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the
sperm whale's well

but peradventure it may be sagaciously urged how is this we thought
the tissued infiltrated head of the sperm whale was the lightest and
most corky part about him and yet thou makest it sink in an element of
a far greater specific gravity than itself we have thee there not at
all but i have ye for at the time poor tash fell in the case had been
nearly emptied of its lighter contents leaving little but the dense
tendinous wall of the well a double welded hammered substance as i
have before said much heavier than the sea water and a lump of which
sinks in it like lead almost but the tendency to rapid sinking in this
substance was in the present instance materially counteracted by the
other parts of the head remaining undetached from it so that it sank
very slowly and deliberately indeed affording queequeg a fair chance
for performing his agile obstetrics on the run as you may say yes it
was a running delivery so it was

now had tashtego perished in that head it had been a very precious
perishing smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
spermaceti coffined hearsed and tombed in the secret inner chamber
and sanctum sanctorum of the whale only one sweeter end can readily be
recalled the delicious death of an ohio honey-hunter who seeking honey
in the crotch of a hollow tree found such exceeding store of it that
leaning too far over it sucked him in so that he died embalmed
how many think ye have likewise fallen into plato's honey head and
sweetly perished there



chapter the prairie


to scan the lines of his face or feel the bumps on the head of this
leviathan this is a thing which no physiognomist or phrenologist has as
yet undertaken such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for
lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the rock of gibraltar
or for gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the dome of the
pantheon still in that famous work of his lavater not only treats
of the various faces of men but also attentively studies the faces
of horses birds serpents and fish and dwells in detail upon the
modifications of expression discernible therein nor have gall and
his disciple spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the
phrenological characteristics of other beings than man therefore
though i am but ill qualified for a pioneer in the application of these
two semi-sciences to the whale i will do my endeavor i try all things
i achieve what i can

physiognomically regarded the sperm whale is an anomalous creature
he has no proper nose and since the nose is the central and most
conspicuous of the features and since it perhaps most modifies and
finally controls their combined expression hence it would seem that its
entire absence as an external appendage must very largely affect
the countenance of the whale for as in landscape gardening a spire
cupola monument or tower of some sort is deemed almost indispensable
to the completion of the scene so no face can be physiognomically in
keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose dash the nose
from phidias's marble jove and what a sorry remainder nevertheless
leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude all his proportions are so
stately that the same deficiency which in the sculptured jove were
hideous in him is no blemish at all nay it is an added grandeur a
nose to the whale would have been impertinent as on your physiognomical
voyage you sail round his vast head in your jolly-boat your noble
conceptions of him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a
nose to be pulled a pestilent conceit which so often will insist upon
obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne

in some particulars perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to
be had of the sperm whale is that of the full front of his head this
aspect is sublime

in thought a fine human brow is like the east when troubled with the
morning in the repose of the pasture the curled brow of the bull has a
touch of the grand in it pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles the
elephant's brow is majestic human or animal the mystical brow is as
that great golden seal affixed by the german emperors to their decrees
it signifies god done this day by my hand but in most creatures
nay in man himself very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine
land lying along the snow line few are the foreheads which like
shakespeare's or melancthon's rise so high and descend so low that the
eyes themselves seem clear eternal tideless mountain lakes and all
above them in the forehead's wrinkles you seem to track the antlered
thoughts descending there to drink as the highland hunters track the
snow prints of the deer but in the great sperm whale this high and
mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified
that gazing on it in that full front view you feel the deity and the
dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living
nature for you see no one point precisely not one distinct feature is
revealed no nose eyes ears or mouth no face he has none proper
nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead pleated with
riddles dumbly lowering with the doom of boats and ships and men
nor in profile does this wondrous brow diminish though that way
viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so in profile you
plainly perceive that horizontal semi-crescentic depression in the
forehead's middle which in man is lavater's mark of genius

but how genius in the sperm whale has the sperm whale ever written
a book spoken a speech no his great genius is declared in his
doing nothing particular to prove it it is moreover declared in his
pyramidical silence and this reminds me that had the great sperm whale
been known to the young orient world he would have been deified by
their child-magian thoughts they deified the crocodile of the nile
because the crocodile is tongueless and the sperm whale has no
tongue or at least it is so exceedingly small as to be incapable of
protrusion if hereafter any highly cultured poetical nation shall lure
back to their birth-right the merry may-day gods of old and livingly
enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky in the now unhaunted
hill then be sure exalted to jove's high seat the great sperm whale
shall lord it

champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics but there is
no champollion to decipher the egypt of every man's and every being's
face physiognomy like every other human science is but a passing
fable if then sir william jones who read in thirty languages could
not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle
meanings how may unlettered ishmael hope to read the awful chaldee of
the sperm whale's brow i but put that brow before you read it if you
can



chapter the nut


if the sperm whale be physiognomically a sphinx to the phrenologist his
brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square

in the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet
in length unhinge the lower jaw and the side view of this skull is as
the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level
base but in life as we have elsewhere seen this inclined plane is
angularly filled up and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent
mass of the junk and sperm at the high end the skull forms a crater to
bed that part of the mass while under the long floor of this crater in
another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many in
depth reposes the mere handful of this monster's brain the brain is at
least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life it is hidden
away behind its vast outworks like the innermost citadel within the
amplified fortifications of quebec so like a choice casket is it
secreted in him that i have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny
that the sperm whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance
of one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine lying in strange
folds courses and convolutions to their apprehensions it seems more
in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part
of him as the seat of his intelligence

it is plain then that phrenologically the head of this leviathan in
the creature's living intact state is an entire delusion as for his
true brain you can then see no indications of it nor feel any the
whale like all things that are mighty wears a false brow to the common
world

if you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view
of its rear end which is the high end you will be struck by its
resemblance to the human skull beheld in the same situation and from
the same point of view indeed place this reversed skull scaled down
to the human magnitude among a plate of men's skulls and you would
involuntarily confound it with them and remarking the depressions on
one part of its summit in phrenological phrase you would say this
man had no self-esteem and no veneration and by those negations
considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and
power you can best form to yourself the truest though not the most
exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is

but if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain you
deem it incapable of being adequately charted then i have another idea
for you if you attentively regard almost any quadruped's spine
you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung
necklace of dwarfed skulls all bearing rudimental resemblance to the
skull proper it is a german conceit that the vertebrae 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 vertebrae of which he was inlaying in a sort of basso-relievo the
beaked prow of his canoe now i consider that the phrenologists have
omitted an important thing in not pushing their investigations from the
cerebellum through the spinal canal for i believe that much of a man's
character will be found betokened in his backbone i would rather feel
your spine than your skull whoever you are a thin joist of a spine
never yet upheld a full and noble soul i rejoice in my spine as in the
firm audacious staff of that flag which i fling half out to the world

apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the sperm whale his cranial
cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra and in that vertebra
the bottom of the 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 vertebrae the canal tapers in size but
for a considerable distance remains of large capacity now of course
this canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance the
spinal cord as the brain and directly communicates with the brain
and what is still more for many feet after emerging from the brain's
cavity the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth almost
equal to that of the brain under all these circumstances would it be
unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically
for viewed in this light the wonderful comparative smallness of his
brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative
magnitude of his spinal cord

but leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists i
would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment in reference to the
sperm whale's hump this august hump if i mistake not rises over one
of the larger vertebrae and is therefore in some sort the outer
convex mould of it from its relative situation then i should call this
high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the sperm whale
and that the great monster is indomitable you will yet have reason to
know



chapter the pequod meets the virgin


the predestinated day arrived and we duly met the ship jungfrau derick
de deer master of bremen

at one time the greatest whaling people in the world the dutch and
germans are now among the least but here and there at very wide
intervals of latitude and longitude you still occasionally meet with
their flag in the pacific

for some reason the jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects
while yet some distance from the pequod she rounded to and dropping a
boat her captain was impelled towards us impatiently standing in the
bows instead of the stern

what has he in his hand there cried starbuck pointing to something
wavingly held by the german impossible a lamp-feeder

not that said stubb no no it's a coffee-pot mr starbuck he's
coming off to make us our coffee is the yarman don't you see that big
tin can there alongside of him that's his boiling water oh he's all
right is the yarman

go along with you cried flask it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can
he's out of oil and has come a-begging

however curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the
whale-ground and however much it may invertedly contradict the old
proverb about carrying coals to newcastle yet sometimes such a thing
really happens and in the present case captain derick de deer did
indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as flask did declare

as he mounted the deck ahab abruptly accosted him without at all
heeding what he had in his hand but in his broken lingo the german
soon evinced his complete ignorance of the white whale immediately
turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can with some
remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in
profound darkness his last drop of bremen oil being gone and not a
single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency concluding
by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the fishery is technically
called a clean one that is an empty one well deserving the name of
jungfrau or the virgin

his necessities supplied derick departed but he had not gained his
ship's side when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the
mast-heads of both vessels and so eager for the chase was derick that
without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard he slewed
round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders

now the game having risen to leeward he and the other three german
boats that soon followed him had considerably the start of the pequod's
keels there were eight whales an average pod aware of their danger
they were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind
rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness
they left a great wide wake as though continually unrolling a great
wide parchment upon the sea

full in this rapid wake and many fathoms in the rear swam a huge
humped old bull which by his comparatively slow progress as well as
by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him seemed afflicted
with the jaundice or some other infirmity whether this whale belonged
to the pod in advance seemed questionable for it is not customary for
such venerable leviathans to be at all social nevertheless he stuck
to their wake though indeed their back water must have retarded him
because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one
like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet his spout was
short slow and laborious coming forth with a choking sort of gush
and spending itself in torn shreds followed by strange subterranean
commotions in him which seemed to have egress at his other buried
extremity causing the waters behind him to upbubble

who's got some paregoric said stubb he has the stomach-ache i'm
afraid lord think of having half an acre of stomach-ache adverse
winds are holding mad christmas in him boys it's the first foul wind
i ever knew to blow from astern but look did ever whale yaw so before
it must be he's lost his tiller

as an overladen indiaman bearing down the hindostan coast with a deck
load of frightened horses careens buries rolls and wallows on her
way so did this old whale heave his aged bulk and now and then partly
turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends expose the cause of his devious
wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin whether he had lost
that fin in battle or had been born without it it were hard to say

only wait a bit old chap and i'll give ye a sling for that wounded
arm cried cruel flask pointing to the whale-line near him

mind he don't sling thee with it cried starbuck give way or the
german will have him

with one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this
one fish because not only was he the largest and therefore the most
valuable whale but he was nearest to them and the other whales were
going with such great velocity moreover as almost to defy pursuit
for the time at this juncture the pequod's keels had shot by the three
german boats last lowered but from the great start he had had derick's
boat still led the chase though every moment neared by his foreign
rivals the only thing they feared was that from being already so
nigh to his mark he would be enabled to dart his iron before they
could completely overtake and pass him as for derick he seemed quite
confident that this would be the case and occasionally with a deriding
gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats

the ungracious and ungrateful dog cried starbuck he mocks and dares
me with the very poor-box i filled for him not five minutes ago then
in his old intense whisper give way greyhounds dog to it

i tell ye what it is men cried stubb to his crew it's against
my religion to get mad but i'd like to eat that villainous
yarman pull won't ye are ye going to let that rascal beat ye do
ye love brandy a hogshead of brandy then to the best man come
why don't some of ye burst a blood-vessel who's that been dropping an
anchor overboard we don't budge an inch we're becalmed halloo here's
grass growing in the boat's bottom and by the lord the mast there's
budding this won't do boys look at that yarman the short and long of
it is men will ye spit fire or not

oh see the suds he makes cried flask dancing up and down what
a hump oh do pile on the beef lays like a log oh my lads do
spring slap-jacks and quahogs for supper you know my lads baked
clams and muffins oh do do spring he's a hundred barreller don't
lose him now don't oh don't see that yarman oh won't ye pull for
your duff my lads such a sog such a sogger don't ye love sperm
there goes three thousand dollars men a bank a whole bank the bank
of england oh do do do what's that yarman about now

at this moment derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the
advancing boats and also his oil-can perhaps with the double view
of retarding his rivals way and at the same time economically
accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss

the unmannerly dutch dogger cried stubb pull now men like fifty
thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils what d'ye say
tashtego are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces
for the honour of old gayhead what d'ye say

i say pull like god-dam cried the indian

fiercely but evenly incited by the taunts of the german the pequod's
three boats now began ranging almost abreast and so disposed
momentarily neared him in that fine loose chivalrous attitude of
the headsman when drawing near to his prey the three mates stood up
proudly occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry
of there she slides now hurrah for the white-ash breeze down with
the yarman sail over him

but so decided an original start had derick had that spite of all
their gallantry he would have proved the victor in this race had not
a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade
of his midship oarsman while this clumsy lubber was striving to free
his white-ash and while in consequence derick's boat was nigh to
capsizing and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage that was
a good time for starbuck stubb and flask with a shout they took a
mortal start forwards and slantingly ranged up on the german's quarter
an instant more and all four boats were diagonically in the whale's
immediate wake while stretching from them on both sides was the
foaming swell that he made

it was a terrific most pitiable and maddening sight the whale was
now going head out and sending his spout before him in a continual
tormented jet while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of
fright now to this hand now to that he yawed in his faltering flight
and still at every billow that he broke he spasmodically sank in the
sea or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin so have i
seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken circles in the
air vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks but the bird has a
voice and with plaintive cries will make known her fear but the fear
of this vast dumb brute of the sea was chained up and enchanted in him
he had no voice save that choking respiration through his spiracle
and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable while still in his
amazing bulk portcullis jaw and omnipotent tail there was enough to
appal the stoutest man who so pitied

seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the pequod's
boats the advantage and rather than be thus foiled of his game derick
chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart
ere the last chance would for ever escape

but no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke than all three
tigers queequeg tashtego daggoo instinctively sprang to their feet
and standing in a diagonal row simultaneously pointed their barbs and
darted over the head of the german harpooneer their three nantucket
irons entered the whale blinding vapours 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
 square feet the pressure of the water is immense we all know
what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under even
here above-ground in the air how vast then the burden of a whale
bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean it must at
least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres one whaleman has estimated
it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships with all their guns
and stores and men on board

as the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea gazing down
into its eternal blue noon and as not a single groan or cry of any
sort nay not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths
what landsman would have thought that beneath all that silence and
placidity the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in
agony not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows
seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great leviathan
was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock suspended and
to what to three bits of board is this the creature of whom it was
once so triumphantly said canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons
or his head with fish-spears the sword of him that layeth at him cannot
hold the spear the dart nor the habergeon he esteemeth iron as
straw the arrow cannot make him flee darts are counted as stubble
he laugheth at the shaking of a spear this the creature this he oh
that unfulfilments should follow the prophets for with the strength
of a thousand thighs in his tail leviathan had run his head under the
mountains of the sea to hide him from the pequod's fish-spears

in that sloping afternoon sunlight the shadows that the three boats
sent down beneath the surface must have been long enough and broad
enough to shade half xerxes army who can tell how appalling to the
wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head

stand by men he stirs cried starbuck as the three lines suddenly
vibrated in the water distinctly conducting upwards to them as by
magnetic wires the life and death throbs of the whale so that every
oarsman felt them in his seat the next moment relieved in great part
from the downward strain at the bows the boats gave a sudden bounce
upwards as a small icefield will when a dense herd of white bears are
scared from it into the sea

haul in haul in cried starbuck again he's rising

the lines of which hardly an instant before not one hand's breadth
could have been gained were now in long quick coils flung back all
dripping into the boats and soon the whale broke water within two
ship's lengths of the hunters

his motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion in most land animals
there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins whereby
when wounded the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in
certain directions not so with the whale one of whose peculiarities
it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels so
that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon a deadly
drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system and when this is
heightened by the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance
below the surface his life may be said to pour from him in incessant
streams yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him and so distant
and numerous its interior fountains that he will keep thus bleeding and
bleeding for a considerable period even as in a drought a river will
flow whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible
hills even now when the boats pulled upon this whale and perilously
drew over his swaying flukes and the lances were darted into him
they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound which kept
continually playing while the natural spout-hole in his head was only
at intervals however rapid sending its affrighted moisture into the
air from this last vent no blood yet came because no vital part of him
had thus far been struck his life as they significantly call it was
untouched

as the boats now more closely surrounded him the whole upper part of
his form with much of it that is ordinarily submerged was plainly
revealed his eyes or rather the places where his eyes had been were
beheld as strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the
noblest oaks when prostrate so from the points which the whale's eyes
had once occupied now protruded blind bulbs horribly pitiable to see
but pity there was none for all his old age and his one arm and his
blind eyes he must die the death and be murdered in order to light the
gay bridals and other merry-makings of men and also to illuminate the
solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all
still rolling in his blood at last he partially disclosed a strangely
discoloured bunch or protuberance the size of a bushel low down on the
flank

a nice spot cried flask just let me prick him there once

avast cried starbuck there's no need of that

but humane starbuck was too late at the instant of the dart an
ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound and goaded by it into more than
sufferable anguish the whale now spouting thick blood with swift fury
blindly darted at the craft bespattering them and their glorying crews
all over with showers of gore capsizing flask's boat and marring the
bows it was his death stroke for by this time so spent was he by
loss of blood that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had
made lay panting on his side impotently flapped with his stumped fin
then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world turned up
the white secrets of his belly lay like a log and died it was most
piteous that last expiring spout as when by unseen hands the water
is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain and with half-stifled
melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the
ground so the last long dying spout of the whale

soon while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship the body
showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled immediately
by starbuck's orders lines were secured to it at different points so
that ere long every boat was a buoy the sunken whale being suspended a
few inches beneath them by the cords by very heedful management when
the ship drew nigh the whale was transferred to her side and was
strongly secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains for it was plain
that unless artificially upheld the body would at once sink to the
bottom

it so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade
the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh
on the lower part of the bunch before described but as the stumps of
harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales
with the flesh perfectly healed around them and no prominence of any
kind to denote their place therefore there must needs have been
some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for
the ulceration alluded to but still more curious was the fact of a
lance-head of stone being found in him not far from the buried iron
the flesh perfectly firm about it who had darted that stone lance and
when it might have been darted by some nor west indian long before
america was discovered

what other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling but a sudden stop was put to further
discoveries by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways
to the sea owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink
however starbuck who had the ordering of affairs hung on to it to the
last hung on to it so resolutely indeed that when at length the ship
would have been capsized if still persisting in locking arms with the
body then when the command was given to break clear from it such was
the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and
cables were fastened that it was impossible to cast them off meantime
everything in the pequod was aslant to cross to the other side of the
deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house the ship
groaned and gasped many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and
cabins were started from their places by the unnatural dislocation
in vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable
fluke-chains to pry them adrift from the timberheads and so low
had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all
approached while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to
the sinking bulk and the ship seemed on the point of going over

hold on hold on won't ye cried stubb to the body don't be in such
a devil of a hurry to sink by thunder men we must do something or go
for it no use prying there avast i say with your handspikes and run
one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife and cut the big chains

knife aye aye cried queequeg and seizing the carpenter's heavy
hatchet he leaned out of a porthole and steel to iron began slashing
at the largest fluke-chains but a few strokes full of sparks were
given when the exceeding strain effected the rest with a terrific
snap every fastening went adrift the ship righted the carcase sank

now this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed sperm
whale is a very curious thing nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it usually the dead sperm whale floats with great
buoyancy with its side or belly considerably elevated above the
surface if the only whales that thus sank were old meagre and
broken-hearted creatures their pads of lard diminished and all their
bones heavy and rheumatic then you might with some reason assert that
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so
sinking consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him but it
is not so for young whales in the highest health and swelling with
noble aspirations prematurely cut off in the warm flush and may of
life with all their panting lard about them even these brawny buoyant
heroes do sometimes sink

be it said however that the sperm whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species where one of that sort go down twenty
right whales do this difference in the species is no doubt imputable in
no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the right whale
his venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton from this
incumbrance the sperm whale is wholly free but there are instances
where after the lapse of many hours or several days the sunken whale
again rises more buoyant than in life but the reason of this
is obvious gases are generated in him he swells to a prodigious
magnitude becomes a sort of animal balloon a line-of-battle ship could
hardly keep him under then in the shore whaling on soundings among
the bays of new zealand when a right whale gives token of sinking they
fasten buoys to him with plenty of rope so that when the body has gone
down they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again

it was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from
the pequod's mast-heads announcing that the jungfrau was again lowering
her boats though the only spout in sight was that of a fin-back
belonging to the species of uncapturable whales because of its
incredible power of swimming nevertheless the fin-back's spout is so
similar to the sperm whale's that by unskilful fishermen it is often
mistaken for it and consequently derick and all his host were now in
valiant chase of this unnearable brute the virgin crowding all sail
made after her four young keels and thus they all disappeared far to
leeward still in bold hopeful chase

oh many are the fin-backs and many are the dericks my friend



chapter the honour 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 honourableness and antiquity and especially when i find so many
great demi-gods and heroes prophets of all sorts who one way or other
have shed distinction upon it i am transported with the reflection
that i myself belong though but subordinately to so emblazoned a
fraternity

the gallant perseus a son of jupiter was the first whaleman and
to the eternal honour of our calling be it said that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent those
were the knightly days of our profession when we only bore arms to
succor the distressed and not to fill men's lamp-feeders every one
knows the fine story of perseus and andromeda how the lovely andromeda
the daughter of a king was tied to a rock on the sea-coast and as
leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off perseus the prince
of whalemen intrepidly advancing harpooned the monster and delivered
and married the maid it was an admirable artistic exploit rarely
achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day inasmuch as this
leviathan was slain at the very first dart and let no man doubt this
arkite story for in the ancient joppa now jaffa on the syrian coast
in one of the pagan temples there stood for many ages the vast skeleton
of a whale which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to
be the identical bones of the monster that perseus slew when the romans
took joppa the same skeleton was carried to italy in triumph what
seems most singular and suggestively important in this story is this
it was from joppa that jonah set sail

akin to the adventure of perseus and andromeda indeed by some supposed
to be indirectly derived from it is that famous story of st george and
the dragon which dragon i maintain to have been a whale for in many
old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together and
often stand for each other thou art as a lion of the waters and as a
dragon of the sea saith ezekiel hereby plainly meaning a whale
in truth some versions of the bible use that word itself besides it
would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had st george but
encountered a crawling reptile of the land instead of doing battle
with the great monster of the deep any man may kill a snake but only a
perseus a st george a coffin have the heart in them to march boldly
up to a whale

let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us for though
the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape and though the battle is depicted
on land and the saint on horseback yet considering the great ignorance
of those times when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists
and considering that as in perseus case st george's whale might have
crawled up out of the sea on the beach and considering that the animal
ridden by st george might have been only a large seal or sea-horse
bearing all this in mind it will not appear altogether incompatible
with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene to
hold this so-called dragon no other than the great leviathan himself in
fact placed before the strict and piercing truth this whole story will
fare like that fish flesh and fowl idol of the philistines dagon by
name who being planted before the ark of israel his horse's head and
both the palms of his hands fell off from him and only the stump or
fishy part of him remained thus then one of our own noble stamp even
a whaleman is the tutelary guardian of england and by good rights we
harpooneers of nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order
of st george and therefore let not the knights of that honourable
company none of whom i venture to say have ever had to do with a
whale like their great patron let them never eye a nantucketer with
disdain since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are
much better entitled to st george's decoration than they

whether to admit hercules among us or not concerning this i long
remained dubious for though according to the greek mythologies that
antique crockett and kit carson that brawny doer of rejoicing good
deeds was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale still whether
that strictly makes a whaleman of him that might be mooted it nowhere
appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish unless indeed
from the inside nevertheless he may be deemed a sort of involuntary
whaleman at any rate the whale caught him if he did not the whale i
claim him for one of our clan

but by the best contradictory authorities this grecian story of
hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
ancient hebrew story of jonah and the whale and vice versa certainly
they are very similar if i claim the demigod then why not the prophet

nor do heroes saints demigods and prophets alone comprise the whole
roll of our order our grand master is still to be named for like royal
kings of old times we find the head waters of our fraternity in nothing
short of the great gods themselves that wondrous oriental story is now
to be rehearsed from the shaster which gives us the dread vishnoo one
of the three persons in the godhead of the hindoos gives us this divine
vishnoo himself for our lord vishnoo who by the first of his ten
earthly incarnations has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale
when brahma or the god of gods saith the shaster resolved to recreate
the world after one of its periodical dissolutions he gave birth to
vishnoo to preside over the work but the vedas or mystical books
whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to vishnoo before
beginning the creation and which therefore must have contained
something in the shape of practical hints to young architects these
vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters so vishnoo became
incarnate in a whale and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths
rescued the sacred volumes was not this vishnoo a whaleman then even
as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman

perseus st george hercules jonah and vishnoo there's a member-roll
for you what club but the whaleman's can head off like that



chapter jonah historically regarded


reference was made to the historical story of jonah and the whale in the
preceding chapter now some nantucketers rather distrust this historical
story of jonah and the whale but then there were some sceptical greeks
and romans who standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times
equally doubted the story of hercules and the whale and arion and the
dolphin and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those
traditions one whit the less facts for all that

one old sag-harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the hebrew
story was this he had one of those quaint old-fashioned bibles
embellished with curious unscientific plates one of which represented
jonah's whale with two spouts in his head a peculiarity only true
with respect to a species of the leviathan the right whale and the
varieties of that order concerning which the fishermen have this
saying a penny roll would choke him his swallow is so very small
but to this bishop jebb's anticipative answer is ready it is not
necessary hints the bishop that we consider jonah as tombed in the
whale's belly but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth and
this seems reasonable enough in the good bishop for truly the
right whale's mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables and
comfortably seat all the players possibly too jonah might have
ensconced himself in a hollow tooth but on second thoughts the right
whale is toothless

another reason which sag-harbor he went by that name urged for his
want of faith in this matter of the prophet was something obscurely in
reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric juices but
this objection likewise falls to the ground because a german exegetist
supposes that jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a
dead whale even as the french soldiers in the russian campaign turned
their dead horses into tents and crawled into them besides it has
been divined by other continental commentators that when jonah was
thrown overboard from the joppa ship he straightway effected his escape
to another vessel near by some vessel with a whale for a figure-head
and i would add possibly called the whale as some craft are
nowadays christened the shark the gull the eagle nor have there
been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned
in the book of jonah merely meant a life-preserver an inflated bag
of wind which the endangered prophet swam to and so was saved from a
watery doom poor sag-harbor therefore seems worsted all round but
he had still another reason for his want of faith it was this if i
remember right jonah was swallowed by the whale in the mediterranean
sea and after three days he was vomited up somewhere within three days
journey of nineveh a city on the tigris very much more than three
days journey across from the nearest point of the mediterranean coast
how is that

but was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that
short distance of nineveh yes he might have carried him round by the
way of the cape of good hope but not to speak of the passage through
the whole length of the mediterranean and another passage up the
persian gulf and red sea such a supposition would involve the complete
circumnavigation of all africa in three days not to speak of the tigris
waters near the site of nineveh being too shallow for any whale to
swim in besides this idea of jonah's weathering the cape of good hope
at so early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of that great
headland from bartholomew diaz its reputed discoverer and so make
modern history a liar

but all these foolish arguments of old sag-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 honour of jonah in which mosque was
a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil



chapter 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 manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling small
sword or broad sword in all its exercises boasts nothing like it it
is only indispensable with an inveterate running whale its grand
fact and feature is the wonderful distance to which the long lance is
accurately darted from a violently rocking jerking boat under extreme
headway steel and wood included the entire spear is some ten or twelve
feet in length the staff is much slighter than that of the harpoon
and also of a lighter material pine it is furnished with a small rope
called a warp of considerable length by which it can be hauled back to
the hand after darting

but before going further it is important to mention here that though
the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance yet it
is seldom done and when done is still less frequently successful
on account of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as
compared with the lance which in effect become serious drawbacks as a
general thing therefore you must first get fast to a whale before any
pitchpoling comes into play

look now at stubb a man who from his humorous deliberate coolness and
equanimity in the direst emergencies was specially qualified to excel
in pitchpoling look at him he stands upright in the tossed bow of the
flying boat wrapt in fleecy foam the towing whale is forty feet ahead
handling the long lance lightly glancing twice or thrice along its
length to see if it be exactly straight stubb whistlingly gathers up
the coil of the warp in one hand so as to secure its free end in his
grasp leaving the rest unobstructed then holding the lance full before
his waistband's middle he levels it at the whale when covering
him with it he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand thereby
elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his
palm fifteen feet in the air he minds you somewhat of a juggler
balancing a long staff on his chin next moment with a rapid nameless
impulse in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming
distance and quivers in the life spot of the whale instead of
sparkling water he now spouts red blood

that drove the spigot out of him cried stubb tis july's immortal
fourth all fountains must run wine today would now it were old
orleans whiskey or old ohio or unspeakable old monongahela then
tashtego lad i'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet and we'd drink
round it yea verily hearts alive we'd brew choice punch in the
spread of his spout-hole there and from that live punch-bowl quaff the
living stuff

again and again to such gamesome talk the dexterous dart is repeated
the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful
leash the agonized whale goes into his flurry the tow-line is
slackened and the pitchpoler dropping astern folds his hands and
mutely watches the monster die



chapter 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 pm of this sixteenth day of december ad
 it should still remain a problem whether these spoutings
are after all really water or nothing but vapour this is surely a
noteworthy thing

let us then look at this matter along with some interesting items
contingent every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
gills the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is
combined with the element in which they swim hence a herring or a cod
might live a century and never once raise its head above the surface
but owing to his marked internal structure which gives him regular
lungs like a human being's the whale can only live by inhaling the
disengaged air in the open atmosphere wherefore the necessity for
his periodical visits to the upper world but he cannot in any degree
breathe through his mouth for in his ordinary attitude the sperm
whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface and
what is still more his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth no he
breathes through his spiracle alone and this is on the top of his head

if i say that in any creature breathing is only a function
indispensable to vitality inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
certain element which being subsequently brought into contact with the
blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle i do not think i
shall err though i may possibly use some superfluous scientific words
assume it and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be
aerated with one breath he might then seal up his nostrils and not
fetch another for a considerable time that is to say he would then
live without breathing anomalous as it may seem this is precisely the
case with the whale who systematically lives by intervals his full
hour and more when at the bottom without drawing a single breath or
so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air for remember he has
no gills how is this between his ribs and on each side of his spine
he is supplied with a remarkable involved cretan labyrinth of
vermicelli-like vessels which vessels when he quits the surface are
completely distended with oxygenated blood so that for an hour or more
a thousand fathoms in the sea he carries a surplus stock of vitality in
him just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus
supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs
the anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable and that the
supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true seems the more
cogent to me when i consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of
that leviathan in having his spoutings out as the fishermen phrase
it this is what i mean if unmolested upon rising to the surface the
sperm whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform
with all his other unmolested risings say he stays eleven minutes and
jets seventy times that is respires seventy breaths then whenever he
rises again he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again to
a minute now if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him so that
he sounds he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular
allowance of air and not till those seventy breaths are told will he
finally go down to stay out his full term below remark however that
in different individuals these rates are different but in any one
they are alike now why should the whale thus insist upon having his
spoutings out unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air ere
descending for good how obvious is it too that this necessity for the
whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase for
not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught when sailing
a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight not so much thy skill then o
hunter as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee

in man breathing is incessantly going on one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations so that whatever other business he has to
attend to waking or sleeping breathe he must or die he will but the
sperm whale only breathes about one seventh or sunday of his time

it has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole if
it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water then
i opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell
seems obliterated in him for the only thing about him that at all
answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole and being so clogged
with two elements it could not be expected to have the power of
smelling but owing to the mystery of the spout whether it be water or
whether it be vapour 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 vapour of the exhaled breath or whether that
exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth and
discharged through the spiracle it is certain that the mouth indirectly
communicates with the spouting canal but it cannot be proved that this
is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle because
the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be when in feeding he
accidentally takes in water but the sperm whale's food is far beneath
the surface and there he cannot spout even if he would besides if
you regard him very closely and time him with your watch you will find
that when unmolested there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods
of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration

but why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject speak out
you have seen him spout then declare what the spout is can you not
tell water from air my dear sir in this world it is not so easy to
settle these plain things i have ever found your plain things the
knottiest of all and as for this whale spout you might almost stand in
it and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely

the central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping
it and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it
when always when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view
of his spout he is in a prodigious commotion the water cascading
all around him and if at such times you should think that you really
perceived drops of moisture in the spout how do you know that they are
not merely condensed from its vapour or how do you know that they
are not those identical drops 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 vapoury shreds of the jet which will
often happen your skin will feverishly smart from the acridness of
the thing so touching it and i know one who coming into still closer
contact with the spout whether with some scientific object in view
or otherwise i cannot say the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm
wherefore among whalemen the spout is deemed poisonous they try to
evade it another thing i have heard it said and i do not much doubt
it that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes it will blind you
the wisest thing the investigator can do then it seems to me is to let
this deadly spout alone

still we can hypothesize even if we cannot prove and establish my
hypothesis is this that the spout is nothing but mist and besides
other reasons to this conclusion i am impelled by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the sperm whale
i account him no common shallow being inasmuch as it is an undisputed
fact that he is never found on soundings or near shores all other
whales sometimes are he is both ponderous and profound and i am
convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings such as
plato pyrrho the devil jupiter dante and so on there always goes
up a certain semi-visible steam while in the act of thinking deep
thoughts while composing a little treatise on eternity i had the
curiosity to place a mirror before me and ere long saw reflected there
a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my
head the invariable moisture of my hair while plunged in deep thought
after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic of an august noon
this seems an additional argument for the above supposition

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



chapter the tail


other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope
and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights less celestial i
celebrate a tail

reckoning the largest sized sperm whale's tail to begin at that point of
the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man it comprises
upon its upper surface alone an area of at least fifty square feet the
compact round body of its root expands into two broad firm flat palms
or flukes gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness
at the crotch or junction these flukes slightly overlap then sideways
recede from each other like wings leaving a wide vacancy between in
no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in
the crescentic borders of these flukes at its utmost expansion in the
full grown whale the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across

the entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews but cut
into it and you find that three distinct strata compose it upper
middle and lower the fibres in the upper and lower layers are
long and horizontal those of the middle one very short and running
crosswise between the outside layers this triune structure as much as
anything else imparts power to the tail to the student of old roman
walls the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin
course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful
relics of the antique and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the
great strength of the masonry

but as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough
the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of
muscular fibres and filaments which passing on either side the loins
and running down into the flukes insensibly blend with them and
largely contribute to their might so that in the tail the confluent
measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point
could annihilation occur to matter this were the thing to do it

nor does this its amazing strength at all tend to cripple the graceful
flexion of its motions where infantileness of ease undulates through
a titanism of power on the contrary those motions derive their most
appalling beauty from it real strength never impairs beauty or harmony
but it often bestows it and in everything imposingly beautiful
strength has much to do with the magic take away the tied tendons that
all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved hercules and its
charm would be gone as devout eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the
naked corpse of goethe he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the
man that seemed as a roman triumphal arch when angelo paints even god
the father in human form mark what robustness is there and whatever
they may reveal of the divine love in the son the soft curled
hermaphroditical italian pictures in which his idea has been most
successfully embodied these pictures so destitute as they are of all
brawniness hint nothing of any power but the mere negative feminine
one of submission and endurance which on all hands it is conceded form
the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings

such is the subtle elasticity of the organ i treat of that whether
wielded in sport or in earnest or in anger whatever be the mood it
be in its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace therein no
fairy's arm can transcend it

five great motions are peculiar to it first when used as a fin for
progression second when used as a mace in battle third in sweeping
fourth in lobtailing fifth in peaking flukes

first being horizontal in its position the leviathan's tail acts in
a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures it never
wriggles in man or fish wriggling is a sign of inferiority to the
whale his tail is the sole means of propulsion scroll-wise coiled
forwards beneath the body and then rapidly sprung backwards it is this
which gives that singular darting leaping motion to the monster when
furiously swimming his side-fins only serve to steer by

second it is a little significant that while one sperm whale only
fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw nevertheless in his
conflicts with man he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail in
striking at a boat he swiftly curves away his flukes from it and the
blow is only inflicted by the recoil if it be made in the unobstructed
air especially if it descend to its mark the stroke is then simply
irresistible no ribs of man or boat can withstand it your only
salvation lies in eluding it but if it comes sideways through the
opposing water then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the whale
boat and the elasticity of its materials a cracked rib or a dashed
plank or two a sort of stitch in the side is generally the most
serious result these submerged side blows are so often received in the
fishery that they are accounted mere child's play some one strips off
a frock and the hole is stopped

third i cannot demonstrate it but it seems to me that in the whale
the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail for in this respect
there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the
elephant's trunk this delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of
sweeping when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
slowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface
of the sea and if he feel but a sailor's whisker woe to that sailor
whiskers and all what tenderness there is in that preliminary touch
had this tail any prehensile power i should straightway bethink me of
darmonodes elephant that so frequented the flower-market and with
low salutations presented nosegays to damsels and then caressed their
zones on more accounts than one a pity it is that the whale does not
possess this prehensile virtue in his tail for i have heard of yet
another elephant that when wounded in the fight curved round his trunk
and extracted the dart

fourth stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the
middle of solitary seas you find him unbent from the vast corpulence
of his dignity and kitten-like he plays on the ocean as if it were a
hearth but still you see his power in his play the broad palms of
his tail are flirted high into the air then smiting the surface the
thunderous concussion resounds for miles you would almost think a great
gun had been discharged and if you noticed the light wreath of vapour
from the spiracle at his other extremity you would think that that was
the smoke from the touch-hole

fifth as in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes
lie considerably below the level of his back they are then completely
out of sight beneath the surface but when he is about to plunge into
the deeps his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are
tossed erect in the air and so remain vibrating a moment till they
downwards shoot out of view excepting the sublime breach somewhere
else to be described this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the
grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature out of the bottomless
profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the
highest heaven so in dreams have i seen majestic satan thrusting forth
his tormented colossal claw from the flame baltic of hell but in
gazing at such scenes it is all in all what mood you are in if in
the dantean the devils will occur to you if in that of isaiah the
archangels standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that
crimsoned sky and sea i once saw a large herd of whales in the east
all heading towards the sun and for a moment vibrating in concert with
peaked flukes as it seemed to me at the time such a grand embodiment
of adoration of the gods was never beheld even in persia the home of
the fire worshippers as ptolemy philopater testified of the african
elephant i then testified of the whale pronouncing him the most devout
of all beings for according to king juba the military elephants of
antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the
profoundest silence

the chance comparison in this chapter between the whale and the
elephant so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk
of the other are concerned should not tend to place those two
opposite organs on an equality much less the creatures to which they
respectively belong for as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier
to leviathan so compared with leviathan's tail his trunk is but the
stalk of a lily the most direful blow from the elephant's trunk were as
the playful tap of a fan compared with the measureless crush and crash
of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes which in repeated instances have
one after the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews
into the air very much as an indian juggler tosses his balls


though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale
and the elephant is preposterous inasmuch as in that particular the
elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to
the elephant nevertheless there are not wanting some points of curious
similitude among these is the spout it is well known that the elephant
will often draw up water or dust in his trunk and then elevating it
jet it forth in a stream


the more i consider this mighty tail the more do i deplore my inability
to express it at times there are gestures in it which though they
would well grace the hand of man remain wholly inexplicable in an
extensive herd so remarkable occasionally are these mystic gestures
that i have heard hunters who have declared them akin to free-mason
signs and symbols that the whale indeed by these methods
intelligently conversed with the world nor are there wanting other
motions of the whale in his general body full of strangeness and
unaccountable to his most experienced assailant dissect him how i may
then i but go skin deep i know him not and never will but if i know
not even the tail of this whale how understand his head much more
how comprehend his face when face he has none thou shalt see my back
parts my tail he seems to say but my face shall not be seen but i
cannot completely make out his back parts and hint what he will about
his face i say again he has no face



chapter the grand armada


the long and narrow peninsula of malacca extending south-eastward from
the territories of birmah forms the most southerly point of all asia
in a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of
sumatra java bally and timor which with many others form a
vast mole or rampart lengthwise connecting asia with australia
and dividing the long unbroken indian ocean from the thickly studded
oriental archipelagoes this rampart is pierced by several sally-ports
for the convenience of ships and whales conspicuous among which are the
straits of sunda and malacca by the straits of sunda chiefly vessels
bound to china from the west emerge into the china seas

those narrow straits of sunda divide sumatra from java and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands buttressed by that bold green
promontory known to seamen as java head they not a little correspond
to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire and
considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices and silks and jewels
and gold and ivory with which the thousand islands of that oriental
sea are enriched it seems a significant provision of nature that such
treasures by the very formation of the land should at least bear the
appearance however ineffectual of being guarded from the all-grasping
western world the shores of the straits of sunda are unsupplied
with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the
mediterranean the baltic and the propontis unlike the danes these
orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from
the endless procession of ships before the wind which for centuries
past by night and by day have passed between the islands of sumatra
and java freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east but while
they freely waive a ceremonial like this they do by no means renounce
their claim to more solid tribute

time out of mind the piratical proas of the malays lurking among
the low shaded coves and islets of sumatra have sallied out upon the
vessels sailing through the straits fiercely demanding tribute at the
point of their spears though by the repeated bloody chastisements they
have received at the hands of european cruisers the audacity of these
corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed yet even at the present
day we occasionally hear of english and american vessels which in
those waters have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged

with a fair fresh wind the pequod was now drawing nigh to these
straits ahab purposing to pass through them into the javan sea and
thence cruising northwards over waters known to be frequented here and
there by the sperm whale sweep inshore by the philippine islands and
gain the far coast of japan in time for the great whaling season there
by these means the circumnavigating pequod would sweep almost all the
known sperm whale cruising grounds of the world previous to descending
upon the line in the pacific where ahab though everywhere else foiled
in his pursuit firmly counted upon giving battle to moby dick in the
sea he was most known to frequent and at a season when he might most
reasonably be presumed to be haunting it

but how now in this zoned quest does ahab touch no land does his crew
drink air surely he will stop for water nay for a long time now
the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring and needs
no sustenance but what's in himself so ahab mark this too in the
whaler while other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff to be
transferred to foreign wharves the world-wandering whale-ship carries
no cargo but herself and crew their weapons and their wants she has a
whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold she is ballasted with
utilities not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge she
carries years water in her clear old prime nantucket water which
when three years afloat the nantucketer in the pacific prefers to
drink before the brackish fluid but yesterday rafted off in casks from
the peruvian or indian streams hence it is that while other ships may
have gone to china from new york and back again touching at a score
of ports the whale-ship in all that interval may not have sighted
one grain of soil her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like
themselves so that did you carry them the news that another flood had
come they would only answer well boys here's the ark

now as many sperm whales had been captured off the western coast of
java in the near vicinity of the straits of sunda indeed as most of
the ground roundabout was generally recognised by the fishermen as an
excellent spot for cruising therefore as the pequod gained more
and more upon java head the look-outs were repeatedly hailed and
admonished to keep wide awake but though the green palmy cliffs of the
land soon loomed on the starboard bow and with delighted nostrils
the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air yet not a single jet was
descried almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
hereabouts the ship had well nigh entered the straits when the
customary cheering cry was heard from aloft and ere long a spectacle of
singular magnificence saluted us

but here be it premised that owing to the unwearied activity with which
of late they have been hunted over all four oceans the sperm whales
instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached companies as in
former times are now frequently met with in extensive herds sometimes
embracing so great a multitude that it would almost seem as if
numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual
assistance and protection to this aggregation of the sperm whale into
such immense caravans may be imputed the circumstance that even in the
best cruising grounds you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months
together without being greeted by a single spout and then be suddenly
saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands

broad on both bows at the distance of some two or three miles and
forming a great semicircle embracing one half of the level horizon
a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the
noon-day air unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the right
whale which dividing at top fall over in two branches like the cleft
drooping boughs of a willow the single forward-slanting spout of the
sperm whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist continually
rising and falling away to leeward

seen from the pequod's deck then as she would rise on a high hill of
the sea this host of vapoury spouts individually curling up into the
air and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze showed
like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis descried
of a balmy autumnal morning by some horseman on a height

as marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains
accelerate their march all eagerness to place that perilous passage in
their rear and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain
even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through
the straits gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle and
swimming on in one solid but still crescentic centre

crowding all sail the pequod pressed after them the harpooneers
handling their weapons and loudly cheering from the heads of their
yet suspended boats if the wind only held little doubt had they that
chased through these straits of sunda the vast host would only deploy
into the oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their
number and who could tell whether in that congregated caravan moby
dick himself might not temporarily be swimming like the worshipped
white-elephant in the coronation procession of the siamese so with
stun-sail piled on stun-sail we sailed along driving these leviathans
before us when of a sudden the voice of tashtego was heard loudly
directing attention to something in our wake

corresponding to the crescent in our van we beheld another in our rear
it seemed formed of detached white vapours rising and falling something
like the spouts of the whales only they did not so completely come and
go for they constantly hovered without finally disappearing levelling
his glass at this sight ahab quickly revolved in his pivot-hole
crying aloft there and rig whips and buckets to wet the
sails malays sir and after us

as if too long lurking behind the headlands till the pequod should
fairly have entered the straits these rascally asiatics were now in hot
pursuit to make up for their over-cautious delay but when the swift
pequod with a fresh leading wind was herself in hot chase how very
kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to
her own chosen pursuit mere riding-whips and rowels to her that they
were as with glass under arm ahab to-and-fro paced the deck in his
forward turn beholding the monsters he chased and in the after one the
bloodthirsty pirates chasing him some such fancy as the above seemed
his and when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in
which the ship was then sailing and bethought him that through that
gate lay the route to his vengeance and beheld how that through that
same gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end
and not only that but a herd of remorseless wild pirates and
inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on with their
curses when all these conceits had passed through his brain ahab's
brow was left gaunt and ribbed like the black sand beach after some
stormy tide has been gnawing it without being able to drag the firm
thing from its place

but thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew and
when after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern the
pequod at last shot by the vivid green cockatoo point on the sumatra
side emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond then the
harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining
upon the ship than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained
upon the malays but still driving on in the wake of the whales at
length they seemed abating their speed gradually the ship neared them
and the wind now dying away word was passed to spring to the boats but
no sooner did the herd by some presumed wonderful instinct of the sperm
whale become notified of the three keels that were after them though
as yet a mile in their rear than they rallied again and forming
in close ranks and battalions so that their spouts all looked like
flashing lines of stacked bayonets moved on with redoubled velocity

stripped to our shirts and drawers we sprang to the white-ash and
after several hours pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase
when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating
token that they were now at last under the influence of that strange
perplexity of inert irresolution which when the fishermen perceive
it in the whale they say he is gallied the compact martial columns
in which they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swimming were now
broken up in one measureless rout and like king porus elephants in the
indian battle with alexander they seemed going mad with consternation
in all directions expanding in vast irregular circles and aimlessly
swimming hither and thither by their short thick spoutings they
plainly betrayed their distraction of panic this was still more
strangely evinced by those of their number who completely paralysed
as it were helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the
sea had these leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep pursued over
the pasture by three fierce wolves they could not possibly have evinced
such excessive dismay but this occasional timidity is characteristic
of almost all herding creatures though banding together in tens of
thousands the lion-maned buffaloes of the west have fled before a
solitary horseman witness too all human beings how when herded
together in the sheepfold of a theatre's pit they will at the
slightest alarm of fire rush helter-skelter for the outlets crowding
trampling jamming and remorselessly dashing each other to death best
therefore withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales
before us for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not
infinitely outdone by the madness of men

though many of the whales as has been said were in violent motion
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor
retreated but collectively remained in one place as is customary in
those cases the boats at once separated each making for some one
lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal in about three minutes time
queequeg's harpoon was flung the stricken fish darted blinding spray
in our faces and then running away with us like light steered straight
for the heart of the herd though such a movement on the part of the
whale struck under such circumstances is in no wise unprecedented and
indeed is almost always more or less anticipated yet does it present
one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery for as the swift
monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal you bid
adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious throb

as blind and deaf the whale plunged forward as if by sheer power of
speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him as we
thus tore a white gash in the sea on all sides menaced as we flew by
the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us our beset boat was
like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest and striving to steer
through their complicated channels and straits knowing not at what
moment it may be locked in and crushed

but not a bit daunted queequeg steered us manfully now sheering off
from this monster directly across our route in advance now edging away
from that whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead while all the
time starbuck stood up in the bows lance in hand pricking out of our
way whatever whales he could reach by short darts for there was no time
to make long ones nor were the oarsmen quite idle though their wonted
duty was now altogether dispensed with they chiefly attended to the
shouting part of the business out of the way commodore cried one
to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface
and for an instant threatened to swamp us hard down with your tail
there cried a second to another which close to our gunwale seemed
calmly cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity

all whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances originally invented
by the nantucket indians called druggs two thick squares of wood
of equal size are stoutly clenched together so that they cross each
other's grain at right angles a line of considerable length is then
attached to the middle of this block and the other end of the line
being looped it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon it is chiefly
among gallied whales that this drugg is used for then more whales
are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time but sperm
whales are not every day encountered while you may then you must
kill all you can and if you cannot kill them all at once you must wing
them so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure hence it
is that at times like these the drugg comes into requisition our boat
was furnished with three of them the first and second were successfully
darted and we saw the whales staggeringly running off fettered by the
enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg they were cramped like
malefactors with the chain and ball but upon flinging the third in the
act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block it caught under one
of the seats of the boat and in an instant tore it out and carried it
away dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from
under him on both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks but we
stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in and so stopped the leaks for
the time

it had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons were
it not that as we advanced into the herd our whale's way greatly
diminished moreover that as we went still further and further from the
circumference of commotion the direful disorders seemed waning so that
when at last the jerking harpoon drew out and the towing whale sideways
vanished then with the tapering force of his parting momentum we
glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal as if
from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake here
the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales were heard
but not felt in this central expanse the sea presented that smooth
satin-like surface called a sleek produced by the subtle moisture
thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods yes we were now
in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every
commotion and still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of
the outer concentric circles and saw successive pods of whales eight
or ten in each swiftly going round and round like multiplied spans of
horses in a ring and so closely shoulder to shoulder that a titanic
circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones and so have
gone round on their backs owing to the density of the crowd of reposing
whales more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd no
possible chance of escape was at present afforded us we must watch for
a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in the wall that had only
admitted us in order to shut us up keeping at the centre of the lake
we were occasionally visited by small tame cows and calves the women
and children of this routed host

now inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving
outer circles and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in
any one of those circles the entire area at this juncture embraced by
the whole multitude must have contained at least two or three square
miles at any rate though indeed such a test at such a time might be
deceptive spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that
seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon i mention this
circumstance because as if the cows and calves had been purposely
locked up in this innermost fold and as if the wide extent of the
herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its
stopping or possibly being so young unsophisticated and every way
innocent and inexperienced however it may have been these smaller
whales now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the
lake evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence or else a still
becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at like household
dogs they came snuffling round us right up to our gunwales and
touching them till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly
domesticated them queequeg patted their foreheads starbuck scratched
their backs with his lance but fearful of the consequences for the
time refrained from darting it

but far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface another and still
stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side for suspended
in those watery vaults floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the
whales and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to
become mothers the lake as i have hinted was to a considerable depth
exceedingly transparent and as human infants while suckling will calmly
and fixedly gaze away from the breast as if leading two different
lives at the time and while yet drawing mortal nourishment be still
spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence even so did the
young of these whales seem looking up towards us but not at us as if
we were but a bit of gulfweed in their new-born sight floating on their
sides the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us one of these little
infants that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old might
have measured some fourteen feet in length and some six feet in
girth he was a little frisky though as yet his body seemed scarce yet
recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the
maternal reticule where tail to head and all ready for the final
spring the unborn whale lies bent like a tartar's bow the delicate
side-fins and the palms of his flukes still freshly retained the
plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign
parts

line line cried queequeg looking over the gunwale him fast him
fast who line him who struck two whale one big one little

what ails ye man cried starbuck

look-e here said queequeg pointing down

as when the stricken whale that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of
fathoms of rope as after deep sounding he floats up again and shows
the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the
air so now starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of madame
leviathan by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam not
seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase this natural line with
the maternal end loose becomes entangled with the hempen one so that
the cub is thereby trapped some of the subtlest secrets of the seas
seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond we saw young leviathan
amours in the deep


the sperm whale as with all other species of the leviathan but unlike
most other fish breeds indifferently at all seasons after a gestation
which may probably be set down at nine months producing but one at a
time though in some few known instances giving birth to an esau and
jacob a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats curiously
situated one on each side of the anus but the breasts themselves
extend upwards from that when by chance these precious parts in a
nursing whale are cut by the hunter's lance the mother's pouring milk
and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods the milk is very sweet
and rich it has been tasted by man it might do well with strawberries
when overflowing with mutual esteem the whales salute more hominum


and thus though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations
and affrights did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and
fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments yea serenely revelled
in dalliance and delight but even so amid the tornadoed atlantic of
my being do i myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm and
while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me deep down and
deep inland there i still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy

meanwhile as we thus lay entranced the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats
still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host or
possibly carrying on the war within the first circle where abundance of
room and some convenient retreats were afforded them but the sight
of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro
across the circles was nothing to what at last met our eyes it is
sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful
and alert to seek to hamstring him as it were by sundering or
maiming his gigantic tail-tendon it is done by darting a short-handled
cutting-spade to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again
a whale wounded as we afterwards learned in this part but not
effectually as it seemed had broken away from the boat carrying along
with him half of the harpoon line and in the extraordinary agony of
the wound he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone
mounted desperado arnold at the battle of saratoga carrying dismay
wherever he went

but agonizing as was the wound of this whale and an appalling spectacle
enough any way yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to
inspire the rest of the herd was owing to a cause which at first the
intervening distance obscured from us but at length we perceived that
by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery this whale had
become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed he had also run
away with the cutting-spade in him and while the free end of the rope
attached to that weapon had permanently caught in the coils of the
harpoon-line round his tail the cutting-spade itself had worked loose
from his flesh so that tormented to madness he was now churning
through the water violently flailing with his flexible tail and
tossing the keen spade about him wounding and murdering his own
comrades

this terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright first the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little and tumble against each other as if lifted
by half spent billows from afar then the lake itself began faintly to
heave and swell the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished
in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central
circles began to swim in thickening clusters yes the long calm was
departing a low advancing hum was soon heard and then like to the
tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river hudson breaks up in
spring the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner centre
as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain instantly starbuck
and queequeg changed places starbuck taking the stern

oars oars he intensely whispered seizing the helm gripe your
oars and clutch your souls now my god men stand by shove him off
you queequeg the whale there prick him hit him stand up stand
up and stay so spring men pull men never mind their backs scrape
them scrape away

the boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks leaving a
narrow dardanelles between their long lengths but by desperate endeavor
we at last shot into a temporary opening then giving way rapidly
and at the same time earnestly watching for another outlet after many
similar hair-breadth escapes we at last swiftly glided into what had
just been one of the outer circles but now crossed by random whales
all violently making for one centre this lucky salvation was cheaply
purchased by the loss of queequeg's hat who while standing in the bows
to prick the fugitive whales had his hat taken clean from his head by
the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes close
by

riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was it soon
resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement for having
clumped together at last in one dense body they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness further pursuit was useless but
the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged whales
might be dropped astern and likewise to secure one which flask had
killed and waifed the waif is a pennoned pole two or three of which
are carried by every boat and which when additional game is at hand
are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale both to
mark its place on the sea and also as token of prior possession should
the boats of any other ship draw near

the result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious
saying in the fishery the more whales the less fish of all the
drugged whales only one was captured the rest contrived to escape for
the time but only to be taken as will hereafter be seen by some other
craft than the pequod



chapter 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 embonpoint

it is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings like fashionables they are for ever on the move in leisurely
search of variety you meet them on the line in time for the full flower
of the equatorial feeding season having just returned perhaps from
spending the summer in the northern seas and so cheating summer of all
unpleasant weariness and warmth by the time they have lounged up and
down the promenade of the equator awhile they start for the oriental
waters in anticipation of the cool season there and so evade the other
excessive temperature of the year

when serenely advancing on one of these journeys if any strange
suspicious sights are seen my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family should any unwarrantably pert young leviathan coming
that way presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies
with what prodigious fury the bashaw assails him and chases him away
high times indeed if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be
permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss though do what the
bashaw will he cannot keep the most notorious lothario out of his bed
for alas all fish bed in common as ashore the ladies often cause the
most terrible duels among their rival admirers just so with the whales
who sometimes come to deadly battle and all for love they fence with
their long lower jaws sometimes locking them together and so striving
for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers not
a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters furrowed
heads broken teeth scolloped fins and in some instances wrenched and
dislocated mouths

but supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at
the first rush of the harem's lord then is it very diverting to watch
that lord gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and
revels there awhile still in tantalizing vicinity to young lothario
like pious solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines
granting other whales to be in sight the fishermen will seldom give
chase to one of these grand turks for these grand turks are too lavish
of their strength and hence their unctuousness is small as for the
sons and the daughters they beget why those sons and daughters must
take care of themselves at least with only the maternal help for
like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named my lord
whale has no taste for the nursery however much for the bower and so
being a great traveller he leaves his anonymous babies all over the
world every baby an exotic in good time nevertheless as the ardour
of youth declines as years and dumps increase as reflection lends
her solemn pauses in short as a general lassitude overtakes the sated
turk then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens our
ottoman enters upon the impotent repentant admonitory stage of life
forswears disbands the harem and grown to an exemplary sulky old
soul goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his
prayers and warning each young leviathan from his amorous errors

now as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school so
is the lord and master of that school technically known as the
schoolmaster it is therefore not in strict character however admirably
satirical that after going to school himself he should then go abroad
inculcating not what he learned there but the folly of it his title
schoolmaster would very naturally seem derived from the name bestowed
upon the harem itself but some have surmised that the man who first
thus entitled this sort of ottoman whale must have read the memoirs of
vidocq and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that
famous frenchman was in his younger days and what was the nature of
those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils

the same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
betakes himself in his advancing years is true of all aged sperm
whales almost universally a lone whale as a solitary leviathan is
called proves an ancient one like venerable moss-bearded daniel boone
he will have no one near him but nature herself and her he takes to
wife in the wilderness of waters and the best of wives she is though
she keeps so many moody secrets

the schools composing none but young and vigorous males previously
mentioned offer a strong contrast to the harem schools for while
those female whales are characteristically timid the young males or
forty-barrel-bulls as they call them are by far the most pugnacious
of all leviathans and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter
excepting those wondrous grey-headed grizzled whales sometimes met
and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout

the forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools like
a mob of young collegians they are full of fight fun and wickedness
tumbling round the world at such a reckless rollicking rate that no
prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous
lad at yale or harvard they soon relinquish this turbulence though
and when about three-fourths grown break up and separately go about in
quest of settlements that is harems

another point of difference between the male and female schools is
still more characteristic of the sexes say you strike a
forty-barrel-bull poor devil all his comrades quit him but strike
a member of the harem school and her companions swim around her with
every token of concern sometimes lingering so near her and so long as
themselves to fall a prey



chapter 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
ad but though no other nation has ever had any written whaling
law yet the american fishermen have been their own legislators and
lawyers in this matter they have provided a system which for terse
comprehensiveness surpasses justinian's pandects and the by-laws of
the chinese society for the suppression of meddling with other people's
business yes these laws might be engraven on a queen anne's farthing
or the barb of a harpoon and worn round the neck so small are they

i a fast-fish belongs to the party fast to it

ii a loose-fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it

but what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
brevity of it which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to
expound it

first what is a fast-fish alive or dead a fish is technically fast
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat by any medium at all
controllable by the occupant or occupants a mast an oar a nine-inch
cable a telegraph wire or a strand of cobweb it is all the same
likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif or any other
recognised symbol of possession so long as the party waifing it plainly
evince their ability at any time to take it alongside as well as their
intention so to do

these are scientific commentaries but the commentaries of the whalemen
themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks the
coke-upon-littleton of the fist true among the more upright and
honourable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases
where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party but
others are by no means so scrupulous

some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated
in england wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of
a whale in the northern seas and when indeed they the plaintiffs had
succeeded in harpooning the fish they were at last through peril of
their lives obliged to forsake not only their lines but their boat
itself ultimately the defendants the crew of another ship came up
with the whale struck killed seized and finally appropriated it
before the very eyes of the plaintiffs and when those defendants were
remonstrated with their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs
teeth and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done
he would now retain their line harpoons and boat which had remained
attached to the whale at the time of the seizure wherefore the
plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale line
harpoons and boat

mr erskine was counsel for the defendants lord ellenborough was
the judge in the course of the defence the witty erskine went on
to illustrate his position by alluding to a recent crim con
case wherein a gentleman after in vain trying to bridle his wife's
viciousness had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life but in
the course of years repenting of that step he instituted an action to
recover possession of her erskine was on the other side and he
then supported it by saying that though the gentleman had originally
harpooned the lady and had once had her fast and only by reason of the
great stress of her plunging viciousness had at last abandoned her yet
abandon her he did so that she became a loose-fish and therefore
when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her the lady then became that
subsequent gentleman's property along with whatever harpoon might have
been found sticking in her

now in the present case erskine contended that the examples of the whale
and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other

these pleadings and the counter pleadings being duly heard the very
learned judge in set terms decided to wit that as for the boat he
awarded it to the plaintiffs because they had merely abandoned it
to save their lives but that with regard to the controverted whale
harpoons and line they belonged to the defendants the whale because
it was a loose-fish at the time of the final capture and the harpoons
and line because when the fish made off with them it the fish
acquired a property in those articles and hence anybody who afterwards
took the fish had a right to them now the defendants afterwards took
the fish ergo the aforesaid articles were theirs

a common man looking at this decision of the very learned judge might
possibly object to it but ploughed up to the primary rock of the
matter the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws
previously quoted and applied and elucidated by lord ellenborough in
the above cited case these two laws touching fast-fish and loose-fish
i say will on reflection be found the fundamentals of all human
jurisprudence for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture
the temple of the law like the temple of the philistines has but two
props to stand on

is it not a saying in every one's mouth possession is half of the law
that is regardless of how the thing came into possession but often
possession is the whole of the law what are the sinews and souls of
russian serfs and republican slaves but fast-fish whereof possession is
the whole of the law what to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last
mite but a fast-fish what is yonder undetected villain's marble mansion
with a door-plate for a waif what is that but a fast-fish what is the
ruinous discount which mordecai the broker gets from poor woebegone
the bankrupt on a loan to keep woebegone's family from starvation
what is that ruinous discount but a fast-fish what is the archbishop of
savesoul's income of l 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 l but a
fast-fish what are the duke of dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets
but fast-fish what to that redoubted harpooneer john bull is poor
ireland but a fast-fish what to that apostolic lancer brother
jonathan is texas but a fast-fish and concerning all these is not
possession the whole of the law

but if the doctrine of fast-fish be pretty generally applicable
the kindred doctrine of loose-fish is still more widely so that is
internationally and universally applicable

what was america in but a loose-fish in which columbus struck the
spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress
what was poland to the czar what greece to the turk what india
to england what at last will mexico be to the united states all
loose-fish

what are the rights of man and the liberties of the world but
loose-fish what all men's minds and opinions but loose-fish what is
the principle of religious belief in them but a loose-fish what to
the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but
loose-fish what is the great globe itself but a loose-fish and what
are you reader but a loose-fish and a fast-fish too



chapter heads or tails


de balena vero sufficit si rex habeat caput et regina caudam
bracton l c 


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 honourary 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 l from the precious
oil and bone and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives and good
ale with their cronies upon the strength of their respective shares up
steps a very learned and most christian and charitable gentleman with
a copy of blackstone under his arm and laying it upon the whale's head
he says hands off this fish my masters is a fast-fish i seize it
as the lord warden's upon this the poor mariners in their respectful
consternation so truly english knowing not what to say fall to
vigorously scratching their heads all round meanwhile ruefully glancing
from the whale to the stranger but that did in nowise mend the matter
or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy
of blackstone at length one of them after long scratching about for
his ideas made bold to speak

please sir who is the lord warden

the duke

but the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish

it is his

we have been at great trouble and peril and some expense and is
all that to go to the duke's benefit we getting nothing at all for our
pains but our blisters

it is his

is the duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of
getting a livelihood

it is his

i thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of
this whale

it is his

won't the duke be content with a quarter or a half

it is his

in a word the whale was seized and sold and his grace the duke of
wellington received the money thinking that viewed in some particular
lights the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be
deemed under the circumstances a rather hard one an honest clergyman
of the town respectfully addressed a note to his grace begging him to
take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration to
which my lord duke in substance replied both letters were published
that he had already done so and received the money and would be
obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he the reverend
gentleman would decline meddling with other people's business is
this the still militant old man standing at the corners of the three
kingdoms on all hands coercing alms of beggars

it will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the
duke to the whale was a delegated one from the sovereign we must needs
inquire then on what principle the sovereign is originally invested with
that right the law itself has already been set forth but plowdon gives
us the reason for it says plowdon the whale so caught belongs to
the king and queen because of its superior excellence and by the
soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such
matters

but why should the king have the head and the queen the tail a reason
for that ye lawyers

in his treatise on queen-gold or queen-pinmoney an old king's bench
author one william prynne thus discourseth ye tail is ye queen's
that ye queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone now this
was written at a time when the black limber bone of the greenland or
right whale was largely used in ladies bodices but this same bone
is not in the tail it is in the head which is a sad mistake for
a sagacious lawyer like prynne but is the queen a mermaid to be
presented with a tail an allegorical meaning may lurk here

there are two royal fish so styled by the english law writers the whale
and the sturgeon both royal property under certain limitations and
nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue
i know not that any other author has hinted of the matter but by
inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same
way as the whale the king receiving the highly dense and elastic head
peculiar to that fish which symbolically regarded may possibly be
humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality and thus there
seems a reason in all things even in law



chapter 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 ve


it was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted and when we
were slowly sailing over a sleepy vapoury mid-day sea that the many
noses on the pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the
three pairs of eyes aloft a peculiar and not very pleasant smell was
smelt in the sea

i will bet something now said stubb that somewhere hereabouts are
some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day i thought they
would keel up before long

presently the vapours in advance slid aside and there in the distance
lay a ship whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be
alongside as we glided nearer the stranger showed french colours from
his peak and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled and
hovered and swooped around him it was plain that the whale alongside
must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale that is a whale that
has died unmolested on the sea and so floated an unappropriated corpse
it may well be conceived what an unsavory odor such a mass must
exhale worse than an assyrian city in the plague when the living are
incompetent to bury the departed so intolerable indeed is it regarded
by some that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it
yet are there those who will still do it notwithstanding the fact that
the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality and
by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose

coming still nearer with the expiring breeze we saw that the frenchman
had a second whale alongside and this second whale seemed even more
of a nosegay than the first in truth it turned out to be one of
those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort
of prodigious dyspepsia or indigestion leaving their defunct bodies
almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil nevertheless in the
proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn
up his nose at such a whale as this however much he may shun blasted
whales in general

the pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger that stubb vowed
he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
knotted round the tail of one of these whales

there's a pretty fellow now he banteringly laughed standing in the
ship's bows there's a jackal for ye i well know that these crappoes
of frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery sometimes lowering
their boats for breakers mistaking them for sperm whale spouts yes
and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of
tallow candles and cases of snuffers foreseeing that all the oil they
will get won't be enough to dip the captain's wick into aye we all
know these things but look ye here's a crappo that is content with our
leavings the drugged whale there i mean aye and is content too with
scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there poor
devil i say pass round a hat some one and let's make him a present
of a little oil for dear charity's sake for what oil he'll get from
that drugged whale there wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail no not
in a condemned cell and as for the other whale why i'll agree to get
more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours than
he'll get from that bundle of bones though now that i think of it it
may contain something worth a good deal more than oil yes ambergris
i wonder now if our old man has thought of that it's worth trying yes
i'm for it and so saying he started for the quarter-deck

by this time the faint air had become a complete calm so that whether
or no the pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell with no hope of
escaping except by its breezing up again issuing from the cabin stubb
now called his boat's crew and pulled off for the stranger drawing
across her bow he perceived that in accordance with the fanciful french
taste the upper part of her stem-piece was carved in the likeness of a
huge drooping stalk was painted green and for thorns had copper
spikes projecting from it here and there the whole terminating in a
symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour upon her head boards in
large gilt letters he read bouton de rose rose-button or rose-bud
and this was the romantic name of this aromatic ship

though stubb did not understand the bouton part of the inscription yet
the word rose and the bulbous figure-head put together sufficiently
explained the whole to him

a wooden rose-bud eh he cried with his hand to his nose that will
do very well but how like all creation it smells

now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck he
had to pull round the bows to the starboard side and thus come close to
the blasted whale and so talk over it

arrived then at this spot with one hand still to his nose he
bawled bouton-de-rose ahoy are there any of you bouton-de-roses that
speak english

yes rejoined a guernsey-man from the bulwarks who turned out to be
the chief-mate

well then my bouton-de-rose-bud have you seen the white whale

what whale

the white whale a sperm whale moby dick have ye seen him

never heard of such a whale cachalot blanche white whale no

very good then good bye now and i'll call again in a minute

then rapidly pulling back towards the pequod and seeing ahab leaning
over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report he moulded his two hands
into a trumpet and shouted no sir no upon which ahab retired and
stubb returned to the frenchman

he now perceived that the guernsey-man who had just got into the
chains and was using a cutting-spade had slung his nose in a sort of
bag

what's the matter with your nose there said stubb broke it

i wish it was broken or that i didn't have any nose at all answered
the guernsey-man who did not seem to relish the job he was at very
much but what are you holding yours for

oh nothing it's a wax nose i have to hold it on fine day ain't it
air rather gardenny i should say throw us a bunch of posies will ye
bouton-de-rose

what in the devil's name do you want here roared the guernseyman
flying into a sudden passion

oh keep cool cool yes that's the word why don't you pack those
whales in ice while you're working at em but joking aside though do
you know rose-bud that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil out of
such whales as for that dried up one there he hasn't a gill in his
whole carcase

i know that well enough but d'ye see the captain here won't believe
it this is his first voyage he was a cologne manufacturer before but
come aboard and mayhap he'll believe you if he won't me and so i'll
get out of this dirty scrape

anything to oblige ye my sweet and pleasant fellow rejoined stubb
and with that he soon mounted to the deck there a queer scene presented
itself the sailors in tasselled caps of red worsted were getting the
heavy tackles in readiness for the whales but they worked rather slow
and talked very fast and seemed in anything but a good humor all their
noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many jib-booms
now and then pairs of them would drop their work and run up to the
mast-head to get some fresh air some thinking they would catch the
plague dipped oakum in coal-tar and at intervals held it to their
nostrils others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short
off at the bowl were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke so that it
constantly filled their olfactories

stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from
the captain's round-house abaft and looking in that direction saw a
fiery face thrust from behind the door which was held ajar from within
this was the tormented surgeon who after in vain remonstrating
against the proceedings of the day had betaken himself to the captain's
round-house cabinet he called it to avoid the pest but still could
not help yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times

marking all this stubb argued well for his scheme and turning to the
guernsey-man had a little chat with him during which the stranger mate
expressed his detestation of his captain as a conceited ignoramus
who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle
sounding him carefully stubb further perceived that the guernsey-man
had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris he therefore
held his peace on that head but otherwise was quite frank and
confidential with him so that the two quickly concocted a little plan
for both circumventing and satirizing the captain without his at all
dreaming of distrusting their sincerity according to this little plan
of theirs the guernsey-man under cover of an interpreter's office was
to tell the captain what he pleased but as coming from stubb and as
for stubb he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in
him during the interview

by this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin he was a
small and dark but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain with
large whiskers and moustache however and wore a red cotton velvet vest
with watch-seals at his side to this gentleman stubb was now politely
introduced by the guernsey-man who at once ostentatiously put on the
aspect of interpreting between them

what shall i say to him first said he

why said stubb eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals you
may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me
though i don't pretend to be a judge

he says monsieur said the guernsey-man in french turning to his
captain that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel whose captain
and chief-mate with six sailors had all died of a fever caught from a
blasted whale they had brought alongside

upon this the captain started and eagerly desired to know more

what now said the guernsey-man to stubb

why since he takes it so easy tell him that now i have eyed him
carefully i'm quite certain that he's no more fit to command a
whale-ship than a st jago monkey in fact tell him from me he's a
baboon

he vows and declares monsieur that the other whale the dried one is
far more deadly than the blasted one in fine monsieur he conjures us
as we value our lives to cut loose from these fish

instantly the captain ran forward and in a loud voice commanded his
crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles and at once cast loose
the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship

what now said the guernsey-man when the captain had returned to
them

why let me see yes you may as well tell him now that that in
fact tell him i've diddled him and aside to himself perhaps somebody
else

he says monsieur that he's very happy to have been of any service to
us

hearing this the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties
meaning himself and mate and concluded by inviting stubb down into his
cabin to drink a bottle of bordeaux

he wants you to take a glass of wine with him said the interpreter

thank him heartily but tell him it's against my principles to drink
with the man i've diddled in fact tell him i must go

he says monsieur that his principles won't admit of his drinking but
that if monsieur wants to live another day to drink then monsieur had
best drop all four boats and pull the ship away from these whales for
it's so calm they won't drift

by this time stubb was over the side and getting into his boat hailed
the guernsey-man to this effect that having a long tow-line in his
boat he would do what he could to help them by pulling out the lighter
whale of the two from the ship's side while the frenchman's boats
then were engaged in towing the ship one way stubb benevolently towed
away at his whale the other way ostentatiously slacking out a most
unusually long tow-line

presently a breeze sprang up stubb feigned to cast off from the whale
hoisting his boats the frenchman soon increased his distance while the
pequod slid in between him and stubb's whale whereupon stubb quickly
pulled to the floating body and hailing the pequod to give notice of
his intentions at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous
cunning seizing his sharp boat-spade he commenced an excavation in the
body a little behind the side fin you would almost have thought he was
digging a cellar there in the sea and when at length his spade struck
against the gaunt ribs it was like turning up old roman tiles and
pottery buried in fat english loam his boat's crew were all in high
excitement eagerly helping their chief and looking as anxious as
gold-hunters

and all the time numberless fowls were diving and ducking and
screaming and yelling and fighting around them stubb was beginning
to look disappointed especially as the horrible nosegay increased when
suddenly from out the very heart of this plague there stole a faint
stream of perfume which flowed through the tide of bad smells without
being absorbed by it as one river will flow into and then along with
another without at all blending with it for a time

i have it i have it cried stubb with delight striking something in
the subterranean regions a purse a purse

dropping his spade he thrust both hands in and drew out handfuls
of something that looked like ripe windsor soap or rich mottled old
cheese very unctuous and savory withal you might easily dent it with
your thumb it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour and this good
friends is ambergris worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist
some six handfuls were obtained but more was unavoidably lost in the
sea and still more perhaps might have been secured were it not for
impatient ahab's loud command to stubb to desist and come on board
else the ship would bid them good bye



chapter ambergris


now this ambergris is a very curious substance and so important as
an article of commerce that in 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 dishonour but raised in glory and likewise
call to mind that saying of paracelsus about what it is that maketh
the best musk also forget not the strange fact that of all things of
ill-savor cologne-water in its rudimental manufacturing stages is the
worst

i should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal but cannot
owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen
and which in the estimation of some already biased minds might be
considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of
the frenchman's two whales elsewhere in this volume the slanderous
aspersion has been disproved that the vocation of whaling is throughout
a slatternly untidy business but there is another thing to rebut they
hint that all whales always smell bad now how did this odious stigma
originate

i opine that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the
greenland whaling ships in london more than two centuries ago because
those whalemen did not then and do not now try out their oil at sea as
the southern ships have always done but cutting up the fresh blubber in
small bits thrust it through the bung holes of large casks and carry
it home in that manner the shortness of the season in those icy seas
and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed forbidding
any other course the consequence is that upon breaking into the hold
and unloading one of these whale cemeteries in the greenland dock a
savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an
old city grave-yard for the foundations of a lying-in-hospital

i partly surmise also that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of greenland in former
times of a dutch village called schmerenburgh or smeerenberg which
latter name is the one used by the learned fogo von slack in his great
work on smells a text-book on that subject as its name imports smeer
fat berg to put up this village was founded in order to afford a
place for the blubber of the dutch whale fleet to be tried out without
being taken home to holland for that purpose it was a collection of
furnaces fat-kettles and oil sheds and when the works were in full
operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor but all this is
quite different with a south sea sperm whaler which in a voyage of four
years perhaps after completely filling her hold with oil does not
perhaps consume fifty days in the business of boiling out and in the
state that it is casked the oil is nearly scentless the truth is that
living or dead if but decently treated whales as a species are by
no means creatures of ill odor nor can whalemen be recognised as the
people of the middle ages affected to detect a jew in the company by
the nose nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant
when as a general thing he enjoys such high health taking abundance
of exercise always out of doors though it is true seldom in the
open air i say that the motion of a sperm whale's flukes above water
dispenses a perfume as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a
warm parlor what then shall i liken the sperm whale to for fragrance
considering his magnitude must it not be to that famous elephant with
jewelled tusks and redolent with myrrh which was led out of an indian
town to do honour to alexander the great



chapter the castaway


it was but some few days after encountering the frenchman that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the pequod's crew an
event most lamentable and which ended in providing the sometimes
madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying
prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own

now in the whale ship it is not every one that goes in the boats some
few hands are reserved called ship-keepers whose province it is to work
the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale as a general thing
these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats
crews but if there happen to be an unduly slender clumsy or timorous
wight in the ship that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper it
was so in the pequod with the little negro pippin by nick-name pip by
abbreviation poor pip ye have heard of him before ye must remember
his tambourine on that dramatic midnight so gloomy-jolly

in outer aspect pip and dough-boy made a match like a black pony and a
white one of equal developments though of dissimilar colour driven in
one eccentric span but while hapless dough-boy was by nature dull and
torpid in his intellects pip though over tender-hearted was at bottom
very bright with that pleasant genial jolly brightness peculiar to
his tribe a tribe which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with
finer freer relish than any other race for blacks the year's calendar
should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five fourth of julys and
new year's days nor smile so while i write that this little black was
brilliant for even blackness has its brilliancy behold yon lustrous
ebony panelled in king's cabinets but pip loved life and all life's
peaceable securities so that the panic-striking business in which he
had somehow unaccountably become entrapped had most sadly blurred his
brightness though as ere long will be seen what was thus temporarily
subdued in him in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by
strange wild fires that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the
natural lustre with which in his native tolland county in connecticut
he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green and at
melodious even-tide with his gay ha-ha had turned the round horizon
into one star-belled tambourine so though in the clear air of day
suspended against a blue-veined neck the pure-watered diamond drop
will healthful glow yet when the cunning jeweller would show you
the diamond in its most impressive lustre he lays it against a gloomy
ground and then lights it up not by the sun but by some unnatural
gases then come out those fiery effulgences infernally superb then
the evil-blazing diamond once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies
looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the king of hell but let us to
the story

it came to pass that in the ambergris affair stubb's after-oarsman
chanced so to sprain his hand as for a time to become quite maimed
and temporarily pip was put into his place

the first time stubb lowered with him pip evinced much nervousness
but happily for that time escaped close contact with the whale and
therefore came off not altogether discreditably though stubb observing
him took care afterwards to exhort him to cherish his courageousness
to the utmost for he might often find it needful

now upon the second lowering the boat paddled upon the whale and as
the fish received the darted iron it gave its customary rap which
happened in this instance to be right under poor pip's seat the
involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap paddle in
hand out of the boat and in such a way that part of the slack whale
line coming against his chest he breasted it overboard with him so as
to become entangled in it when at last plumping into the water that
instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run the line swiftly
straightened and presto poor pip came all foaming up to the chocks
of the boat remorselessly dragged there by the line which had taken
several turns around his chest and neck

tashtego stood in the bows he was full of the fire of the hunt he
hated pip for a poltroon snatching the boat-knife from its sheath
he suspended its sharp edge over the line and turning towards stubb
exclaimed interrogatively cut meantime pip's blue choked face
plainly looked do for god's sake all passed in a flash in less than
half a minute this entire thing happened

damn him cut roared stubb and so the whale was lost and pip was
saved

so soon as he recovered himself the poor little negro was assailed
by yells and execrations from the crew tranquilly permitting these
irregular cursings to evaporate stubb then in a plain business-like
but still half humorous manner cursed pip officially and that done
unofficially gave him much wholesome advice the substance was never
jump from a boat pip except but all the rest was indefinite as the
soundest advice ever is now in general stick to the boat is your
true motto in whaling but cases will sometimes happen when leap from
the boat is still better moreover as if perceiving at last that if he
should give undiluted conscientious advice to pip he would be leaving
him too wide a margin to jump in for the future stubb suddenly dropped
all advice and concluded with a peremptory command stick to the boat
pip or by the lord i won't pick you up if you jump mind that we
can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you a whale would sell for
thirty times what you would pip in alabama bear that in mind and
don't jump any more hereby perhaps stubb indirectly hinted that
though man loved his fellow yet man is a money-making animal which
propensity too often interferes with his benevolence

but we are all in the hands of the gods and pip jumped again it was
under very similar circumstances to the first performance but this time
he did not breast out the line and hence when the whale started to
run pip was left behind on the sea like a hurried traveller's trunk
alas stubb was but too true to his word it was a beautiful bounteous
blue day the spangled sea calm and cool and flatly stretching away
all round to the horizon like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the
extremest bobbing up and down in that sea pip's ebon head showed
like a head of cloves no boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly
astern stubb's inexorable back was turned upon him and the whale was
winged in three minutes a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between
pip and stubb out from the centre of the sea poor pip turned his
crisp curling black head to the sun another lonely castaway though
the loftiest and the brightest

now in calm weather to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore but the awful
lonesomeness is intolerable the intense concentration of self in the
middle of such a heartless immensity my god who can tell it mark how
when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea mark how closely they
hug their ship and only coast along her sides

but had stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate no he
did not mean to at least because there were two boats in his wake
and he supposed no doubt that they would of course come up to pip very
quickly and pick him up though indeed such considerations towards
oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity is not always manifested
by the hunters in all similar instances and such instances not
unfrequently occur almost invariably in the fishery a coward so
called is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to
military navies and armies

but it so happened that those boats without seeing pip suddenly
spying whales close to them on one side turned and gave chase and
stubb's boat was now so far away and he and all his crew so intent
upon his fish that pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him
miserably by the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him but
from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot such at
least they said he was the sea had jeeringly kept his finite body
up but drowned the infinite of his soul not drowned entirely though
rather carried down alive to wondrous depths where strange shapes of
the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes
and the miser-merman wisdom revealed his hoarded heaps and among the
joyous heartless ever-juvenile eternities pip saw the multitudinous
god-omnipresent coral insects that out of the firmament of waters
heaved the colossal orbs he saw god's foot upon the treadle of the
loom and spoke it and therefore his shipmates called him mad so man's
insanity is heaven's sense and wandering from all mortal reason man
comes at last to that celestial thought which to reason is absurd and
frantic and weal or woe feels then uncompromised indifferent as his
god

for the rest blame not stubb too hardly the thing is common in that
fishery and in the sequel of the narrative it will then be seen what
like abandonment befell myself



chapter a squeeze of the hand


that whale of stubb's so dearly purchased was duly brought to
the pequod's side where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed were regularly gone through even to the baling of
the heidelburgh tun or case

while some were occupied with this latter duty others were employed
in dragging away the larger tubs so soon as filled with the sperm and
when the proper time arrived this same sperm was carefully manipulated
ere going to the try-works of which anon

it had cooled and crystallized to such a degree that when with several
others i sat down before a large constantine's bath of it i found
it strangely concreted into lumps here and there rolling about in the
liquid part it was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid
a sweet and unctuous duty no wonder that in old times this sperm was
such a favourite cosmetic such a clearer such a sweetener such a
softener such a delicious molifier after having my hands in it for
only a few minutes my fingers felt like eels and began as it were to
serpentine and spiralise

as i sat there at my ease cross-legged on the deck after the bitter
exertion at the windlass under a blue tranquil sky the ship under
indolent sail and gliding so serenely along as i bathed my hands among
those soft gentle globules of infiltrated tissues woven almost within
the hour as they richly broke to my fingers and discharged all their
opulence like fully ripe grapes their wine as i snuffed up that
uncontaminated aroma literally and truly like the smell of spring
violets i declare to you that for the time i lived as in a musky
meadow i forgot all about our horrible oath in that inexpressible
sperm i washed my hands and my heart of it i almost began to credit
the old paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying
the heat of anger while bathing in that bath i felt divinely free from
all ill-will or petulance or malice of any sort whatsoever

squeeze squeeze squeeze all the morning long i squeezed that sperm
till i myself almost melted into it i squeezed that sperm till a
strange sort of insanity came over me and i found myself unwittingly
squeezing my co-laborers hands in it mistaking their hands for the
gentle globules such an abounding affectionate friendly loving
feeling did this avocation beget that at last i was continually
squeezing their hands and looking up into their eyes sentimentally as
much as to say oh my dear fellow beings why should we longer cherish
any social acerbities or know the slightest ill-humor or envy come
let us squeeze hands all round nay let us all squeeze ourselves into
each other let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and
sperm of kindness

would that i could keep squeezing that sperm for ever for now since by
many prolonged repeated experiences i have perceived that in all cases
man must eventually lower or at least shift his conceit of attainable
felicity not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy but in
the wife the heart the bed the table the saddle the fireside the
country now that i have perceived all this i am ready to squeeze case
eternally in thoughts of the visions of the night i saw long rows of
angels in paradise each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti

now while discoursing of sperm it behooves to speak of other things
akin to it in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the
try-works

first comes white-horse so called which is obtained from the tapering
part of the fish and also from the thicker portions of his flukes it
is tough with congealed tendons a wad of muscle but still contains
some oil after being severed from the whale the white-horse is first
cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer they look much like
blocks of berkshire marble

plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the
whale's flesh here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber and
often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness it is
a most refreshing convivial beautiful object to behold as its name
imports it is of an exceedingly rich mottled tint with a bestreaked
snowy and golden ground dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and
purple it is plums of rubies in pictures of citron spite of reason
it is hard to keep yourself from eating it i confess that once i stole
behind the foremast to try it it tasted something as i should conceive
a royal cutlet from the thigh of louis le gros might have tasted
supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison
season and that particular venison season contemporary with an
unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of champagne

there is another substance and a very singular one which turns up in
the course of this business but which i feel it to be very puzzling
adequately to describe it is called slobgollion an appellation
original with the whalemen and even so is the nature of the substance
it is an ineffably oozy stringy affair most frequently found in the
tubs of sperm after a prolonged squeezing and subsequent decanting
i hold it to be the wondrously thin ruptured membranes of the case
coalescing

gurry so called is a term properly belonging to right whalemen but
sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen it designates the
dark glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the greenland
or right whale and much of which covers the decks of those inferior
souls who hunt that ignoble leviathan

nippers strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary
but as applied by whalemen it becomes so a whaleman's nipper is
a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of
leviathan's tail it averages an inch in thickness and for the rest is
about the size of the iron part of a hoe edgewise moved along the
oily deck it operates like a leathern squilgee and by nameless
blandishments as of magic allures along with it all impurities

but to learn all about these recondite matters your best way is at once
to descend into the blubber-room and have a long talk with its inmates
this place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the
blanket-pieces when stript and hoisted from the whale when the proper
time arrives for cutting up its contents this apartment is a scene of
terror to all tyros especially by night on one side lit by a dull
lantern a space has been left clear for the workmen they generally
go in pairs a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man the whaling-pike is
similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name the gaff is
something like a boat-hook with his gaff the gaffman hooks on to a
sheet of blubber and strives to hold it from slipping as the ship
pitches and lurches about meanwhile the spade-man stands on the sheet
itself perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces this
spade is sharp as hone can make it the spademan's feet are shoeless
the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from
him like a sledge if he cuts off one of his own toes or one of his
assistants would you be very much astonished toes are scarce among
veteran blubber-room men



chapter 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 th
chapter of the first book of kings

look at the sailor called the mincer who now comes along and assisted
by two allies heavily backs the grandissimus as the mariners call it
and with bowed shoulders staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier
carrying a dead comrade from the field extending it upon the forecastle
deck he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt as an
african hunter the pelt of a boa this done he turns the pelt inside
out like a pantaloon leg gives it a good stretching so as almost to
double its diameter and at last hangs it well spread in the rigging
to dry ere long it is taken down when removing some three feet of it
towards the pointed extremity and then cutting two slits for arm-holes
at the other end he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it the mincer
now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling
immemorial to all his order this investiture alone will adequately
protect him while employed in the peculiar functions of his office

that office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
pots an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse planted
endwise against the bulwarks and with a capacious tub beneath it into
which the minced pieces drop fast as the sheets from a rapt orator's
desk arrayed in decent black occupying a conspicuous pulpit intent
on bible leaves what a candidate for an archbishopric what a lad for a
pope were this mincer


bible leaves bible leaves this is the invariable cry from the mates
to the mincer it enjoins him to be careful and cut his work into as
thin slices as possible inasmuch as by so doing the business of
boiling out the oil is much accelerated and its quantity considerably
increased besides perhaps improving it in quality



chapter the try-works


besides her hoisted boats an american whaler is outwardly distinguished
by her try-works she presents the curious anomaly of the most solid
masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship
it is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her
planks

the try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast the most
roomy part of the deck the timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength
fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and
mortar some ten feet by eight square and five in height the
foundation does not penetrate the deck but the masonry is firmly
secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all
sides and screwing it down to the timbers on the flanks it is cased
with wood and at top completely covered by a large sloping battened
hatchway removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots two in
number and each of several barrels capacity when not in use they are
kept remarkably clean sometimes they are polished with soapstone
and sand till they shine within like silver punch-bowls during the
night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil
themselves away there for a nap while employed in polishing them one
man in each pot side by side many confidential communications
are carried on over the iron lips it is a place also for profound
mathematical meditation it was in the left hand try-pot of the pequod
with the soapstone diligently circling round me that i was first
indirectly struck by the remarkable fact that in geometry all bodies
gliding along the cycloid my soapstone for example will descend from
any point in precisely the same time

removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works the bare
masonry of that side is exposed penetrated by the two iron mouths of
the furnaces directly underneath the pots these mouths are fitted
with heavy doors of iron the intense heat of the fire is prevented
from communicating itself to the deck by means of a shallow reservoir
extending under the entire inclosed surface of the works by a tunnel
inserted at the rear this reservoir is kept replenished with water as
fast as it evaporates there are no external chimneys they open direct
from the rear wall and here let us go back for a moment

it was about nine o'clock at night that the pequod's try-works were
first started on this present voyage it belonged to stubb to oversee
the business

all ready there off hatch then and start her you cook fire the
works this was an easy thing for the carpenter had been thrusting his
shavings into the furnace throughout the passage here be it said that
in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a
time with wood after that no wood is used except as a means of quick
ignition to the staple fuel in a word after being tried out the
crisp shrivelled blubber now called scraps or fritters still contains
considerable of its unctuous properties these fritters feed the flames
like a plethoric burning martyr or a self-consuming misanthrope once
ignited the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body
would that he consumed his own smoke for his smoke is horrible to
inhale and inhale it you must and not only that but you must live in
it for the time it has an unspeakable wild hindoo odor about it such
as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres it smells like the left
wing of the day of judgment it is an argument for the pit

by midnight the works were in full operation we were clear from the
carcase sail had been made the wind was freshening the wild ocean
darkness was intense but that darkness was licked up by the fierce
flames which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues and
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging as with the famed greek
fire the burning ship drove on as if remorselessly commissioned to
some vengeful deed so the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
bold hydriote canaris issuing from their midnight harbors with broad
sheets of flame for sails bore down upon the turkish frigates and
folded them in conflagrations

the hatch removed from the top of the works now afforded a wide hearth
in front of them standing on this were the tartarean shapes of the
pagan harpooneers always the whale-ship's stokers with huge pronged
poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots or
stirred up the fires beneath till the snaky flames darted curling out
of the doors to catch them by the feet the smoke rolled away in sullen
heaps to every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil
which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces opposite the mouth
of the works on the further side of the wide wooden hearth was the
windlass this served for a sea-sofa here lounged the watch when not
otherwise employed looking into the red heat of the fire till their
eyes felt scorched in their heads their tawny features now all
begrimed with smoke and sweat their matted beards and the contrasting
barbaric brilliancy of their teeth all these were strangely revealed in
the capricious emblazonings of the works as they narrated to each other
their unholy adventures their tales of terror told in words of mirth
as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them like the
flames from the furnace as to and fro in their front the harpooneers
wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers as the
wind howled on and the sea leaped and the ship groaned and dived and
yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness
of the sea and the night and scornfully champed the white bone in
her mouth and viciously spat round her on all sides then the rushing
pequod freighted with savages and laden with fire and burning
a corpse and plunging into that blackness of darkness seemed the
material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul

so seemed it to me as i stood at her helm and for long hours silently
guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea wrapped for that interval
in darkness myself i but the better saw the redness the madness the
ghastliness of others the continual sight of the fiend shapes before
me capering half in smoke and half in fire these at last begat kindred
visions in my soul so soon as i began to yield to that unaccountable
drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm

but that night in particular a strange and ever since inexplicable
thing occurred to me starting from a brief standing sleep i was
horribly conscious of something fatally wrong the jaw-bone tiller smote
my side which leaned against it in my ears was the low hum of sails
just beginning to shake in the wind i thought my eyes were open i
was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically
stretching them still further apart but spite of all this i could see
no compass before me to steer by though it seemed but a minute since i
had been watching the card by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it
nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom now and then made ghastly by
flashes of redness uppermost was the impression that whatever swift
rushing thing i stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern a stark bewildered feeling as of
death came over me convulsively my hands grasped the tiller but with
the crazy conceit that the tiller was somehow in some enchanted way
inverted my god what is the matter with me thought i lo in my brief
sleep i had turned myself about and was fronting the ship's stern with
my back to her prow and the compass in an instant i faced back just
in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind and very
probably capsizing her how glad and how grateful the relief from this
unnatural hallucination of the night and the fatal contingency of being
brought by the lee

look not too long in the face of the fire o man never dream with thy
hand on the helm turn not thy back to the compass accept the first
hint of the hitching tiller believe not the artificial fire when its
redness makes all things look ghastly to-morrow in the natural sun
the skies will be bright those who glared like devils in the forking
flames the morn will show in far other at least gentler relief the
glorious golden glad sun the only true lamp all others but liars

nevertheless the sun hides not virginia's dismal swamp nor rome's
accursed campagna nor wide sahara nor all the millions of miles of
deserts and of griefs beneath the moon the sun hides not the ocean
which is the dark side of this earth and which is two thirds of this
earth so therefore that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
in him that mortal man cannot be true not true or undeveloped with
books the same the truest of all men was the man of sorrows and the
truest of all books is solomon's and ecclesiastes is the fine hammered
steel of woe all is vanity all this wilful world hath not got hold
of unchristian solomon's wisdom yet but he who dodges hospitals and
jails and walks fast crossing graveyards and would rather talk of
operas than hell calls cowper young pascal rousseau poor devils all
of sick men and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by rabelais as
passing wise and therefore jolly not that man is fitted to sit
down on tomb-stones and break the green damp mould with unfathomably
wondrous solomon

but even solomon he says the man that wandereth out of the way
of understanding shall remain ie even while living in the
congregation of the dead give not thyself up then to fire lest it
invert thee deaden thee as for the time it did me there is a wisdom
that is woe but there is a woe that is madness and there is a catskill
eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges
and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces
and even if he for ever flies within the gorge that gorge is in the
mountains so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still
higher than other birds upon the plain even though they soar



chapter the lamp


had you descended from the pequod's try-works to the pequod's
forecastle where the off duty watch were sleeping for one single
moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors there they lay
in their triangular oaken vaults each mariner a chiselled muteness a
score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes

in merchantmen oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens to dress in the dark and eat in the dark and stumble in
darkness to his pallet this is his usual lot but the whaleman as he
seeks the food of light so he lives in light he makes his berth 
an
aladdin's lamp and lays him down in it so that in the pitchiest night
the ship's black hull still houses an illumination

see with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of
lamps often but old bottles and vials though to the copper cooler at
the try-works and replenishes them there as mugs of ale at a vat he
burns too the purest of oil in its unmanufactured and therefore
unvitiated state a fluid unknown to solar lunar or astral
contrivances ashore it is sweet as early grass butter in april he
goes and hunts for his oil so as to be sure of its freshness and
genuineness even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own
supper of game



chapter stowing down and clearing up


already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off
descried from the mast-head how he is chased over the watery moors and
slaughtered in the valleys of the deep how he is then towed alongside
and beheaded and how on the principle which entitled the headsman of
old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed his great padded
surtout becomes the property of his executioner how in due time he
is condemned to the pots and like shadrach meshach and abednego his
spermaceti oil and bone pass unscathed through the fire but now it
remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the description by
rehearsing singing if i may the romantic proceeding of decanting off
his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold where
once again leviathan returns to his native profundities sliding along
beneath the surface as before but alas never more to rise and blow

while still warm the oil like hot punch is received into the
six-barrel casks and while perhaps the ship is pitching and rolling
this way and that in the midnight sea the enormous casks are slewed
round and headed over end for end and sometimes perilously scoot
across the slippery deck like so many land slides till at last
man-handled and stayed in their course and all round the hoops rap
rap go as many hammers as can play upon them for now ex officio
every sailor is a cooper

at length when the last pint is casked and all is cool then the great
hatchways are unsealed the bowels of the ship are thrown open and down
go the casks to their final rest in the sea this done the hatches are
replaced and hermetically closed like a closet walled up

in the sperm fishery this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
incidents in all the business of whaling one day the planks stream with
freshets of blood and oil on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of
the whale's head are profanely piled great rusty casks lie about as
in a brewery yard the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the
bulwarks the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness the entire
ship seems great leviathan himself while on all hands the din is
deafening

but a day or two after you look about you and prick your ears in this
self-same ship and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works
you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel with a
most scrupulously neat commander the unmanufactured sperm oil possesses
a singularly cleansing virtue this is the reason why the decks never
look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil besides
from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale a potent lye is
readily made and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale
remains clinging to the side that lye quickly exterminates it hands
go diligently along the bulwarks and with buckets of water and rags
restore them to their full tidiness the soot is brushed from the lower
rigging all the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise
faithfully cleansed and put away the great hatch is scrubbed and placed
upon the try-works completely hiding the pots every cask is out of
sight all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks and when by the combined
and simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company the
whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded then the crew
themselves proceed to their own ablutions shift themselves from top to
toe and finally issue to the immaculate deck fresh and all aglow as
bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest holland

now with elated step they pace the planks in twos and threes and
humorously discourse of parlors sofas carpets and fine cambrics
propose to mat the deck think of having hanging to the top object not
to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle to hint to
such musked mariners of oil and bone and blubber were little short
of audacity they know not the thing you distantly allude to away and
bring us napkins

but mark aloft there at the three mast heads stand three men intent
on spying out more whales which if caught infallibly will again
soil the old oaken furniture and drop at least one small grease-spot
somewhere yes and many is the time when after the severest
uninterrupted labors which know no night continuing straight through
for ninety-six hours when from the boat where they have swelled their
wrists with all day rowing on the line they only step to the deck to
carry vast chains and heave the heavy windlass and cut and slash yea
and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined
fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works when on the
heel of all this they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the
ship and make a spotless dairy room of it many is the time the poor
fellows just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks are startled by
the cry of there she blows and away they fly to fight another whale
and go through the whole weary thing again oh my friends but this
is man-killing yet this is life for hardly have we mortals by long
toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable
sperm and then with weary patience cleansed ourselves from its
defilements and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul
hardly is this done when there she blows the ghost is spouted up
and away we sail to fight some other world and go through young life's
old routine again

oh the metempsychosis oh pythagoras that in bright greece two
thousand years ago did die so good so wise so mild i sailed with
thee along the peruvian coast last voyage and foolish as i am taught
thee a green simple boy how to splice a rope



chapter the doubloon


ere now it has been related how ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck
taking regular turns at either limit the binnacle and mainmast but
in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been
added how that sometimes in these walks when most plunged in his mood
he was wont to pause in turn at each spot and stand there strangely
eyeing the particular object before him when he halted before the
binnacle with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass
that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his
purpose and when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast
then as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin
there he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness only dashed
with a certain wild longing if not hopefulness

but one morning turning to pass the doubloon he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them and some
certain significance lurks in all things else all things are little
worth and the round world itself but an empty cipher except to sell by
the cartload as they do hills about boston to fill up some morass in
the milky way

now this doubloon was of purest virgin gold raked somewhere out of the
heart of gorgeous hills whence east and west over golden sands the
head-waters of many a pactolus flows and though now nailed amidst all
the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes yet
untouchable and immaculate to any foulness it still preserved its quito
glow nor though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed
by ruthless hands and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick
darkness which might cover any pilfering approach nevertheless every
sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last for it was
set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end and however wanton
in their sailor ways one and all the mariners revered it as the white
whale's talisman sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by
night wondering whose it was to be at last and whether he would ever
live to spend it

now those noble golden coins of south america are as medals of the sun
and tropic token-pieces here palms alpacas and volcanoes sun's disks
and stars ecliptics horns-of-plenty and rich banners waving are in
luxuriant profusion stamped so that the precious gold seems almost to
derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories by passing through
those fancy mints so spanishly poetic

it so chanced that the doubloon of the pequod was a most wealthy example
of these things on its round border it bore the letters republica del
ecuador quito so this bright coin came from a country planted in the
middle of the world and beneath the great equator and named after it
and it had been cast midway up the andes in the unwaning clime that
knows no autumn zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three
andes summits from one a flame a tower on another on the third a
crowing cock while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned
zodiac the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics and the
keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at libra

before this equatorial coin ahab not unobserved by others was now
pausing

there's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers and
all other grand and lofty things look here three peaks as proud as
lucifer the firm tower that is ahab the volcano that is ahab the
courageous the undaunted and victorious fowl that too is ahab all
are ahab and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe
which like a magician's glass to each and every man in turn but
mirrors back his own mysterious self great pains small gains for those
who ask the world to solve them it cannot solve itself methinks now
this coined sun wears a ruddy face but see aye he enters the sign
of storms the equinox and but six months before he wheeled out of a
former equinox at aries from storm to storm so be it then born in
throes t is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs so be
it then here's stout stuff for woe to work on so be it then

no fairy fingers can have pressed the gold but devil's claws must
have left their mouldings there since yesterday murmured starbuck
to himself leaning against the bulwarks the old man seems to read
belshazzar's awful writing i have never marked the coin inspectingly
he goes below let me read a dark valley between three mighty
heaven-abiding peaks that almost seem the trinity in some faint
earthly symbol so in this vale of death god girds us round and over
all our gloom the sun of righteousness still shines a beacon and a
hope if we bend down our eyes the dark vale shows her mouldy soil
but if we lift them the bright sun meets our glance half way to cheer
yet oh the great sun is no fixture and if at midnight we would fain
snatch some sweet solace from him we gaze for him in vain this coin
speaks wisely mildly truly but still sadly to me i will quit it
lest truth shake me falsely

there now's the old mogul soliloquized stubb by the try-works he's
been twigging it and there goes starbuck from the same and both with
faces which i should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long
and all from looking at a piece of gold which did i have it now on
negro hill or in corlaer's hook i'd not look at it very long ere
spending it humph in my poor insignificant opinion i regard this as
queer i have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings your doubloons
of old spain your doubloons of peru your doubloons of chili your
doubloons of bolivia your doubloons of popayan with plenty of gold
moidores and pistoles and joes and half joes and quarter joes what
then should there be in this doubloon of the equator that is so killing
wonderful by golconda let me read it once halloa here's signs and
wonders truly that now is what old bowditch in his epitome calls the
zodiac and what my almanac below calls ditto i'll get the almanac and
as i have heard devils can be raised with daboll's arithmetic i'll try
my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with
the massachusetts calendar here's the book let's see now signs and
wonders and the sun he's always among em hem hem hem here they
are here they go all alive aries or the ram taurus or the bull
and jimimi here's gemini himself or the twins well the sun he
wheels among em aye here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold
between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring book you lie there
the fact is you books must know your places you'll do to give us the
bare words and facts but we come in to supply the thoughts that's my
small experience so far as the massachusetts calendar and bowditch's
navigator and daboll's arithmetic go signs and wonders eh pity if
there is nothing wonderful in signs and significant in wonders there's
a clue somewhere wait a bit hist hark by jove i have it look you
doubloon your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter
and now i'll read it off straight out of the book come almanack to
begin there's aries or the ram lecherous dog he begets us then
taurus or the bull he bumps us the first thing then gemini or the
twins that is virtue and vice we try to reach virtue when lo comes
cancer the crab and drags us back and here going from virtue leo
a roaring lion lies in the path he gives a few fierce bites and surly
dabs with his paw we escape and hail virgo the virgin that's our
first love we marry and think to be happy for aye when pop comes
libra or the scales happiness weighed and found wanting and while we
are very sad about that lord how we suddenly jump as scorpio or the
scorpion stings us in the rear we are curing the wound when whang
come the arrows all round sagittarius or the archer is amusing
himself as we pluck out the shafts stand aside here's the
battering-ram capricornus or the goat full tilt he comes rushing
and headlong we are tossed when aquarius or the water-bearer pours
out his whole deluge and drowns us and to wind up with pisces or the
fishes we sleep there's a sermon now writ in high heaven and the
sun goes through it every year and yet comes out of it all alive and
hearty jollily he aloft there wheels through toil and trouble and
so alow here does jolly stubb oh jolly's the word for aye adieu
doubloon but stop here comes little king-post dodge round the
try-works now and let's hear what he'll have to say there he's
before it he'll out with something presently so so he's beginning

i see nothing here but a round thing made of gold and whoever raises
a certain whale this round thing belongs to him so what's all this
staring been about it is worth sixteen dollars that's true and at
two cents the cigar that's nine hundred and sixty cigars i won't smoke
dirty pipes like stubb but i like cigars and here's nine hundred and
sixty of them so here goes flask aloft to spy em out

shall i call that wise or foolish now if it be really wise it has a
foolish look to it yet if it be really foolish then has it a sort
of wiseish look to it but avast here comes our old manxman the old
hearse-driver he must have been that is before he took to the sea he
luffs up before the doubloon halloa and goes round on the other side
of the mast why there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side and now he's
back again what does that mean hark he's muttering voice like an old
worn-out coffee-mill prick ears and listen

if the white whale be raised it must be in a month and a day when
the sun stands in some one of these signs i've studied signs and know
their marks they were taught me two score years ago by the old witch
in copenhagen now in what sign will the sun then be the horse-shoe
sign for there it is right opposite the gold and what's the
horse-shoe sign the lion is the horse-shoe sign the roaring and
devouring lion ship old ship my old head shakes to think of thee

there's another rendering now but still one text all sorts of men
in one kind of world you see dodge again here comes queequeg all
tattooing looks like the signs of the zodiac himself what says the
cannibal as i live he's comparing notes looking at his thigh bone
thinks the sun is in the thigh or in the calf or in the bowels i
suppose as the old women talk surgeon's astronomy in the back country
and by jove he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh i
guess it's sagittarius or the archer no he don't know what to make
of the doubloon he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers
but aside again here comes that ghost-devil fedallah tail coiled out
of sight as usual oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual what does he
say with that look of his ah only makes a sign to the sign and bows
himself there is a sun on the coin fire worshipper depend upon it
ho more and more this way comes pip poor boy would he had died
or i he's half horrible to me he too has been watching all of these
interpreters myself included and look now he comes to read with that
unearthly idiot face stand away again and hear him hark

i look you look he looks we look ye look they look

upon my soul he's been studying murray's grammar improving his mind
poor fellow but what's that he says now hist

i look you look he looks we look ye look they look

why he's getting it by heart hist again

i look you look he looks we look ye look they look

well that's funny

and i you and he and we ye and they are all bats and i'm a crow
especially when i stand a'top of this pine tree here caw caw caw
caw caw caw ain't i a crow and where's the scare-crow there he
stands two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers and two more poked
into the sleeves of an old jacket

wonder if he means me complimentary poor lad i could go hang
myself any way for the present i'll quit pip's vicinity i can stand
the rest for they have plain wits but he's too crazy-witty for my
sanity so so i leave him muttering

here's the ship's navel this doubloon here and they are all on fire
to unscrew it but unscrew your navel and what's the consequence then
again if it stays here that is ugly too for when aught's nailed to
the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate ha ha old ahab
the white whale he'll nail ye this is a pine tree my father in old
tolland county cut down a pine tree once and found a silver ring grown
over in it some old darkey's wedding ring how did it get there and
so they'll say in the resurrection when they come to fish up this old
mast and find a doubloon lodged in it with bedded oysters for the
shaggy bark oh the gold the precious precious gold the green
miser'll hoard ye soon hish hish god goes mong the worlds
blackberrying cook ho cook and cook us jenny hey hey hey hey
hey jenny jenny and get your hoe-cake done



chapter leg and arm

the pequod of nantucket meets the samuel enderby of london


ship ahoy hast seen the white whale

so cried ahab once more hailing a ship showing english colours bearing
down under the stern trumpet to mouth the old man was standing in his
hoisted quarter-boat his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger
captain who was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow he was
a darkly-tanned burly good-natured fine-looking man of sixty or
thereabouts dressed in a spacious roundabout that hung round him in
festoons of blue pilot-cloth and one empty arm of this jacket streamed
behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar's surcoat

hast seen the white whale

see you this and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it
he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone terminating in a wooden head
like a mallet

man my boat cried ahab impetuously and tossing about the oars near
him stand by to lower

in less than a minute without quitting his little craft he and his
crew were dropped to the water and were soon alongside of the stranger
but here a curious difficulty presented itself in the excitement of the
moment ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never
once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own and then it was
always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to
the pequod and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other
vessel at a moment's warning now it is no very easy matter
for anybody except those who are almost hourly used to it like
whalemen to clamber up a ship's side from a boat on the open sea for
the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks and
then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson so deprived
of one leg and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied
with the kindly invention ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a
clumsy landsman again hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height
he could hardly hope to attain

it has before been hinted perhaps that every little untoward
circumstance that befell him and which indirectly sprang from his
luckless mishap almost invariably irritated or exasperated ahab and
in the present instance all this was heightened by the sight of the
two officers of the strange ship leaning over the side by the
perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there and swinging towards him a
pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes for at first they did not seem
to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to
use their sea bannisters but this awkwardness only lasted a minute
because the strange captain observing at a glance how affairs stood
cried out i see i see avast heaving there jump boys and swing
over the cutting-tackle

as good luck would have it they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous and the great tackles were still aloft and the massive curved
blubber-hook now clean and dry was still attached to the end this
was quickly lowered to ahab who at once comprehending it all slid his
solitary thigh into the curve of the hook it was like sitting in the
fluke of an anchor or the crotch of an apple tree and then giving the
word held himself fast and at the same time also helped to hoist his
own weight by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of
the tackle soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks and
gently landed upon the capstan head with his ivory arm frankly thrust
forth in welcome the other captain advanced and ahab putting out his
ivory leg and crossing the ivory arm like two sword-fish blades
cried out in his walrus way aye aye hearty let us shake bones
together an arm and a leg an arm that never can shrink d'ye
see and a leg that never can run where did'st thou see the white
whale how long ago

the white whale said the englishman pointing his ivory arm towards
the east and taking a rueful sight along it as if it had been a
telescope there i saw him on the line last season

and he took that arm off did he asked ahab now sliding down from
the capstan and resting on the englishman's shoulder as he did so

aye he was the cause of it at least and that leg too

spin me the yarn said ahab how was it

it was the first time in my life that i ever cruised on the line
began the englishman i was ignorant of the white whale at that time
well one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales and my boat
fastened to one of them a regular circus horse he was too that went
milling and milling round so that my boat's crew could only trim dish
by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale presently up breaches
from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale with a milky-white
head and hump all crows feet and wrinkles

it was he it was he cried ahab suddenly letting out his suspended
breath

and harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin

aye aye they were mine my irons cried ahab exultingly but on

give me a chance then said the englishman good-humoredly well
this old great-grandfather with the white head and hump runs all afoam
into the pod and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line

aye i see wanted to part it free the fast-fish an old trick i
know him

how it was exactly continued the one-armed commander i do not know
but in biting the line it got foul of his teeth caught there somehow
but we didn't know it then so that when we afterwards pulled on the
line bounce we came plump on to his hump instead of the other whale's
that went off to windward all fluking seeing how matters stood and
what a noble great whale it was the noblest and biggest i ever saw
sir in my life i resolved to capture him spite of the boiling rage
he seemed to be in and thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose or
the tooth it was tangled to might draw for i have a devil of a boat's
crew for a pull on a whale-line seeing all this i say i jumped
into my first mate's boat mr mounttop's here by the way
captain mounttop mounttop the captain as i was saying i jumped
into mounttop's boat which d'ye see was gunwale and gunwale
with mine then and snatching the first harpoon let this old
great-grandfather have it but lord look you sir hearts and souls
alive man the next instant in a jiff i was blind as a bat both
eyes out all befogged and bedeadened with black foam the whale's tail
looming straight up out of it perpendicular in the air like a marble
steeple no use sterning all then but as i was groping at midday with
a blinding sun all crown-jewels as i was groping i say after the
second iron to toss it overboard down comes the tail like a lima
tower cutting my boat in two leaving each half in splinters and
flukes first the white hump backed through the wreck as though it was
all chips we all struck out to escape his terrible flailings i seized
hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him and for a moment clung to that
like a sucking fish but a combing sea dashed me off and at the same
instant the fish taking one good dart forwards went down like a
flash and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me
caught me here clapping his hand just below his shoulder yes
caught me just here i say and bore me down to hell's flames i was
thinking when when all of a sudden thank the good god the barb ript
its way along the flesh clear along the whole length of my arm came
out nigh my wrist and up i floated and that gentleman there will tell
you the rest by the way captain dr bunger ship's surgeon bunger
my lad the captain now bunger boy spin your part of the yarn

the professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out had been all the
time standing near them with nothing specific visible to denote his
gentlemanly rank on board his face was an exceedingly round but sober
one he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt and patched
trowsers and had thus far been dividing his attention between a
marlingspike he held in one hand and a pill-box held in the other
occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two
crippled captains but at his superior's introduction of him to ahab
he politely bowed and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding

it was a shocking bad wound began the whale-surgeon and taking my
advice captain boomer here stood our old sammy 

samuel enderby is the name of my ship interrupted the one-armed
captain addressing ahab go on boy

stood our old sammy off to the northward to get out of the blazing hot
weather there on the line but it was no use i did all i could sat up
with him nights was very severe with him in the matter of diet 

oh very severe chimed in the patient himself then suddenly altering
his voice drinking hot rum toddies with me every night till he
couldn't see to put on the bandages and sending me to bed half seas
over about three o'clock in the morning oh ye stars he sat up with
me indeed and was very severe in my diet oh a great watcher and very
dietetically severe is dr bunger bunger you dog laugh out why
don't ye you know you're a precious jolly rascal but heave ahead
boy i'd rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man

my captain you must have ere this perceived respected sir said the
imperturbable godly-looking bunger slightly bowing to ahab is apt to
be facetious at times he spins us many clever things of that sort but
i may as well say en passant as the french remark that i myself that
is to say jack bunger late of the reverend clergy am a strict total
abstinence man i never drink 

water cried the captain he never drinks it it's a sort of fits to
him fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia but go on go on with
the arm story

yes i may as well said the surgeon coolly i was about observing
sir before captain boomer's facetious interruption that spite of my
best and severest endeavors the wound kept getting worse and worse the
truth was sir it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw more
than two feet and several inches long i measured it with the lead line
in short it grew black i knew what was threatened and off it came
but i had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there that thing is
against all rule pointing at it with the marlingspike that is the
captain's work not mine he ordered the carpenter to make it he had
that club-hammer there put to the end to knock some one's brains
out with i suppose as he tried mine once he flies into diabolical
passions sometimes do ye see this dent sir removing his hat and
brushing aside his hair and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull
but which bore not the slightest scarry trace or any token of ever
having been a wound well the captain there will tell you how that
came here he knows

no i don't said the captain but his mother did he was born with
it oh you solemn rogue you you bunger was there ever such another
bunger in the watery world bunger when you die you ought to die in
pickle you dog you should be preserved to future ages you rascal

what became of the white whale now cried ahab who thus far had been
impatiently listening to this by-play between the two englishmen

oh cried the one-armed captain oh yes well after he sounded
we didn't see him again for some time in fact as i before hinted i
didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick till
some time afterwards when coming back to the line we heard about moby
dick as some call him and then i knew it was he

did'st thou cross his wake again

twice

but could not fasten

didn't want to try to ain't one limb enough what should i do without
this other arm and i'm thinking moby dick doesn't bite so much as he
swallows

well then interrupted bunger give him your left arm for bait to
get the right do you know gentlemen very gravely and mathematically
bowing to each captain in succession do you know gentlemen that the
digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by divine
providence that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest
even a man's arm and he knows it too so that what you take for the
white whale's malice is only his awkwardness for he never means
to swallow a single limb he only thinks to terrify by feints but
sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow formerly a patient of mine
in ceylon that making believe swallow jack-knives once upon a time let
one drop into him in good earnest and there it stayed for a twelvemonth
or more when i gave him an emetic and he heaved it up in small tacks
d'ye see no possible way for him to digest that jack-knife and fully
incorporate it into his general bodily system yes captain boomer if
you are quick enough about it and have a mind to pawn one arm for the
sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other why in that
case the arm is yours only let the whale have another chance at you
shortly that's all

no thank ye bunger said the english captain he's welcome to the
arm he has since i can't help it and didn't know him then but not to
another one no more white whales for me i've lowered for him once and
that has satisfied me there would be great glory in killing him i know
that and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him but hark ye
he's best let alone don't you think so captain glancing at the
ivory leg

he is but he will still be hunted for all that what is best let
alone that accursed thing is not always what least allures he's all a
magnet how long since thou saw'st him last which way heading

bless my soul and curse the foul fiend's cried bunger stoopingly
walking round ahab and like a dog strangely snuffing this man's
blood bring the thermometer it's at the boiling point his pulse
makes these planks beat sir taking a lancet from his pocket and
drawing near to ahab's arm

avast roared ahab dashing him against the bulwarks man the boat
which way heading

good god cried the english captain to whom the question was put
what's the matter he was heading east i think is your captain
crazy whispering fedallah

but fedallah putting a finger on his lip slid over the bulwarks to
take the boat's steering oar and ahab swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower

in a moment he was standing in the boat's stern and the manilla men
were springing to their oars in vain the english captain hailed him
with back to the stranger ship and face set like a flint to his own
ahab stood upright till alongside of the pequod



chapter 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 this great whaling house was in existence my numerous
fish-documents do not make plain but in that year it fitted
out the first english ships that ever regularly hunted the sperm whale
though for some score of years previous ever since 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 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
 the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own to
go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of japan that ship well
called the syren made a noble experimental cruise and it was thus
that the great japanese whaling ground first became generally known
the syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a captain coffin a
nantucketer

all honour to the 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 honour being a very fast
sailer and a noble craft every way i boarded her once at midnight
somewhere off the patagonian coast and drank good flip down in the
forecastle it was a fine gam we had and they were all trumps every
soul on board a short life to them and a jolly death and that fine
gam i had long very long after old ahab touched her planks with his
ivory heel it minds me of the noble solid saxon hospitality of that
ship and may my parson forget me and the devil remember me if i ever
lose sight of it flip did i say we had flip yes and we flipped it
at the rate of ten gallons the hour and when the squall came for it's
squally off there by patagonia and all hands visitors and all were
called to reef topsails we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each
other aloft in bowlines and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our
jackets into the sails so that we hung there reefed fast in the
howling gale a warning example to all drunken tars however the masts
did not go overboard and by and by we scrambled down so sober that we
had to pass the flip again though the savage salt spray bursting down
the forecastle scuttle rather too much diluted and pickled it to my
taste

the beef was fine tough but with body in it they said it was
bull-beef others that it was dromedary beef but i do not know for
certain how that was they had dumplings too small but substantial
symmetrically globular and indestructible dumplings i fancied that you
could feel them and roll them about in you after they were swallowed
if you stooped over too far forward you risked their pitching out
of you like billiard-balls the bread but that couldn't be helped
besides it was an anti-scorbutic in short the bread contained the
only fresh fare they had but the forecastle was not very light and it
was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it but all
in all taking her from truck to helm considering the dimensions of the
cook's boilers including his own live parchment boilers fore and aft
i say the samuel enderby was a jolly ship of good fare and plenty
fine flip and strong crack fellows all and capital from boot heels to
hat-band

but why was it think ye that the samuel enderby and some other
english whalers i know of not all though were such famous hospitable
ships that passed round the beef and the bread and the can and the
joke and were not soon weary of eating and drinking and laughing
i will tell you the abounding good cheer of these english whalers
is matter for historical research nor have i been at all sparing of
historical whale research when it has seemed needed

the english were preceded in the whale fishery by the hollanders
zealanders and danes from whom they derived many terms still extant
in the fishery and what is yet more their fat old fashions
touching plenty to eat and drink for as a general thing the english
merchant-ship scrimps her crew but not so the english whaler hence in
the english this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal and natural
but incidental and particular and therefore must have some special
origin which is here pointed out and will be still further elucidated

during my researches in the leviathanic histories i stumbled upon an
ancient dutch volume which by the musty whaling smell of it i
knew must be about whalers the title was dan coopman wherefore i
concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some amsterdam
cooper in the fishery as every whale ship must carry its cooper i was
reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one
fitz swackhammer but my friend dr snodhead a very learned man
professor of low dutch and high german in the college of santa claus and
st pott's to whom i handed the work for translation giving him a box
of sperm candles for his trouble this same dr snodhead so soon as he
spied the book assured me that dan coopman did not mean the cooper
but the merchant in short this ancient and learned low dutch book
treated of the commerce of holland and among other subjects contained
a very interesting account of its whale fishery and in this chapter it
was headed smeer or fat that i found a long detailed list of the
outfits for the larders and cellars of sail of dutch whalemen from
which list as translated by dr snodhead i transcribe the following

 lbs of beef lbs friesland pork lbs of stock
fish lbs of biscuit lbs of soft bread firkins
of butter lbs texel leyden cheese lbs cheese
probably an inferior article ankers of geneva barrels of
beer

most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading not so in
the present case however where the reader is flooded with whole pipes
barrels quarts and gills of good gin and good cheer

at the time i devoted three days to the studious digesting of all
this beer beef and bread during which many profound thoughts were
incidentally suggested to me capable of a transcendental and platonic
application and furthermore i compiled supplementary tables of my
own touching the probable quantity of stock-fish etc consumed by
every low dutch harpooneer in that ancient greenland and spitzbergen
whale fishery in the first place the amount of butter and texel and
leyden cheese consumed seems amazing i impute it though to their
naturally unctuous natures being rendered still more unctuous by the
nature of their vocation and especially by their pursuing their game
in those frigid polar seas on the very coasts of that esquimaux country
where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil

the quantity of beer too is very large 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 men to each of their fleet
of sail we have 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 ankers of gin
now whether these gin and beer harpooneers so fuddled as one might
fancy them to have been were the right sort of men to stand up in
a boat's head and take good aim at flying whales this would seem
somewhat improbable yet they did aim at them and hit them too but
this was very far north be it remembered where beer agrees well with
the constitution upon the equator in our southern fishery beer would
be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his
boat and grievous loss might ensue to nantucket and new bedford

but no more enough has been said to show that the old dutch whalers
of two or three centuries ago were high livers and that the english
whalers have not neglected so excellent an example for say they when
cruising in an empty ship if you can get nothing better out of the
world get a good dinner out of it at least and this empties the
decanter



chapter a bower in the arsacides


hitherto in descriptively treating of the sperm whale i have chiefly
dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect or separately and in detail
upon some few interior structural features but to a large and thorough
sweeping comprehension of him it behooves me now to unbutton him still
further and untagging the points of his hose unbuckling his garters
and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost
bones set him before you in his ultimatum that is to say in his
unconditional skeleton

but how now ishmael how is it that you a mere oarsman in the
fishery pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the
whale did erudite stubb mounted upon your capstan deliver lectures
on the anatomy of the cetacea and by help of the windlass hold up a
specimen rib for exhibition explain thyself ishmael can you land
a full-grown whale on your deck for examination as a cook dishes a
roast-pig surely not a veritable witness have you hitherto been
ishmael but have a care how you seize the privilege of jonah alone
the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams the rafters
ridge-pole sleepers and under-pinnings making up the frame-work of
leviathan and belike of the tallow-vats dairy-rooms butteries and
cheeseries in his bowels

i confess that since jonah few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale nevertheless i have been blessed
with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature in a ship i belonged
to a small cub sperm whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his
poke or bag to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons and for the
heads of the lances think you i let that chance go without using my
boat-hatchet and jack-knife and breaking the seal and reading all the
contents of that young cub

and as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
gigantic full grown development for that rare knowledge i am indebted
to my late royal friend tranquo king of tranque one of the arsacides
for being at tranque years ago when attached to the trading-ship dey
of algiers i was invited to spend part of the arsacidean holidays with
the lord of tranque at his retired palm villa at pupella a sea-side
glen not very far distant from what our sailors called bamboo-town his
capital

among many other fine qualities my royal friend tranquo being gifted
with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu had brought
together in pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his
people could invent chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices
chiselled shells inlaid spears costly paddles aromatic canoes
and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders the
wonder-freighted tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores

chief among these latter was a great sperm whale which after an
unusually long raging gale had been found dead and stranded with his
head against a cocoa-nut tree whose plumage-like tufted droopings
seemed his verdant jet when the vast body had at last been stripped of
its fathom-deep enfoldings and the bones become dust dry in the sun
then the skeleton was carefully transported up the pupella glen where a
grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it

the ribs were hung with trophies the vertebrae were carved with
arsacidean annals in strange hieroglyphics in the skull the priests
kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame so that the mystic head
again sent forth its vapoury spout while suspended from a bough the
terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees like the hair-hung
sword that so affrighted damocles

it was a wondrous sight the wood was green as mosses of the icy
glen the trees stood high and haughty feeling their living sap the
industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom with a gorgeous carpet
on it whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof and
the living flowers the figures all the trees with all their laden
branches all the shrubs and ferns and grasses the message-carrying
air all these unceasingly were active through the lacings of the
leaves the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied
verdure oh busy weaver unseen weaver pause one word whither
flows the fabric what palace may it deck wherefore all these ceaseless
toilings speak weaver stay thy hand but one single word with
thee nay the shuttle flies the figures float from forth the loom the
freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away the weaver-god he weaves
and by that weaving is he deafened that he hears no mortal voice and
by that humming we too who look on the loom are deafened and only
when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through
it for even so it is in all material factories the spoken words that
are inaudible among the flying spindles those same words are plainly
heard without the walls bursting from the opened casements thereby
have villainies been detected ah mortal then be heedful for so in
all this din of the great world's loom thy subtlest thinkings may be
overheard afar

now amid the green life-restless loom of that arsacidean wood the
great white worshipped skeleton lay lounging a gigantic idler yet
as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around
him the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver himself all woven
over with the vines every month assuming greener fresher verdure but
himself a skeleton life folded death death trellised life the grim
god wived with youthful life and begat him curly-headed glories

now when with royal tranquo i visited this wondrous whale and saw the
skull an altar and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real
jet had issued i marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as
an object of vertu he laughed but more i marvelled that the priests
should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine to and fro i paced
before this skeleton brushed the vines aside broke through the
ribs and with a ball of arsacidean twine wandered eddied long amid
its many winding shaded colonnades and arbours but soon my line was
out and following it back i emerged from the opening where i entered
i saw no living thing within naught was there but bones

cutting me a green measuring-rod i once more dived within the skeleton
from their arrow-slit in the skull the priests perceived me taking the
altitude of the final rib how now they shouted dar'st thou measure
this our god that's for us aye priests well how long do ye make
him then but hereupon a fierce contest rose among them concerning
feet and inches they cracked each other's sconces with their
yard-sticks the great skull echoed and seizing that lucky chance i
quickly concluded my own admeasurements

these admeasurements i now propose to set before you but first be
it recorded that in this matter i am not free to utter any fancied
measurement i please because there are skeleton authorities you can
refer to to test my accuracy there is a leviathanic museum they tell
me in hull england one of the whaling ports of that country where
they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales likewise i
have heard that in the museum of manchester in new hampshire they have
what the proprietors call the only perfect specimen of a greenland or
river whale in the united states moreover at a place in yorkshire
england burton constable by name a certain sir clifford constable has
in his possession the skeleton of a sperm whale but of moderate size
by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend king tranquo's

in both cases the stranded whales to which these two skeletons
belonged were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
grounds king tranquo seizing his because he wanted it and sir
clifford because he was lord of the seignories of those parts sir
clifford's whale has been articulated throughout so that like a
great chest of drawers you can open and shut him in all his bony
cavities spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan and swing all day
upon his lower jaw locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and
shutters and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of
keys at his side sir clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at
the whispering gallery in the spinal column threepence to hear the echo
in the hollow of his cerebellum and sixpence for the unrivalled view
from his forehead

the skeleton dimensions i shall now proceed to set down are copied
verbatim from my right arm where i had them tattooed as in my wild
wanderings at that period there was no other secure way of preserving
such valuable statistics but as i was crowded for space and wished
the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem i was
then composing at least what untattooed parts might remain i did not
trouble myself with the odd inches nor indeed should inches at all
enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale



chapter measurement of the whale's skeleton


in the first place i wish to lay before you a particular plain
statement touching the living bulk of this leviathan whose skeleton we
are briefly to exhibit such a statement may prove useful here

according to a careful calculation i have made and which i partly base
upon captain scoresby's estimate of seventy tons for the largest
sized greenland whale of sixty feet in length according to my careful
calculation i say a sperm whale of the largest magnitude between
eighty-five and ninety feet in length and something less than forty
feet in its fullest circumference such a whale will weigh at least
ninety tons so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton he would
considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one
thousand one hundred inhabitants

think you not then that brains like yoked cattle should be put to this
leviathan to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination

having already in various ways put before you his skull spout-hole
jaw teeth tail forehead fins and divers other parts i shall now
simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his
unobstructed bones but as the colossal skull embraces so very large
a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton as it is by far the
most complicated part and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in
this chapter you must not fail to carry it in your mind or under your
arm as we proceed otherwise you will not gain a complete notion of the
general structure we are about to view

in length the sperm whale's skeleton at tranque measured seventy-two
feet so that when fully invested and extended in life he must have
been ninety feet long for in the whale the skeleton loses about one
fifth in length compared with the living body of this seventy-two feet
his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet leaving some fifty feet of
plain back-bone attached to this back-bone for something less than a
third of its length was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once
enclosed his vitals

to me this vast ivory-ribbed chest with the long unrelieved spine
extending far away from it in a straight line not a little resembled
the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks when only some twenty
of her naked bow-ribs are inserted and the keel is otherwise for the
time but a long disconnected timber

the ribs were ten on a side the first to begin from the neck
was nearly six feet long the second third and fourth were each
successively longer till you came to the climax of the fifth or one
of the middle ribs which measured eight feet and some inches from
that part the remaining ribs diminished till the tenth and last only
spanned five feet and some inches in general thickness they all bore
a seemly correspondence to their length the middle ribs were the most
arched in some of the arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay
footpath bridges over small streams

in considering these ribs i could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance so variously repeated in this book that the skeleton of
the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form the largest of
the tranque ribs one of the middle ones occupied that part of the fish
which in life is greatest in depth now the greatest depth of the
invested body of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen
feet whereas the corresponding rib measured but little more than eight
feet so that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of the
living magnitude of that part besides for some way where i now saw
but a naked spine all that had been once wrapped round with tons of
added bulk in flesh muscle blood and bowels still more for the
ample fins i here saw but a few disordered joints and in place of the
weighty and majestic but boneless flukes an utter blank

how vain and foolish then thought i for timid untravelled man to try
to comprehend aright this wondrous whale by merely poring over his dead
attenuated skeleton stretched in this peaceful wood no only in the
heart of quickest perils only when within the eddyings of his angry
flukes only on the profound unbounded sea can the fully invested whale
be truly and livingly found out

but the spine for that the best way we can consider it is with a
crane to pile its bones high up on end no speedy enterprise but now
it's done it looks much like pompey's pillar

there are forty and odd vertebrae in all which in the skeleton are
not locked together they mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on
a gothic spire forming solid courses of heavy masonry the largest
a middle one is in width something less than three feet and in depth
more than four the smallest where the spine tapers away into the
tail is only two inches in width and looks something like a white
billiard-ball i was told that there were still smaller ones but they
had been lost by some little cannibal urchins the priest's children
who had stolen them to play marbles with thus we see how that the
spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple
child's play



chapter 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 archaeological fossiliferous and
antediluvian point of view applied to any other creature than the
leviathan to an ant or a flea such portly terms might justly be deemed
unwarrantably grandiloquent but when leviathan is the text the case is
altered fain am i to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest
words of the dictionary and here be it said that whenever it has been
convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations i have
invariably used a huge quarto edition of johnson expressly purchased
for that purpose because that famous lexicographer's uncommon personal
bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author
like me

one often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject
though it may seem but an ordinary one how then with me writing
of this leviathan unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
capitals give me a condor's quill give me vesuvius crater for an
inkstand friends hold my arms for in the mere act of penning my
thoughts of this leviathan they weary me and make me faint with their
outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep as if to include the whole
circle of the sciences and all the generations of whales and men and
mastodons past present and to come with all the revolving panoramas
of empire on earth and throughout the whole universe not excluding its
suburbs such and so magnifying is the virtue of a large and liberal
theme we expand to its bulk to produce a mighty book you must choose
a mighty theme no great and enduring volume can ever be written on the
flea though many there be who have tried it

ere entering upon the subject of fossil whales i present my credentials
as a geologist by stating that in my miscellaneous time i have been
a stone-mason and also a great digger of ditches canals and wells
wine-vaults cellars and cisterns of all sorts likewise by way of
preliminary i desire to remind the reader that while in the earlier
geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now almost
completely extinct the subsequent relics discovered in what are called
the tertiary formations seem the connecting or at any rate intercepted
links between the antichronical creatures and those whose remote
posterity are said to have entered the ark all the fossil whales
hitherto discovered belong to the tertiary period which is the last
preceding the superficial formations and though none of them
precisely answer to any known species of the present time they are yet
sufficiently akin to them in general respects to justify their taking
rank as cetacean fossils

detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales fragments of their bones
and skeletons have within thirty years past at various intervals been
found at the base of the alps in lombardy in france in england in
scotland and in the states of louisiana mississippi and alabama
among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull which in the
year 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 on
the plantation of judge creagh in alabama the awe-stricken credulous
slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen
angels the alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile and bestowed
upon it the name of basilosaurus but some specimen bones of it being
taken across the sea to owen the english anatomist it turned out
that this alleged reptile was a whale though of a departed species a
significant illustration of the fact again and again repeated in this
book that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the
shape of his fully invested body so owen rechristened the monster
zeuglodon and in his paper read before the london geological society
pronounced it in substance one of the most extraordinary creatures
which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence

when i stand among these mighty leviathan skeletons skulls tusks
jaws ribs and vertebrae 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 miles of this world's circumference not an inhabitable
hand's breadth of land was visible then the whole world was the
whale's and king of creation he left his wake along the present lines
of the andes and the himmalehs who can show a pedigree like leviathan
ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the pharaoh's methuselah seems
a school-boy i look round to shake hands with shem i am horror-struck
at this antemosaic unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of
the whale which having been before all time must needs exist after
all humane ages are over

but not alone has this leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
ancient bust but upon egyptian tablets whose antiquity seems to claim
for them an almost fossiliferous character we find the unmistakable
print of his fin in an apartment of the great temple of denderah
some fifty years ago there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a
sculptured and painted planisphere abounding in centaurs griffins and
dolphins similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the
moderns gliding among them old leviathan swam as of yore was there
swimming in that planisphere centuries before solomon was cradled

nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity
of the whale in his own osseous post-diluvian reality as set down by
the venerable john leo the old barbary traveller

not far from the sea-side they have a temple the rafters and beams
of which are made of whale-bones for whales of a monstrous size are
oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore the common people imagine that
by a secret power bestowed by god upon the temple no whale can pass it
without immediate death but the truth of the matter is that on either
side of the temple there are rocks that shoot two miles into the sea
and wound the whales when they light upon em they keep a whale's rib
of an incredible length for a miracle which lying upon the ground with
its convex part uppermost makes an arch the head of which cannot be
reached by a man upon a camel's back this rib says john leo is said
to have layn there a hundred years before i saw it their historians
affirm that a prophet who prophesy'd of mahomet came from this temple
and some do not stand to assert that the prophet jonas was cast forth
by the whale at the base of the temple

in this afric temple of the whale i leave you reader and if you be a
nantucketer and a whaleman you will silently worship there



chapter 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 lacepede the french naturalist in his elaborate history of whales
in the very beginning of his work page sets down the right whale at
one hundred metres three hundred and twenty-eight feet and this work
was published so late as ad 

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 whaleships now penetrating even through
behring's straits and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers
of the world and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all
continental coasts the moot point is whether leviathan can long endure
so wide a chase and so remorseless a havoc whether he must not at last
be exterminated from the waters and the last whale like the last man
smoke his last pipe and then himself evaporate in the final puff

comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo
which not forty years ago overspread by tens of thousands the prairies
of illinois and missouri and shook their iron manes and scowled with
their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals
where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch in such
a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished to show that
the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction

but you must look at this matter in every light though so short a
period ago not a good lifetime the census of the buffalo in illinois
exceeded the census of men now in london and though at the present day
not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region and though the
cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man yet the far
different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an
end to the leviathan forty men in one ship hunting the sperm whales for
forty-eight months think they have done extremely well and thank god
if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish whereas in the days
of the old canadian and indian hunters and trappers of the west when
the far west in whose sunset suns still rise was a wilderness and
a virgin the same number of moccasined men for the same number of
months mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships would have slain
not forty but forty thousand and more buffaloes a fact that if need
were could be statistically stated

nor considered aright does it seem any argument in favour of the
gradual extinction of the sperm whale for example that in former years
the latter part of the last century say these leviathans in
small pods were encountered much oftener than at present and in
consequence the voyages were not so prolonged and were also much more
remunerative because as has been elsewhere noticed those whales
influenced by some views to safety now swim the seas in immense
caravans so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries yokes and
pods and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
separated unfrequent armies that is all and equally fallacious seems
the conceit that because the so-called whale-bone whales no longer
haunt many grounds in former years abounding with them hence that
species also is declining for they are only being driven from
promontory to cape and if one coast is no longer enlivened with
their jets then be sure some other and remoter strand has been very
recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle

furthermore concerning these last mentioned leviathans they have two
firm fortresses which in all human probability will for ever remain
impregnable and as upon the invasion of their valleys the frosty swiss
have retreated to their mountains so hunted from the savannas and
glades of the middle seas the whale-bone whales can at last resort to
their polar citadels and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers and
walls there come up among icy fields and floes and in a charmed circle
of everlasting december bid defiance to all pursuit from man

but as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one
cachalot some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this
positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions
but though for some time past a number of these whales not less than
 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 elephants that in those regions elephants are
numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes and there seems no
reason to doubt that if these elephants which have now been hunted for
thousands of years by semiramis by porus by hannibal and by all the
successive monarchs of the east if they still survive there in great
numbers much more may the great whale outlast all hunting since he
has a pasture to expatiate in which is precisely twice as large as all
asia both americas europe and africa new holland and all the isles
of the sea combined

moreover we are to consider that from the presumed great longevity
of whales their probably attaining the age of a century and more
therefore at any one period of time several distinct adult generations
must be contemporary and what that is we may soon gain some idea
of by imagining all the grave-yards cemeteries and family vaults of
creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men women and children
who were alive seventy-five years ago and adding this countless host to
the present human population of the globe

wherefore for all these things we account the whale immortal in his
species however perishable in his individuality he swam the seas
before the continents broke water he once swam over the site of the
tuileries and windsor castle and the kremlin in noah's flood he
despised noah's ark and if ever the world is to be again flooded like
the netherlands to kill off its rats then the eternal whale will still
survive and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood
spout his frothed defiance to the skies



chapter ahab's leg


the precipitating manner in which captain ahab had quitted the samuel
enderby of london had not been unattended with some small violence to
his own person he had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his
boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock and
when after gaining his own deck and his own pivot-hole there he so
vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman it
was as ever something about his not steering inflexibly enough then
the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench
that though it still remained entire and to all appearances lusty yet
ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy

and indeed it seemed small matter for wonder that for all his
pervading mad recklessness ahab did at times give careful heed to the
condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood for it had not
been very long prior to the pequod's sailing from nantucket that he
had been found one night lying prone upon the ground and insensible
by some unknown and seemingly inexplicable unimaginable casualty his
ivory limb having been so violently displaced that it had stake-wise
smitten and all but pierced his groin nor was it without extreme
difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured

nor at the time had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind that all
the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a
former woe and he too plainly seemed to see that as the most poisonous
reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest
songster of the grove so equally with every felicity all miserable
events do naturally beget their like yea more than equally thought
ahab since both the ancestry and posterity of grief go further than the
ancestry and posterity of joy for not to hint of this that it is
an inference from certain canonic teachings that while some natural
enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world
but on the contrary shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of
all hell's despair whereas some guilty mortal miseries shall still
fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs
beyond the grave not at all to hint of this there still seems an
inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing for thought ahab while
even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying
pettiness lurking in them but at bottom all heartwoes a mystic
significance and in some men an archangelic grandeur so do their
diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction to trail the
genealogies of these high mortal miseries carries us at last among the
sourceless primogenitures of the gods so that in the face of all the
glad hay-making suns and soft cymballing round harvest-moons we must
needs give in to this that the gods themselves are not for ever glad
the ineffaceable sad birth-mark in the brow of man is but the stamp of
sorrow in the signers

unwittingly here a secret has been divulged which perhaps might more
properly in set way have been disclosed before with many other
particulars concerning ahab always had it remained a mystery to some
why it was that for a certain period both before and after the sailing
of the pequod he had hidden himself away with such grand-lama-like
exclusiveness and for that one interval sought speechless refuge as
it were among the marble senate of the dead captain peleg's bruited
reason for this thing appeared by no means adequate though indeed
as touching all ahab's deeper part every revelation partook more of
significant darkness than of explanatory light but in the end it all
came out this one matter did at least that direful mishap was at
the bottom of his temporary recluseness and not only this but to that
ever-contracting dropping circle ashore who for any reason possessed
the privilege of a less banned approach to him to that timid circle the
above hinted casualty remaining as it did moodily unaccounted for by
ahab invested itself with terrors not entirely underived from the land
of spirits and of wails so that through their zeal for him they had
all conspired so far as in them lay to muffle up the knowledge of
this thing from others and hence it was that not till a considerable
interval had elapsed did it transpire upon the pequod's decks

but be all this as it may let the unseen ambiguous synod in the air
or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire have to do or not
with earthly ahab yet in this present matter of his leg he took plain
practical procedures he called the carpenter

and when that functionary appeared before him he bade him without delay
set about making a new leg and directed the mates to see him supplied
with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory sperm whale which had thus
far been accumulated on the voyage in order that a careful selection
of the stoutest clearest-grained stuff might be secured this done the
carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that night and to
provide all the fittings for it independent of those pertaining to
the distrusted one in use moreover the ship's forge was ordered to be
hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold and to accelerate
the affair the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the
forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed



chapter the carpenter


seat thyself sultanically among the moons of saturn and take high
abstracted man alone and he seems a wonder a grandeur and a woe but
from the same point take mankind in mass and for the most part they
seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates both contemporary and hereditary
but most humble though he was and far from furnishing an example of
the high humane abstraction the pequod's carpenter was no duplicate
hence he now comes in person on this stage

like all sea-going ship carpenters and more especially those belonging
to whaling vessels he was to a certain off-handed practical extent
alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own
the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all
those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an
auxiliary material but besides the application to him of the generic
remark above this carpenter of the pequod was singularly efficient in
those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring
in a large ship upon a three or four years voyage in uncivilized
and far-distant seas for not to speak of his readiness in ordinary
duties repairing stove boats sprung spars reforming the shape of
clumsy-bladed oars inserting bull's eyes in the deck or new tree-nails
in the side planks and other miscellaneous matters more directly
pertaining to his special business he was moreover unhesitatingly
expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes both useful and
capricious

the one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold
was his vice-bench a long rude ponderous table furnished with several
vices of different sizes and both of iron and of wood at all times
except when whales were alongside this bench was securely lashed
athwartships against the rear of the try-works

a belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole
the carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices and straightway
files it smaller a lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board
and is made a captive out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone and
cross-beams of sperm whale ivory the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking
cage for it an oarsman sprains his wrist the carpenter concocts a
soothing lotion stubb longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon
the blade of his every oar screwing each oar in his big vice of wood
the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation a sailor takes
a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings the carpenter drills his ears
another has the toothache the carpenter out pincers and clapping
one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there but the poor fellow
unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation whirling round the
handle of his wooden vice the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in
that if he would have him draw the tooth

thus this carpenter was prepared at all points and alike indifferent
and without respect in all teeth he accounted bits of ivory heads he
deemed but top-blocks men themselves he lightly held for capstans but
while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such
liveliness of expertness in him too all this would seem to argue some
uncommon vivacity of intelligence but not precisely so for nothing was
this man more remarkable than for a certain impersonal stolidity as
it were impersonal i say for it so shaded off into the surrounding
infinite of things that it seemed one with the general stolidity
discernible in the whole visible world which while pauselessly active
in uncounted modes still eternally holds its peace and ignores you
though you dig foundations for cathedrals yet was this half-horrible
stolidity in him involving too as it appeared an all-ramifying
heartlessness yet was it oddly dashed at times with an old
crutch-like antediluvian wheezing humorousness not unstreaked now
and then with a certain grizzled wittiness such as might have served
to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle
of noah's ark was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long
wanderer whose much rolling to and fro not only had gathered no moss
but what is more had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings
might have originally pertained to him he was a stript abstract an
unfractioned integral uncompromised as a new-born babe living without
premeditated reference to this world or the next you might almost
say that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of
unintelligence for in his numerous trades he did not seem to work so
much by reason or by instinct or simply because he had been tutored to
it or by any intermixture of all these even or uneven but merely by
a kind of deaf and dumb spontaneous literal process he was a pure
manipulator his brain if he had ever had one must have early
oozed along into the muscles of his fingers he was like one of
those unreasoning but still highly useful multum in parvo sheffield
contrivances assuming the exterior though a little swelled of a
common pocket knife but containing not only blades of various sizes
but also screw-drivers cork-screws tweezers awls pens rulers
nail-filers countersinkers so if his superiors wanted to use the
carpenter for a screw-driver all they had to do was to open that part
of him and the screw was fast or if for tweezers take him up by the
legs and there they were

yet as previously hinted this omnitooled open-and-shut carpenter
was after all no mere machine of an automaton if he did not have a
common soul in him he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously
did its duty what that was whether essence of quicksilver or a few
drops of hartshorn there is no telling but there it was and there it
had abided for now some sixty years or more and this it was this same
unaccountable cunning life-principle in him this it was that kept
him a great part of the time soliloquizing but only like an unreasoning
wheel which also hummingly soliloquizes or rather his body was a
sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there and talking all the
time to keep himself awake



chapter ahab and the carpenter

the deck first night watch


carpenter standing before his vice-bench and by the light of two
lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg which joist is
firmly fixed in the vice slabs of ivory leather straps pads screws
and various tools of all sorts lying about the bench forward the red
flame of the forge is seen where the blacksmith is at work


drat the file and drat the bone that is hard which should be soft
and that is soft which should be hard so we go who file old jaws and
shinbones let's try another aye now this works better sneezes
halloa this bone dust is sneezes why it's sneezes yes it's
sneezes bless my soul it won't let me speak this is what an old
fellow gets now for working in dead lumber saw a live tree and
you don't get this dust amputate a live bone and you don't get it
sneezes come come you old smut there bear a hand and let's have
that ferule and buckle-screw i'll be ready for them presently lucky
now sneezes there's no knee-joint to make that might puzzle a little
but a mere shinbone why it's easy as making hop-poles only i should
like to put a good finish on time time if i but only had the time i
could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever sneezes scraped to a lady
in a parlor those buckskin legs and calves of legs i've seen in shop
windows wouldn't compare at all they soak water they do and of
course get rheumatic and have to be doctored sneezes with washes and
lotions just like live legs there before i saw it off now i must
call his old mogulship and see whether the length will be all right
too short if anything i guess ha that's the heel we are in luck
here he comes or it's somebody else that's certain

ahab advancing

during the ensuing scene the carpenter continues sneezing at times


well manmaker

just in time sir if the captain pleases i will now mark the length
let me measure sir

measured for a leg good well it's not the first time about it
there keep thy finger on it this is a cogent vice thou hast here
carpenter let me feel its grip once so so it does pinch some

oh sir it will break bones beware beware

no fear i like a good grip i like to feel something in this
slippery world that can hold man what's prometheus about there the
blacksmith i mean what's he about

he must be forging the buckle-screw sir now

right it's a partnership he supplies the muscle part he makes a
fierce red flame there

aye sir he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work

um-m so he must i do deem it now a most meaning thing that that
old greek prometheus who made men they say should have been a
blacksmith and animated them with fire for what's made in fire must
properly belong to fire and so hell's probable how the soot flies
this must be the remainder the greek made the africans of carpenter
when he's through with that buckle tell him to forge a pair of steel
shoulder-blades there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack

sir

hold while prometheus is about it i'll order a complete man after a
desirable pattern imprimis fifty feet high in his socks then chest
modelled after the thames tunnel then legs with roots to em to stay
in one place then arms three feet through the wrist no heart at all
brass forehead and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains and let
me see shall i order eyes to see outwards no but put a sky-light on
top of his head to illuminate inwards there take the order and away

now what's he speaking about and who's he speaking to i should like
to know shall i keep standing here aside

tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome here's one no
no no i must have a lantern

ho ho that's it hey here are two sir one will serve my turn

what art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for man
thrusted light is worse than presented pistols

i thought sir that you spoke to carpenter


carpenter why that's but no a very tidy and i may say
an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here
carpenter or would'st thou rather work in clay

sir clay clay sir that's mud we leave clay to ditchers sir

the fellow's impious what art thou sneezing about

bone is rather dusty sir

take the hint then and when thou art dead never bury thyself under
living people's noses

sir oh ah i guess so yes 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 praetorians at the auction of the roman empire which was
the world's and yet i owe for the flesh in the tongue i brag with by
heavens i'll get a crucible and into it and dissolve myself down to
one small compendious vertebra so

carpenter resuming his work


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



chapter 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 semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold and drench
the casks with sea-water which afterwards at varying intervals is
removed by the ship's pumps hereby the casks are sought to be kept
damply tight while by the changed character of the withdrawn water the
mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo


now from the south and west the pequod was drawing nigh to formosa and
the bashee isles between which lies one of the tropical outlets from
the china waters into the pacific and so starbuck found ahab with
a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him
and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the
japanese islands niphon matsmai and sikoke with his snow-white new
ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table and with a long
pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand the wondrous old man with his
back to the gangway door was wrinkling his brow and tracing his old
courses again

who's there hearing the footstep at the door but not turning round
to it on deck begone

captain ahab mistakes it is i the oil in the hold is leaking sir we
must up burtons and break out

up burtons and break out now that we are nearing japan heave-to here
for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops

either do that sir or waste in one day more oil than we may make good
in a year what we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving
sir

so it is so it is if we get it

i was speaking of the oil in the hold sir

and i was not speaking or thinking of that at all begone let it leak
i'm all aleak myself aye leaks in leaks not only full of leaky casks
but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship and that's a far worse plight
than the pequod's man yet i don't stop to plug my leak for who can
find it in the deep-loaded hull or how hope to plug it even if
found in this life's howling gale starbuck i'll not have the burtons
hoisted

what will the owners say sir

let the owners stand on nantucket beach and outyell the typhoons what
cares ahab owners owners thou art always prating to me starbuck
about those miserly owners as if the owners were my conscience but
look ye the only real owner of anything is its commander and hark ye
my conscience is in this ship's keel on deck

captain ahab said the reddening mate moving further into the cabin
with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed
not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation
of itself but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself
a better man than i might well pass over in thee what he would quickly
enough resent in a younger man aye and in a happier captain ahab

devils dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me on
deck

nay sir not yet i do entreat and i do dare sir to be forbearing
shall we not understand each other better than hitherto captain ahab

ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack forming part of most
south-sea-men's cabin furniture and pointing it towards starbuck
exclaimed there is one god that is lord over the earth and one
captain that is lord over the pequod on deck

for an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate and his fiery cheeks
you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of
the levelled tube but mastering his emotion he half calmly rose
and as he quitted the cabin paused for an instant and said thou hast
outraged not insulted me sir but for that i ask thee not to beware of
starbuck thou wouldst but laugh but let ahab beware of ahab beware of
thyself old man

he waxes brave but nevertheless obeys most careful bravery that
murmured ahab as starbuck disappeared what's that he said ahab
beware of ahab there's something there then unconsciously using the
musket for a staff with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little
cabin but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed and
returning the gun to the rack he went to the deck

thou art but too good a fellow starbuck he said lowly to the mate
then raising his voice to the crew furl the t'gallant-sails and
close-reef the top-sails fore and aft back the main-yard up burton
and break out in the main-hold

it were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was that as respecting
starbuck ahab thus acted it may have been a flash of honesty in him
or mere prudential policy which under the circumstance imperiously
forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection however transient
in the important chief officer of his ship however it was his orders
were executed and the burtons were hoisted



chapter queequeg in his coffin


upon searching it was found that the casks last struck into the hold
were perfectly sound and that the leak must be further off so it
being calm weather they broke out deeper and deeper disturbing the
slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts and from that black midnight
sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above so deep did they
go and so ancient and corroded and weedy the aspect of the lowermost
puncheons that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask
containing coins of captain noah with copies of the posted placards
vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood tierce after
tierce too of water and bread and beef and shooks of staves and
iron bundles of hoops were hoisted out till at last the piled decks
were hard to get about and the hollow hull echoed under foot as if
you were treading over empty catacombs and reeled and rolled in the sea
like an air-freighted demijohn top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless
student with all aristotle in his head well was it that the typhoons
did not visit them then

now at this time it was that my poor pagan companion and fast
bosom-friend queequeg was seized with a fever which brought him nigh
to his endless end

be it said that in this vocation of whaling sinecures are unknown
dignity and danger go hand in hand till you get to be captain the
higher you rise the harder you toil so with poor queequeg who as
harpooneer must not only face all the rage of the living whale but as
we have elsewhere seen mount his dead back in a rolling sea and
finally descend into the gloom of the hold and bitterly sweating
all day in that subterraneous confinement resolutely manhandle the
clumsiest casks and see to their stowage to be short among whalemen
the harpooneers are the holders so called

poor queequeg when the ship was about half disembowelled you should
have stooped over the hatchway and peered down upon him there where
stripped to his woollen drawers the tattooed savage was crawling about
amid that dampness and slime like a green spotted lizard at the bottom
of a well and a well or an ice-house it somehow proved to him poor
pagan where strange to say for all the heat of his sweatings he
caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever and at last after
some days suffering laid him in his hammock close to the very sill
of the door of death how he wasted and wasted away in those few
long-lingering days till there seemed but little left of him but his
frame and tattooing but as all else in him thinned and his cheek-bones
grew sharper his eyes nevertheless seemed growing fuller and fuller
they became of a strange softness of lustre and mildly but deeply
looked out at you there from his sickness a wondrous testimony to that
immortal health in him which could not die or be weakened and like
circles on the water which as they grow fainter expand so his eyes
seemed rounding and rounding like the rings of eternity an awe that
cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this
waning savage and saw as strange things in his face as any beheld who
were bystanders when zoroaster died for whatever is truly wondrous and
fearful in man never yet was put into words or books and the drawing
near of death which alike levels all alike impresses all with a last
revelation which only an author from the dead could adequately tell
so that let us say it again no dying chaldee or greek had higher and
holier thoughts than those whose mysterious shades you saw creeping
over the face of poor queequeg as he quietly lay in his swaying
hammock and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final
rest and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher
towards his destined heaven

not a man of the crew but gave him up and as for queequeg himself
what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he
asked he called one to him in the grey morning watch when the day was
just breaking and taking his hand said that while in nantucket he
had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood like the rich
war-wood of his native isle and upon inquiry he had learned that all
whalemen who died in nantucket were laid in those same dark canoes
and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him for it was not
unlike the custom of his own race who after embalming a dead warrior
stretched him out in his canoe and so left him to be floated away to
the starry archipelagoes for not only do they believe that the stars
are isles but that far beyond all visible horizons their own mild
uncontinented seas interflow with the blue heavens and so form the
white breakers of the milky way he added that he shuddered at
the thought of being buried in his hammock according to the usual
sea-custom tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks
no he desired a canoe like those of nantucket all the more congenial
to him being a whaleman that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes
were without a keel though that involved but uncertain steering and
much lee-way adown the dim ages

now when this strange circumstance was made known aft the carpenter
was at once commanded to do queequeg's bidding whatever it might
include there was some heathenish coffin-coloured old lumber aboard
which upon a long previous voyage had been cut from the aboriginal
groves of the lackaday islands and from these dark planks the coffin
was recommended to be made no sooner was the carpenter apprised of
the order than taking his rule he forthwith with all the indifferent
promptitude of his character proceeded into the forecastle and took
queequeg's measure with great accuracy regularly chalking queequeg's
person as he shifted the rule

ah poor fellow he'll have to die now ejaculated the long island
sailor

going to his vice-bench the carpenter for convenience sake and general
reference now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin
was to be and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches
at its extremities this done he marshalled the planks and his tools
and to work

when the last nail was driven and the lid duly planed and fitted
he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it inquiring
whether they were ready for it yet in that direction

overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
people on deck began to drive the coffin away queequeg to every one's
consternation commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to
him nor was there any denying him seeing that of all mortals some
dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly since they will
shortly trouble us so little for evermore the poor fellows ought to be
indulged

leaning over in his hammock queequeg long regarded the coffin with
an attentive eye he then called for his harpoon had the wooden stock
drawn from it and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along
with one of the paddles of his boat all by his own request also
biscuits were then ranged round the sides within a flask of fresh water
was placed at the head and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in
the hold at the foot and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a
pillow queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed that he
might make trial of its comforts if any it had he lay without moving
a few minutes then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little
god yojo then crossing his arms on his breast with yojo between he
called for the coffin lid hatch he called it to be placed over him
the head part turned over with a leather hinge and there lay queequeg
in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view rarmai
it will do it is easy he murmured at last and signed to be replaced
in his hammock

but ere this was done pip who had been slily hovering near by all this
while drew nigh to him where he lay and with soft sobbings took him
by the hand in the other holding his tambourine

poor rover will ye never have done with all this weary roving where
go ye now but if the currents carry ye to those sweet antilles where
the beaches are only beat with water-lilies will ye do one little
errand for me seek out one pip who's now been missing long i think
he's in those far antilles if ye find him then comfort him for he
must be very sad for look he's left his tambourine behind i found
it rig-a-dig dig dig now queequeg die and i'll beat ye your dying
march

i have heard murmured starbuck gazing down the scuttle that in
violent fevers men all ignorance have talked in ancient tongues
and that when the mystery is probed it turns out always that in their
wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken
in their hearing by some lofty scholars so to my fond faith poor pip
in this strange sweetness of his lunacy brings heavenly vouchers of all
our heavenly homes where learned he that but there hark he speaks
again but more wildly now

form two and two let's make a general of him ho where's his harpoon
lay it across here rig-a-dig dig dig huzza oh for a game cock
now to sit upon his head and crow queequeg dies game mind ye that
queequeg dies game take ye good heed of that queequeg dies game i
say game game game but base little pip he died a coward died all
a'shiver out upon pip hark ye if ye find pip tell all the antilles
he's a runaway a coward a coward a coward tell them he jumped from
a whale-boat i'd never beat my tambourine over base pip and hail
him general if he were once more dying here no no shame upon all
cowards shame upon them let em go drown like pip that jumped from a
whale-boat shame shame

during all this queequeg lay with closed eyes as if in a dream pip
was led away and the sick man was replaced in his hammock

but now that he had apparently made every preparation for death now
that his coffin was proved a good fit queequeg suddenly rallied soon
there seemed no need of the carpenter's box and thereupon when some
expressed their delighted surprise he in substance said that the
cause of his sudden convalescence was this at a critical moment he
had just recalled a little duty ashore which he was leaving undone
and therefore had changed his mind about dying he could not die yet
he averred they asked him then whether to live or die was a matter of
his own sovereign will and pleasure he answered certainly in a word
it was queequeg's conceit that if a man made up his mind to live mere
sickness could not kill him nothing but a whale or a gale or some
violent ungovernable unintelligent destroyer of that sort

now there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized
that while a sick civilized man may be six months convalescing
generally speaking a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day
so in good time my queequeg gained strength and at length after
sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days but eating with a
vigorous appetite he suddenly leaped to his feet threw out his arms
and legs gave himself a good stretching yawned a little bit and then
springing into the head of his hoisted boat and poising a harpoon
pronounced himself fit for a fight

with a wild whimsiness he now used his coffin for a sea-chest and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes set them in order there
many spare hours he spent in carving the lid with all manner of
grotesque figures and drawings and it seemed that hereby he was
striving in his rude way to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on
his body and this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and
seer of his island who by those hieroglyphic marks had written out on
his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth and a mystical
treatise on the art of attaining truth so that queequeg in his own
proper person was a riddle to unfold a wondrous work in one volume but
whose mysteries not even himself could read though his own live heart
beat against them and these mysteries were therefore destined in
the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were
inscribed and so be unsolved to the last and this thought it must
have been which suggested to ahab that wild exclamation of his when
one morning turning away from surveying poor queequeg oh devilish
tantalization of the gods



chapter the pacific


when gliding by the bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great south
sea were it not for other things i could have greeted my dear pacific
with uncounted thanks for now the long supplication of my youth was
answered that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues
of blue

there is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea whose gently
awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath like those
fabled undulations of the ephesian sod over the buried evangelist st
john and meet it is that over these sea-pastures wide-rolling watery
prairies and potters fields of all four continents the waves should
rise and fall and ebb and flow unceasingly for here millions of mixed
shades and shadows drowned dreams somnambulisms reveries all that
we call lives and souls lie dreaming dreaming still tossing like
slumberers in their beds the ever-rolling waves but made so by their
restlessness

to any meditative magian rover this serene pacific once beheld must
ever after be the sea of his adoption it rolls the midmost waters of
the world the indian ocean and atlantic being but its arms the same
waves wash the moles of the new-built californian towns but yesterday
planted by the recentest race of men and lave the faded but still
gorgeous skirts of asiatic lands older than abraham while all between
float milky-ways of coral isles and low-lying endless unknown
archipelagoes and impenetrable japans thus this mysterious divine
pacific zones the world's whole bulk about makes all coasts one bay
to it seems the tide-beating heart of earth lifted by those eternal
swells you needs must own the seductive god bowing your head to pan

but few thoughts of pan stirred ahab's brain as standing like an
iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging with one
nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the bashee isles
in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking and with the other
consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea that sea in
which the hated white whale must even then be swimming launched at
length upon these almost final waters and gliding towards the japanese
cruising-ground the old man's purpose intensified itself his firm lips
met like the lips of a vice the delta of his forehead's veins swelled
like overladen brooks in his very sleep his ringing cry ran through
the vaulted hull stern all the white whale spouts thick blood



chapter the blacksmith


availing himself of the mild summer-cool weather that now reigned in
these latitudes and in preparation for the peculiarly active
pursuits shortly to be anticipated perth the begrimed blistered old
blacksmith had not removed his portable forge to the hold again after
concluding his contributory work for ahab's leg but still retained
it on deck fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast being now almost
incessantly invoked by the headsmen and harpooneers and bowsmen to do
some little job for them altering or repairing or new shaping their
various weapons and boat furniture often he would be surrounded by an
eager circle all waiting to be served holding boat-spades pike-heads
harpoons and lances and jealously watching his every sooty movement
as he toiled nevertheless this old man's was a patient hammer wielded
by a patient arm no murmur no impatience no petulance did come from
him silent slow and solemn bowing over still further his chronically
broken back he toiled away as if toil were life itself and the
heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart and so it
was most miserable

a peculiar walk in this old man a certain slight but painful appearing
yawing in his gait had at an early period of the voyage excited the
curiosity of the mariners and to the importunity of their persisted
questionings he had finally given in and so it came to pass that every
one now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate

belated and not innocently one bitter winter's midnight on the road
running between two country towns the blacksmith half-stupidly felt
the deadly numbness stealing over him and sought refuge in a leaning
dilapidated barn the issue was the loss of the extremities of both
feet out of this revelation part by part at last came out the four
acts of the gladness and the one long and as yet uncatastrophied fifth
act of the grief of his life's drama

he was an old man who at the age of nearly sixty had postponedly
encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin he had been
an artisan of famed excellence and with plenty to do owned a house
and garden embraced a youthful daughter-like loving wife and three
blithe ruddy children every sunday went to a cheerful-looking church
planted in a grove but one night under cover of darkness and further
concealed in a most cunning disguisement a desperate burglar slid into
his happy home and robbed them all of everything and darker yet to
tell the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into
his family's heart it was the bottle conjuror upon the opening of that
fatal cork forth flew the fiend and shrivelled up his home now for
prudent most wise and economic reasons the blacksmith's shop was in
the basement of his dwelling but with a separate entrance to it so
that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no
unhappy nervousness but with vigorous pleasure to the stout ringing of
her young-armed old husband's hammer whose reverberations muffled by
passing through the floors and walls came up to her not unsweetly
in her nursery and so to stout labor's iron lullaby the blacksmith's
infants were rocked to slumber

oh woe on woe oh death why canst thou not sometimes be timely hadst
thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon
him then had the young widow had a delicious grief and her orphans a
truly venerable legendary sire to dream of in their after years and
all of them a care-killing competency but death plucked down some
virtuous elder brother on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the
responsibilities of some other family and left the worse than useless
old man standing till the hideous rot of life should make him easier to
harvest

why tell the whole the blows of the basement hammer every day grew more
and more between and each blow every day grew fainter than the last
the wife sat frozen at the window with tearless eyes glitteringly
gazing into the weeping faces of her children the bellows fell the
forge choked up with cinders the house was sold the mother dived
down into the long church-yard grass her children twice followed her
thither and the houseless familyless old man staggered off a vagabond
in crape his every woe unreverenced his grey head a scorn to flaxen
curls

death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this but death
is only a launching into the region of the strange untried it is but
the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense remote the
wild the watery the unshored therefore to the death-longing eyes of
such men who still have left in them some interior compunctions against
suicide does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly
spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable taking terrors and
wonderful new-life adventures and from the hearts of infinite
pacifics the thousand mermaids sing to them come hither
broken-hearted here is another life without the guilt of intermediate
death here are wonders supernatural without dying for them come
hither bury thyself in a life which to your now equally abhorred and
abhorring landed world is more oblivious than death come hither put
up thy gravestone too within the churchyard and come hither till we
marry thee

hearkening to these voices east and west by early sunrise and by fall
of eve the blacksmith's soul responded aye i come and so perth went
a-whaling



chapter the forge


with matted beard and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron about
mid-day perth was standing between his forge and anvil the latter
placed upon an iron-wood log with one hand holding a pike-head in the
coals and with the other at his forge's lungs when captain ahab came
along carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag while
yet a little distance from the forge moody ahab paused till at last
perth withdrawing his iron from the fire began hammering it upon the
anvil the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights
some of which flew close to ahab

are these thy mother carey's chickens perth they are always flying
in thy wake birds of good omen too but not to all look here they
burn but thou thou liv'st among them without a scorch

because i am scorched all over captain ahab answered perth resting
for a moment on his hammer i am past scorching not easily can'st thou
scorch a scar

well well no more thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly sanely woeful
to me in no paradise myself i am impatient of all misery in others
that is not mad thou should'st go mad blacksmith say why dost thou
not go mad how can'st thou endure without being mad do the heavens yet
hate thee that thou can'st not go mad what wert thou making there

welding an old pike-head sir there were seams and dents in it

and can'st thou make it all smooth again blacksmith after such hard
usage as it had

i think so sir

and i suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents never
mind how hard the metal blacksmith

aye sir i think i can all seams and dents but one

look ye here then cried ahab passionately advancing and leaning
with both hands on perth's shoulders look ye here here can ye
smoothe out a seam like this blacksmith sweeping one hand across his
ribbed brow if thou could'st blacksmith glad enough would i lay
my head upon thy anvil and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes
answer can'st thou smoothe this seam

oh that is the one sir said i not all seams and dents but one

aye blacksmith it is the one aye man it is unsmoothable for
though thou only see'st it here in my flesh it has worked down into the
bone of my skull that is all wrinkles but away with child's play no
more gaffs and pikes to-day look ye here jingling the leathern bag
as if it were full of gold coins i too want a harpoon made one that
a thousand yoke of fiends could not part perth something that will
stick in a whale like his own fin-bone there's the stuff flinging
the pouch upon the anvil look ye blacksmith these are the gathered
nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses

horse-shoe stubbs sir why captain ahab thou hast here then the
best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work

i know it old man these stubbs will weld together like glue from the
melted bones of murderers quick forge me the harpoon and forge me
first twelve rods for its shank then wind and twist and hammer these
twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line quick i'll
blow the fire

when at last the twelve rods were made ahab tried them one by one by
spiralling them with his own hand round a long heavy iron bolt a
flaw rejecting the last one work that over again perth

this done perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one when
ahab stayed his hand and said he would weld his own iron as then
with regular gasping hems he hammered on the anvil perth passing to
him the glowing rods one after the other and the hard pressed forge
shooting up its intense straight flame the parsee passed silently and
bowing over his head towards the fire seemed invoking some curse or
some blessing on the toil but as ahab looked up he slid aside

what's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for muttered stubb
looking on from the forecastle that parsee smells fire like a fusee
and smells of it himself like a hot musket's powder-pan

at last the shank in one complete rod received its final heat and as
perth to temper it plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near
by the scalding steam shot up into ahab's bent face

would'st thou brand me perth wincing for a moment with the pain
have i been but forging my own branding-iron then

pray god not that yet i fear something captain ahab is not this
harpoon for the white whale

for the white fiend but now for the barbs thou must make them
thyself man here are my razors the best of steel here and make the
barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the icy sea

for a moment the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain
not use them

take them man i have no need for them for i now neither shave sup
nor pray till but here to work

fashioned at last into an arrowy shape and welded by perth to the
shank the steel soon pointed the end of the iron and as the blacksmith
was about giving the barbs their final heat prior to tempering them he
cried to ahab to place the water-cask near

no no no water for that i want it of the true death-temper ahoy
there tashtego queequeg daggoo what say ye pagans will ye give me
as much blood as will cover this barb holding it high up a cluster of
dark nods replied yes three punctures were made in the heathen flesh
and the white whale's barbs were then tempered

ego non baptizo te in nomine patris sed in nomine diaboli
deliriously howled ahab as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the
baptismal blood

now mustering the spare poles from below and selecting one of hickory
with the bark still investing it ahab fitted the end to the socket of
the iron a coil of new tow-line was then unwound and some fathoms of
it taken to the windlass and stretched to a great tension pressing
his foot upon it till the rope hummed like a harp-string then eagerly
bending over it and seeing no strandings ahab exclaimed good and
now for the seizings

at one extremity the rope was unstranded and the separate spread yarns
were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon the pole
was then driven hard up into the socket from the lower end the rope
was traced half-way along the pole's length and firmly secured so with
intertwistings of twine this done pole iron and rope like the three
fates remained inseparable and ahab moodily stalked away with the
weapon the sound of his ivory leg and the sound of the hickory pole
both hollowly ringing along every plank but ere he entered his cabin
light unnatural half-bantering yet most piteous sound was heard oh
pip thy wretched laugh thy idle but unresting eye all thy strange
mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the
melancholy ship and mocked it



chapter the gilder


penetrating further and further into the heart of the japanese cruising
ground the pequod was soon all astir in the fishery often in mild
pleasant weather for twelve fifteen eighteen and twenty hours on the
stretch they were engaged in the boats steadily pulling or sailing
or paddling after the whales or for an interlude of sixty or seventy
minutes calmly awaiting their uprising though with but small success
for their pains

at such times under an abated sun afloat all day upon smooth slow
heaving swells seated in his boat light as a birch canoe and so
sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves that like hearth-stone
cats they purr against the gunwale these are the times of dreamy
quietude when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the
ocean's skin one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it and
would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a
remorseless fang

these are the times when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
certain filial confident land-like feeling towards the sea that he
regards it as so much flowery earth and the distant ship revealing
only the tops of her masts seems struggling forward not through high
rolling waves but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie as when
the western emigrants horses only show their erected ears while their
hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure

the long-drawn virgin vales the mild blue hill-sides as over these
there steals the hush the hum you almost swear that play-wearied
children lie sleeping in these solitudes in some glad may-time when
the flowers of the woods are plucked and all this mixes with your most
mystic mood so that fact and fancy half-way meeting interpenetrate
and form one seamless whole

nor did such soothing scenes however temporary fail of at least as
temporary an effect on ahab but if these secret golden keys did seem
to open in him his own secret golden treasuries yet did his breath upon
them prove but tarnishing

oh grassy glades oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul in
ye though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life in ye
men yet may roll like young horses in new morning clover and for some
few fleeting moments feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them
would to god these blessed calms would last but the mingled mingling
threads of life are woven by warp and woof calms crossed by storms a
storm for every calm there is no steady unretracing progress in this
life we do not advance through fixed gradations and at the last one
pause through infancy's unconscious spell boyhood's thoughtless
faith adolescence doubt the common doom then scepticism then
disbelief resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of if but once
gone through we trace the round again and are infants boys and men
and ifs eternally where lies the final harbor whence we unmoor no
more in what rapt ether sails the world of which the weariest will
never weary where is the foundling's father hidden our souls are like
those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them the secret of
our paternity lies in their grave and we must there to learn it

and that same day too gazing far down from his boat's side into that
same golden sea starbuck lowly murmured 

loveliness unfathomable as ever lover saw in his young bride's
eye tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks and thy kidnapping
cannibal ways let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory i look deep
down and do believe

and stubb fish-like with sparkling scales leaped up in that same
golden light 

i am stubb and stubb has his history but here stubb takes oaths that
he has always been jolly



chapter the pequod meets the bachelor


and jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down
before the wind some few weeks after ahab's harpoon had been welded

it was a nantucket ship the bachelor which had just wedged in her
last cask of oil and bolted down her bursting hatches and now in glad
holiday apparel was joyously though somewhat vain-gloriously sailing
round among the widely-separated ships on the ground previous to
pointing her prow for home

the three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting
at their hats from the stern a whale-boat was suspended bottom down
and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the
last whale they had slain signals ensigns and jacks of all colours
were flying from her rigging on every side sideways lashed in each of
her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm above which in her
top-mast cross-trees you saw slender breakers of the same precious
fluid and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp

as was afterwards learned the bachelor had met with the most surprising
success all the more wonderful for that while cruising in the same
seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a
single fish not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to
make room for the far more valuable sperm but additional supplemental
casks had been bartered for from the ships she had met and these were
stowed along the deck and in the captain's and officers state-rooms
even the cabin table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood and the
cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt lashed down to the
floor for a centrepiece in the forecastle the sailors had actually
caulked and pitched their chests and filled them it was humorously
added that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler and
filled it that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled
it that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and
filled them that indeed everything was filled with sperm except the
captain's pantaloons pockets and those he reserved to thrust his hands
into in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction

as this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody pequod the
barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle and drawing
still nearer a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge
try-pots which covered with the parchment-like poke or stomach skin of
the black fish gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the clenched
hands of the crew on the quarter-deck the mates and harpooneers were
dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the
polynesian isles while suspended in an ornamented boat firmly secured
aloft between the foremast and mainmast three long island negroes with
glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory were presiding over the hilarious
jig meanwhile others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at
the masonry of the try-works from which the huge pots had been
removed you would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed
bastille such wild cries they raised as the now useless brick and
mortar were being hurled into the sea

lord and master over all this scene the captain stood erect on the
ship's elevated quarter-deck so that the whole rejoicing drama was
full before him and seemed merely contrived for his own individual
diversion

and ahab he too was standing on his quarter-deck shaggy and black
with a stubborn gloom and as the two ships crossed each other's
wakes one all jubilations for things passed the other all forebodings
as to things to come their two captains in themselves impersonated the
whole striking contrast of the scene

come aboard come aboard cried the gay bachelor's commander lifting
a glass and a bottle in the air

hast seen the white whale gritted ahab in reply

no only heard of him but don't believe in him at all said the other
good-humoredly come aboard

thou art too damned jolly sail on hast lost any men

not enough to speak of two islanders that's all but come aboard
old hearty come along i'll soon take that black from your brow come
along will ye merry's the play a full ship and homeward-bound

how wondrous familiar is a fool muttered ahab then aloud thou art
a full ship and homeward bound thou sayst well then call me an empty
ship and outward-bound so go thy ways and i will mine forward there
set all sail and keep her to the wind

and thus while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze the other
stubbornly fought against it and so the two vessels parted the crew
of the pequod looking with grave lingering glances towards the receding
bachelor but the bachelor's men never heeding their gaze for the lively
revelry they were in and as ahab leaning over the taffrail eyed the
homewardbound craft he took from his pocket a small vial of sand and
then looking from the ship to the vial seemed thereby bringing two
remote associations together for that vial was filled with nantucket
soundings



chapter the dying whale


not seldom in this life when on the right side fortune's favourites
sail close by us we though all adroop before catch somewhat of the
rushing breeze and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out so seemed
it with the pequod for next day after encountering the gay bachelor
whales were seen and four were slain and one of them by ahab

it was far down the afternoon and when all the spearings of the crimson
fight were done and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky sun
and whale both stilly died together then such a sweetness and such
plaintiveness such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air that
it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of
the manilla isles the spanish land-breeze wantonly turned sailor had
gone to sea freighted with these vesper hymns

soothed again but only soothed to deeper gloom ahab who had sterned
off from the whale sat intently watching his final wanings from the now
tranquil boat for that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales
dying the turning sunwards of the head and so expiring that strange
spectacle beheld of such a placid evening somehow to ahab conveyed a
wondrousness unknown before

he turns and turns him to it how slowly but how steadfastly his
homage-rendering and invoking brow with his last dying motions he too
worships fire most faithful broad baronial vassal of the sun oh
that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights
look here far water-locked beyond all hum of human weal or woe
in these most candid and impartial seas where to traditions no rocks
furnish tablets where for long chinese ages the billows have still
rolled on speechless and unspoken to as stars that shine upon the
niger's unknown source here too life dies sunwards full of faith but
see no sooner dead than death whirls round the corpse and it heads
some other way

oh thou dark hindoo half of nature who of drowned bones hast builded
thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas
thou art an infidel thou queen and too truly speakest to me in the
wide-slaughtering typhoon and the hushed burial of its after calm nor
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head and then gone round
again without a lesson to me

oh trebly hooped and welded hip of power oh high aspiring rainbowed
jet that one strivest this one jettest all in vain in vain oh
whale dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun that
only calls forth life but gives it not again yet dost thou darker
half rock me with a prouder if a darker faith all thy unnamable
imminglings float beneath me here i am buoyed by breaths of once living
things exhaled as air but water now

then hail for ever hail o sea in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest born of earth yet suckled by the sea though
hill and valley mothered me ye billows are my foster-brothers



chapter the whale watch


the four whales slain that evening had died wide apart one far to
windward one less distant to leeward one ahead one astern these
last three were brought alongside ere nightfall but the windward one
could not be reached till morning and the boat that had killed it lay
by its side all night and that boat was ahab's

the waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole and
the lantern hanging from its top cast a troubled flickering glare
upon the black glossy back and far out upon the midnight waves which
gently chafed the whale's broad flank like soft surf upon a beach

ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the parsee who crouching
in the bow sat watching the sharks that spectrally played round the
whale and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails a sound
like the moaning in squadrons over asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of
gomorrah ran shuddering through the air

started from his slumbers ahab face to face saw the parsee and
hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a
flooded world i have dreamed it again said he

of the hearses have i not said old man that neither hearse nor
coffin can be thine

and who are hearsed that die on the sea

but i said old man that ere thou couldst die on this voyage two
hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea the first not made by
mortal hands and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in
america

aye aye a strange sight that parsee a hearse and its plumes
floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers ha such a
sight we shall not soon see

believe it or not thou canst not die till it be seen old man

and what was that saying about thyself

though it come to the last i shall still go before thee thy pilot

and when thou art so gone before if that ever befall then ere i can
follow thou must still appear to me to pilot me still was it not
so well then did i believe all ye say oh my pilot i have here two
pledges that i shall yet slay moby dick and survive it

take another pledge old man said the parsee as his eyes lighted up
like fire-flies in the gloom hemp only can kill thee

the gallows ye mean i am immortal then on land and on sea cried
ahab with a laugh of derision immortal on land and on sea

both were silent again as one man the grey dawn came on and the
slumbering crew arose from the boat's bottom and ere noon the dead
whale was brought to the ship



chapter the quadrant


the season for the line at length drew near and every day when ahab
coming from his cabin cast his eyes aloft the vigilant helmsman would
ostentatiously handle his spokes and the eager mariners quickly run to
the braces and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed
on the nailed doubloon impatient for the order to point the ship's
prow for the equator in good time the order came it was hard upon high
noon and ahab seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat was
about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his
latitude

now in that japanese sea the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences that unblinkingly vivid japanese sun seems the blazing
focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable burning-glass the sky looks
lacquered clouds there are none the horizon floats and this nakedness
of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of god's throne
well that ahab's quadrant was furnished with coloured glasses through
which to take sight of that solar fire so swinging his seated form
to the roll of the ship and with his astrological-looking instrument
placed to his eye he remained in that posture for some moments to
catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its precise meridian
meantime while his whole attention was absorbed the parsee was kneeling
beneath him on the ship's deck and with face thrown up like ahab's
was eyeing the same sun with him only the lids of his eyes half hooded
their orbs and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness
at length the desired observation was taken and with his pencil upon
his ivory leg ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that
precise instant then falling into a moment's revery he again looked up
towards the sun and murmured to himself thou sea-mark thou high and
mighty pilot thou tellest me truly where i am but canst thou cast the
least hint where i shall be or canst thou tell where some other thing
besides me is this moment living where is moby dick this instant thou
must be eyeing him these eyes of mine look into the very eye that is
even now beholding him aye and into the eye that is even now equally
beholding the objects on the unknown thither side of thee thou sun

then gazing at his quadrant and handling one after the other its
numerous cabalistical contrivances he pondered again and muttered
foolish toy babies plaything of haughty admirals and commodores and
captains the world brags of thee of thy cunning and might but what
after all canst thou do but tell the poor pitiful point where thou
thyself happenest to be on this wide planet and the hand that holds
thee no not one jot more thou canst not tell where one drop of water
or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon and yet with thy impotence
thou insultest the sun science curse thee thou vain toy and cursed
be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven whose live
vividness but scorches him as these old eyes are even now scorched
with thy light o sun level by nature to this earth's horizon are the
glances of man's eyes not shot from the crown of his head as if god
had meant him to gaze on his firmament curse thee thou quadrant
dashing it to the deck no longer will i guide my earthly way by thee
the level ship's compass and the level deadreckoning by log and by
line these shall conduct me and show me my place on the sea aye
lighting from the boat to the deck thus i trample on thee thou paltry
thing that feebly pointest on high thus i split and destroy thee

as the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live
and dead feet a sneering triumph that seemed meant for ahab and a
fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself these passed over
the mute motionless parsee's face unobserved he rose and glided away
while awestruck by the aspect of their commander the seamen clustered
together on the forecastle till ahab troubledly pacing the deck
shouted out to the braces up helm square in

in an instant the yards swung round and as the ship half-wheeled upon
her heel her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon
her long ribbed hull seemed as the three horatii pirouetting on one
sufficient steed

standing between the knight-heads starbuck watched the pequod's
tumultuous way and ahab's also as he went lurching along the deck

i have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow full of
its tormented flaming life and i have seen it wane at last down down
to dumbest dust old man of oceans of all this fiery life of thine
what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes

aye cried stubb but sea-coal ashes mind ye that mr
starbuck sea-coal not your common charcoal well well i heard ahab
mutter here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine
swears that i must play them and no others and damn me ahab but
thou actest right live in the game and die in it



chapter the candles


warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs the tiger of bengal
crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure skies the most effulgent
but basket the deadliest thunders gorgeous cuba knows tornadoes
that never swept tame northern lands so too it is that in these
resplendent japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all
storms the typhoon it will sometimes burst from out that cloudless
sky like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town

towards evening of that day the pequod was torn of her canvas and
bare-poled was left to fight a typhoon which had struck her directly
ahead when darkness came on sky and sea roared and split with the
thunder and blazed with the lightning that showed the disabled masts
fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the
tempest had left for its after sport

holding by a shroud starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck at every
flash of the lightning glancing aloft to see what additional disaster
might have befallen the intricate hamper there while stubb and flask
were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the
boats but all their pains seemed naught though lifted to the very
top of the cranes the windward quarter boat ahab's did not escape
a great rolling sea dashing high up against the reeling ship's high
teetering side stove in the boat's bottom at the stern and left it
again all dripping through like a sieve

bad work bad work mr starbuck said stubb regarding the wreck
but the sea will have its way stubb for one can't fight it you see
mr starbuck a wave has such a great long start before it leaps all
round the world it runs and then comes the spring but as for me all
the start i have to meet it is just across the deck here but never
mind it's all in fun so the old song says sings

 oh jolly is the gale
 and a joker is the whale
 a flourishin his tail 
 such a funny sporty gamy jesty joky hoky-poky lad is the ocean oh

 the scud all a flyin
 that's his flip only foamin
 when he stirs in the spicin 
 such a funny sporty gamy jesty joky hoky-poky lad is the ocean oh

 thunder splits the ships
 but he only smacks his lips
 a tastin of this flip 
 such a funny sporty gamy jesty joky hoky-poky lad is the ocean oh


avast stubb cried starbuck let the typhoon sing and strike his
harp here in our rigging but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy
peace

but i am not a brave man never said i was a brave man i am a coward
and i sing to keep up my spirits and i tell you what it is mr
starbuck there's no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my
throat and when that's done ten to one i sing ye the doxology for a
wind-up

madman look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own

what how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else never
mind how foolish

here cried starbuck seizing stubb by the shoulder and pointing his
hand towards the weather bow markest thou not that the gale comes from
the eastward the very course ahab is to run for moby dick the very
course he swung to this day noon now mark his boat there where is
that stove in the stern-sheets man where he is wont to stand his
stand-point is stove man now jump overboard and sing away if thou
must

i don't half understand ye what's in the wind

yes yes round the cape of good hope is the shortest way to
nantucket soliloquized starbuck suddenly heedless of stubb's
question the gale that now hammers at us to stave us we can turn it
into a fair wind that will drive us towards home yonder to windward
all is blackness of doom but to leeward homeward i see it lightens up
there but not with the lightning

at that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness following
the flashes a voice was heard at his side and almost at the same
instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead

who's there

old thunder said ahab groping his way along the bulwarks to his
pivot-hole but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed
lances of fire

now as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off
the perilous fluid into the soil so the kindred rod which at sea some
ships carry to each mast is intended to conduct it into the water but
as this conductor must descend to considerable depth that its end may
avoid all contact with the hull and as moreover if kept constantly
towing there it would be liable to many mishaps besides interfering
not a little with some of the rigging and more or less impeding the
vessel's way in the water because of all this the lower parts of a
ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard but are generally made
in long slender links so as to be the more readily hauled up into the
chains outside or thrown down into the sea as occasion may require

the rods the rods cried starbuck to the crew suddenly admonished to
vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux
to light ahab to his post are they overboard drop them over fore and
aft quick

avast cried ahab let's have fair play here though we be the weaker
side yet i'll contribute to raise rods on the himmalehs and andes that
all the world may be secured but out on privileges let them be sir

look aloft cried starbuck the corpusants the corpusants

all the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire and touched at each
tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames each of
the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air like
three gigantic wax tapers before an altar

blast the boat let it go cried stubb at this instant as a swashing
sea heaved up under his own little craft so that its gunwale violently
jammed his hand as he was passing a lashing blast it but
slipping backward on the deck his uplifted eyes caught the flames and
immediately shifting his tone he cried the corpusants have mercy on us
all

to sailors oaths are household words they will swear in the trance of
the calm and in the teeth of the tempest they will imprecate curses
from the topsail-yard-arms when most they teeter over to a seething
sea but in all my voyagings seldom have i heard a common oath when
god's burning finger has been laid on the ship when his mene mene
tekel upharsin has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage

while this pallidness was burning aloft few words were heard from the
enchanted crew who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle
all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence like a far away
constellation of stars relieved against the ghostly light the gigantic
jet negro daggoo loomed up to thrice his real stature and seemed
the black cloud from which the thunder had come the parted mouth of
tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth which strangely gleamed as
if they too had been tipped by corpusants while lit up by the
preternatural light queequeg's tattooing burned like satanic blue
flames on his body

the tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft and once more
the pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall a moment
or two passed when starbuck going forward pushed against some one it
was stubb what thinkest thou now man i heard thy cry it was not the
same in the song

no no it wasn't i said the corpusants have mercy on us all and i
hope they will still but do they only have mercy on long faces have
they no bowels for a laugh and look ye mr starbuck but it's too dark
to look hear me then i take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign
of good luck for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be
chock a block with sperm-oil d'ye see and so all that sperm will
work up into the masts like sap in a tree yes our three masts will
yet be as three spermaceti candles that's the good promise we saw

at that moment starbuck caught sight of stubb's face slowly beginning
to glimmer into sight glancing upwards he cried see see and once
more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled
supernaturalness in their pallor

the corpusants have mercy on us all cried stubb again

at the base of the mainmast full beneath the doubloon and the flame
the parsee was kneeling in ahab's front but with his head bowed away
from him while near by from the arched and overhanging rigging where
they had just been engaged securing a spar a number of the seamen
arrested by the glare now cohered together and hung pendulous like a
knot of numbed wasps from a drooping orchard twig in various enchanted
attitudes like the standing or stepping or running skeletons in
herculaneum others remained rooted to the deck but all their eyes
upcast

aye aye men cried ahab look up at it mark it well the white
flame but lights the way to the white whale hand me those mainmast
links there i would fain feel this pulse and let mine beat against it
blood against fire so

then turning the last link held fast in his left hand he put his foot
upon the parsee and with fixed upward eye and high-flung right arm he
stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames

oh thou clear spirit of clear fire whom on these seas i as persian
once did worship till in the sacramental act so burned by thee that to
this hour i bear the scar i now know thee thou clear spirit and i now
know that thy right worship is defiance to neither love nor reverence
wilt thou be kind and e'en for hate thou canst but kill and all
are killed no fearless fool now fronts thee i own thy speechless
placeless power but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will
dispute its unconditional unintegral mastery in me in the midst of the
personified impersonal a personality stands here though but a point at
best whencesoe'er i came wheresoe'er i go yet while i earthly live
the queenly personality lives in me and feels her royal rights but war
is pain and hate is woe come in thy lowest form of love and i will
kneel and kiss thee but at thy highest come as mere supernal power
and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds there's that
in here that still remains indifferent oh thou clear spirit of thy
fire thou madest me and like a true child of fire i breathe it back to
thee

sudden repeated flashes of lightning the nine flames leap lengthwise
to thrice their previous height ahab with the rest closes his eyes
his right hand pressed hard upon them

i own thy speechless placeless power said i not so nor was it wrung
from me nor do i now drop these links thou canst blind but i can then
grope thou canst consume but i can then be ashes take the homage of
these poor eyes and shutter-hands i would not take it the lightning
flashes through my skull mine eye-balls ache and ache my whole beaten
brain seems as beheaded and rolling on some stunning ground oh oh
yet blindfold yet will i talk to thee light though thou be thou
leapest out of darkness but i am darkness leaping out of light leaping
out of thee the javelins cease open eyes see or not there burn the
flames oh thou magnanimous now i do glory in my genealogy but thou
art but my fiery father my sweet mother i know not oh cruel what
hast thou done with her there lies my puzzle but thine is greater
thou knowest not how came ye hence callest thyself unbegotten
certainly knowest not thy beginning hence callest thyself unbegun i
know that of me which thou knowest not of thyself oh thou omnipotent
there is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee thou clear spirit to whom
all thy eternity is but time all thy creativeness mechanical through
thee thy flaming self my scorched eyes do dimly see it oh thou
foundling fire thou hermit immemorial thou too hast thy incommunicable
riddle thy unparticipated grief here again with haughty agony i read
my sire leap leap up and lick the sky i leap with thee i burn with
thee would fain be welded with thee defyingly i worship thee

the boat the boat cried starbuck look at thy boat old man

ahab's harpoon the one forged at perth's fire remained firmly lashed
in its conspicuous crotch so that it projected beyond his whale-boat's
bow but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather
sheath to drop off and from the keen steel barb there now came a
levelled flame of pale forked fire as the silent harpoon burned there
like a serpent's tongue starbuck grasped ahab by the arm god god
is against thee old man forbear tis an ill voyage ill begun ill
continued let me square the yards while we may old man and make a
fair wind of it homewards to go on a better voyage than this

overhearing starbuck the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces though not a sail was left aloft for the moment all the aghast
mate's thoughts seemed theirs they raised a half mutinous cry but
dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck and snatching the
burning harpoon ahab waved it like a torch among them swearing to
transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end
petrified by his aspect and still more shrinking from the fiery dart
that he held the men fell back in dismay and ahab again spoke 

all your oaths to hunt the white whale are as binding as mine and
heart soul and body lungs and life old ahab is bound and that ye
may know to what tune this heart beats look ye here thus i blow out
the last fear and with one blast of his breath he extinguished the
flame

as in the hurricane that sweeps the plain men fly the neighborhood of
some lone gigantic elm whose very height and strength but render it so
much the more unsafe because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts
so at those last words of ahab's many of the mariners did run from him
in a terror of dismay



chapter the deck towards the end of the first night watch

ahab standing by the helm starbuck approaching him


we must send down the main-top-sail yard sir the band is working loose
and the lee lift is half-stranded shall i strike it sir

strike nothing lash it if i had sky-sail poles i'd sway them up
now

sir in god's name sir

well

the anchors are working sir shall i get them inboard

strike nothing and stir nothing but lash everything the wind rises
but it has not got up to my table-lands yet quick and see to it by
masts and keels he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some
coasting smack send down my main-top-sail yard ho gluepots loftiest
trucks were made for wildest winds and this brain-truck of mine now
sails amid the cloud-scud shall i strike that oh none but cowards
send down their brain-trucks in tempest time what a hooroosh aloft
there i would e'en take it for sublime did i not know that the colic
is a noisy malady oh take medicine take medicine



chapter midnight the forecastle bulwarks


stubb and flask mounted on them and passing additional lashings over
the anchors there hanging


no stubb you may pound that knot there as much as you please but you
will never pound into me what you were just now saying and how long
ago is it since you said the very contrary didn't you once say that
whatever ship ahab sails in that ship should pay something extra on its
insurance policy just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft
and boxes of lucifers forward stop now didn't you say so

well suppose i did what then i've part changed my flesh since that
time why not my mind besides supposing we are loaded with powder
barrels aft and lucifers forward how the devil could the lucifers get
afire in this drenching spray here why my little man you have
pretty red hair but you couldn't get afire now shake yourself you're
aquarius or the water-bearer flask might fill pitchers at your coat
collar don't you see then that for these extra risks the marine
insurance companies have extra guarantees here are hydrants flask but
hark again and i'll answer ye the other thing first take your leg off
from the crown of the anchor here though so i can pass the rope
now listen what's the mighty difference between holding a mast's
lightning-rod in the storm and standing close by a mast that hasn't
got any lightning-rod at all in a storm don't you see you timber-head
that no harm can come to the holder of the rod unless the mast is first
struck what are you talking about then not one ship in a hundred
carries rods and ahab aye man and all of us were in no more
danger then in my poor opinion than all the crews in ten thousand
ships now sailing the seas why you king-post you i suppose you would
have every man in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running
up the corner of his hat like a militia officer's skewered feather
and trailing behind like his sash why don't ye be sensible flask it's
easy to be sensible why don't ye then any man with half an eye can be
sensible

i don't know that stubb you sometimes find it rather hard

yes when a fellow's soaked through it's hard to be sensible that's
a fact and i am about drenched with this spray never mind catch the
turn there and pass it seems to me we are lashing down these anchors
now as if they were never going to be used again tying these two
anchors here flask seems like tying a man's hands behind him and what
big generous hands they are to be sure these are your iron fists
hey what a hold they have too i wonder flask whether the world is
anchored anywhere if she is she swings with an uncommon long cable
though there hammer that knot down and we've done so next to
touching land lighting on deck is the most satisfactory i say just
wring out my jacket skirts will ye thank ye they laugh at long-togs
so flask but seems to me a long tailed coat ought always to be worn
in all storms afloat the tails tapering down that way serve to carry
off the water d'ye see same with cocked hats the cocks form gable-end
eave-troughs flask no more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me i
must mount a swallow-tail and drive down a beaver so halloa whew
there goes my tarpaulin overboard lord lord that the winds that come
from heaven should be so unmannerly this is a nasty night lad



chapter midnight aloft thunder and lightning


the main-top-sail yard tashtego passing new lashings around it


um um um stop that thunder plenty too much thunder up here what's
the use of thunder um um um we don't want thunder we want rum give
us a glass of rum um um um



chapter the musket


during the most violent shocks of the typhoon the man at the pequod's
jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by
its spasmodic motions even though preventer tackles had been attached
to it for they were slack because some play to the tiller was
indispensable

in a severe gale like this while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock
to the blast it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the
compasses at intervals go round and round it was thus with the
pequod's at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice
the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards it is
a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort of unwonted
emotion

some hours after midnight the typhoon abated so much that through the
strenuous exertions of starbuck and stubb one engaged forward and the
other aft the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails
were cut adrift from the spars and went eddying away to leeward like
the feathers of an albatross which sometimes are cast to the winds when
that storm-tossed bird is on the wing

the three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed and a
storm-trysail was set further aft so that the ship soon went through
the water with some precision again and the course for the present
east-south-east which he was to steer if practicable was once more
given to the helmsman for during the violence of the gale he had only
steered according to its vicissitudes but as he was now bringing the
ship as near her course as possible watching the compass meanwhile lo
a good sign the wind seemed coming round astern aye the foul breeze
became fair

instantly the yards were squared to the lively song of ho the
fair wind oh-ye-ho cheerly men the crew singing for joy that so
promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents
preceding it

in compliance with the standing order of his commander to report
immediately and at any one of the twenty-four hours any decided change
in the affairs of the deck starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to
the breeze however reluctantly and gloomily than he mechanically went
below to apprise captain ahab of the circumstance

ere knocking at his state-room he involuntarily paused before it
a moment the cabin lamp taking long swings this way and that was
burning fitfully and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's bolted
door a thin one with fixed blinds inserted in place of upper panels
the isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming
silence to reign there though it was hooped round by all the roar of
the elements the loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed as
they stood upright against the forward bulkhead starbuck was an honest
upright man but out of starbuck's heart at that instant when he saw
the muskets there strangely evolved an evil thought but so blent with
its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew
it for itself

he would have shot me once he murmured yes there's the very musket
that he pointed at me that one with the studded stock let me touch
it lift it strange that i who have handled so many deadly lances
strange that i should shake so now loaded i must see aye aye and
powder in the pan that's not good best spill it wait i'll cure
myself of this i'll hold the musket boldly while i think i come
to report a fair wind to him but how fair fair for death and
doom that's fair for moby dick it's a fair wind that's only fair for
that accursed fish the very tube he pointed at me the very one
this one i hold it here he would have killed me with the very thing i
handle now aye and he would fain kill all his crew does he not say
he will not strike his spars to any gale has he not dashed his heavenly
quadrant and in these same perilous seas gropes he not his way by mere
dead reckoning of the error-abounding log and in this very typhoon did
he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods but shall this crazed
old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom
with him yes it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and
more if this ship come to any deadly harm and come to deadly harm my
soul swears this ship will if ahab have his way if then he were this
instant put aside that crime would not be his ha is he muttering in
his sleep yes just there in there he's sleeping sleeping aye
but still alive and soon awake again i can't withstand thee then old
man not reasoning not remonstrance not entreaty wilt thou hearken to
all this thou scornest flat obedience to thy own flat commands this is
all thou breathest aye and say'st the men have vow'd thy vow say'st
all of us are ahabs great god forbid but is there no other way no
lawful way make him a prisoner to be taken home what hope to wrest
this old man's living power from his own living hands only a fool
would try it say he were pinioned even knotted all over with ropes
and hawsers chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor he would
be more hideous than a caged tiger then i could not endure the
sight could not possibly fly his howlings all comfort sleep itself
inestimable reason would leave me on the long intolerable voyage what
then remains the land is hundreds of leagues away and locked japan
the nearest i stand alone here upon an open sea with two oceans and
a whole continent between me and law aye aye tis so is heaven
a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed
tindering sheets and skin together and would i be a murderer then
if and slowly stealthily and half sideways looking he placed the
loaded musket's end against the door

on this level ahab's hammock swings within his head this way a
touch and starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again oh
mary mary boy boy boy but if i wake thee not to death old man
who can tell to what unsounded deeps starbuck's body this day week
may sink with all the crew great god where art thou shall i shall
i the wind has gone down and shifted sir the fore and main topsails
are reefed and set she heads her course

stern all oh moby dick i clutch thy heart at last

such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's
tormented sleep as if starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream
to speak

the yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel
starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel but turning from the door he
placed the death-tube in its rack and left the place

he's too sound asleep mr stubb go thou down and wake him and tell
him i must see to the deck here thou know'st what to say



chapter the needle


next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk and striving in the pequod's gurgling track pushed her on
like giants palms outspread the strong unstaggering breeze abounded
so that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails the whole world
boomed before the wind muffled in the full morning light the invisible
sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place where his
bayonet rays moved on in stacks emblazonings as of crowned babylonian
kings and queens reigned over everything the sea was as a crucible of
molten gold that bubblingly leaps with light and heat

long maintaining an enchanted silence ahab stood apart and every time
the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit he turned to eye
the bright sun's rays produced ahead and when she profoundly settled by
the stern he turned behind and saw the sun's rearward place and how
the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake

ha ha my ship thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of
the sun ho ho all ye nations before my prow i bring the sun to ye
yoke on the further billows hallo a tandem i drive the sea

but suddenly reined back by some counter thought he hurried towards the
helm huskily demanding how the ship was heading

east-sou-east sir said the frightened steersman

thou liest smiting him with his clenched fist heading east at this
hour in the morning and the sun astern

upon this every soul was confounded for the phenomenon just then
observed by ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else but its very
blinding palpableness must have been the cause

thrusting his head half way into the binnacle ahab caught one glimpse
of the compasses his uplifted arm slowly fell for a moment he almost
seemed to stagger standing behind him starbuck looked and lo the two
compasses pointed east and the pequod was as infallibly going west

but ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew
the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed i have it it has happened
before mr starbuck last night's thunder turned our compasses that's
all thou hast before now heard of such a thing i take it

aye but never before has it happened to me sir said the pale mate
gloomily

here it must needs be said that accidents like this have in more than
one case occurred to ships in violent storms the magnetic energy as
developed in the mariner's needle is as all know essentially one with
the electricity beheld in heaven hence it is not to be much marvelled
at that such things should be instances where the lightning has
actually struck the vessel so as to smite down some of the spars and
rigging the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal
all its loadstone virtue being annihilated so that the before magnetic
steel was of no more use than an old wife's knitting needle but in
either case the needle never again of itself recovers the original
virtue thus marred or lost and if the binnacle compasses be affected
the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship even were
the lowermost one inserted into the kelson

deliberately standing before the binnacle and eyeing the transpointed
compasses the old man with the sharp of his extended hand now took
the precise bearing of the sun and satisfied that the needles were
exactly inverted shouted out his orders for the ship's course to be
changed accordingly the yards were hard up and once more the pequod
thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind for the supposed fair
one had only been juggling her

meanwhile whatever were his own secret thoughts starbuck said nothing
but quietly he issued all requisite orders while stubb and flask who
in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings likewise
unmurmuringly acquiesced as for the men though some of them lowly
rumbled their fear of ahab was greater than their fear of fate but as
ever before the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed
or if impressed it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their
congenial hearts from inflexible ahab's

for a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries but
chancing to slip with his ivory heel he saw the crushed copper
sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck

thou poor proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot yesterday i wrecked
thee and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me so so but
ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet mr starbuck a lance without
a pole a top-maul and the smallest of the sail-maker's needles
quick

accessory perhaps to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about
to do were certain prudential motives whose object might have been to
revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill in a
matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses besides the old
man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles though clumsily
practicable was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors
without some shudderings and evil portents

men said he steadily turning upon the crew as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded my men the thunder turned old ahab's
needles but out of this bit of steel ahab can make one of his own that
will point as true as any

abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors as this
was said and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might
follow but starbuck looked away

with a blow from the top-maul ahab knocked off the steel head of the
lance and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining bade
him hold it upright without its touching the deck then with the maul
after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod he placed the
blunted needle endwise on the top of it and less strongly hammered
that several times the mate still holding the rod as before then
going through some small strange motions with it whether indispensable
to the magnetizing of the steel or merely intended to augment the awe
of the crew is uncertain he called for linen thread and moving to the
binnacle slipped out the two reversed needles there and horizontally
suspended the sail-needle by its middle over one of the compass-cards
at first the steel went round and round quivering and vibrating at
either end but at last it settled to its place when ahab who had
been intently watching for this result stepped frankly back from the
binnacle and pointing his stretched arm towards it exclaimed look
ye for yourselves if ahab be not lord of the level loadstone the sun
is east and that compass swears it

one after another they peered in for nothing but their own eyes could
persuade such ignorance as theirs and one after another they slunk
away

in his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph you then saw ahab in all his
fatal pride



chapter the log and line


while now the fated pequod had been so long afloat this voyage the log
and line had but very seldom been in use owing to a confident reliance
upon other means of determining the vessel's place some merchantmen
and many whalemen especially when cruising wholly neglect to heave the
log though at the same time and frequently more for form's sake than
anything else regularly putting down upon the customary slate the
course steered by the ship as well as the presumed average rate of
progression every hour it had been thus with the pequod the wooden
reel and angular log attached hung long untouched just beneath the
railing of the after bulwarks rains and spray had damped it sun and
wind had warped it all the elements had combined to rot a thing that
hung so idly but heedless of all this his mood seized ahab as he
happened to glance upon the reel not many hours after the magnet scene
and he remembered how his quadrant was no more and recalled his frantic
oath about the level log and line the ship was sailing plungingly
astern the billows rolled in riots

forward there heave the log

two seamen came the golden-hued tahitian and the grizzly manxman take
the reel one of ye i'll heave

they went towards the extreme stern on the ship's lee side where the
deck with the oblique energy of the wind was now almost dipping into
the creamy sidelong-rushing sea

the manxman took the reel and holding it high up by the projecting
handle-ends of the spindle round which the spool of line revolved so
stood with the angular log hanging downwards till ahab advanced to him

ahab stood before him and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty
turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard when the old
manxman who was intently eyeing both him and the line made bold to
speak

sir i mistrust it this line looks far gone long heat and wet have
spoiled it

twill hold old gentleman long heat and wet have they spoiled thee
thou seem'st to hold or truer perhaps life holds thee not thou it

i hold the spool sir but just as my captain says with these
grey hairs of mine tis not worth while disputing specially with a
superior who'll ne'er confess

what's that there now's a patched professor in queen nature's
granite-founded college but methinks he's too subservient where wert
thou born

in the little rocky isle of man sir

excellent thou'st hit the world by that

i know not sir but i was born there

in the isle of man hey well the other way it's good here's a man
from man a man born in once independent man and now unmanned of man
which is sucked in by what up with the reel the dead blind wall
butts all inquiring heads at last up with it so

the log was heaved the loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long
dragging line astern and then instantly the reel began to whirl in
turn jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows the towing
resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely

hold hard

snap the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon the tugging
log was gone

i crush the quadrant the thunder turns the needles and now the mad
sea parts the log-line but ahab can mend all haul in here tahitian
reel up manxman and look ye let the carpenter make another log and
mend thou the line see to it

there he goes now to him nothing's happened but to me the skewer
seems loosening out of the middle of the world haul in haul in
tahitian these lines run whole and whirling out come in broken and
dragging slow ha pip come to help eh pip

pip whom call ye pip pip jumped from the whale-boat pip's missing
let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here fisherman it drags
hard i guess he's holding on jerk him tahiti jerk him off we haul
in no cowards here ho there's his arm just breaking water a hatchet
a hatchet cut it off we haul in no cowards here captain ahab sir
sir here's pip trying to get on board again

peace thou crazy loon cried the manxman seizing him by the arm
away from the quarter-deck

the greater idiot ever scolds the lesser muttered ahab advancing
hands off from that holiness where sayest thou pip was boy

astern there sir astern lo lo

and who art thou boy i see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of
thy eyes oh god that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve
through who art thou boy

bell-boy sir ship's-crier ding dong ding pip pip pip
one hundred pounds of clay reward for pip five feet high looks
cowardly quickest known by that ding dong ding who's seen pip the
coward

there can be no hearts above the snow-line oh ye frozen heavens look
down here ye did beget this luckless child and have abandoned him
ye creative libertines here boy ahab's cabin shall be pip's home
henceforth while ahab lives thou touchest my inmost centre boy thou
art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings come let's down

what's this here's velvet shark-skin intently gazing at ahab's hand
and feeling it ah now had poor pip but felt so kind a thing as this
perhaps he had ne'er been lost this seems to me sir as a man-rope
something that weak souls may hold by oh sir let old perth now come
and rivet these two hands together the black one with the white for i
will not let this go

oh boy nor will i thee unless i should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here come then to my cabin lo ye believers in
gods all goodness and in man all ill lo you see the omniscient gods
oblivious of suffering man and man though idiotic and knowing not
what he does yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude come
i feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand than though i grasped an
emperor's

there go two daft ones now muttered the old manxman one daft with
strength the other daft with weakness but here's the end of the rotten
line all dripping too mend it eh i think we had best have a new
line altogether i'll see mr stubb about it



chapter the life-buoy


steering now south-eastward by ahab's levelled steel and her progress
solely determined by ahab's level log and line the pequod held on
her path towards the equator making so long a passage through such
unfrequented waters descrying no ships and ere long sideways impelled
by unvarying trade winds over waves monotonously mild all these seemed
the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene

at last when the ship drew near to the outskirts as it were of the
equatorial fishing-ground and in the deep darkness that goes before the
dawn was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets the watch then headed
by flask was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly like
half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all herod's murdered
innocents that one and all they started from their reveries and for
the space of some moments stood or sat or leaned all transfixedly
listening like the carved roman slave while that wild cry remained
within hearing the christian or civilized part of the crew said it was
mermaids and shuddered but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled
yet the grey manxman the oldest mariner of all declared that the wild
thrilling sounds that were heard were the voices of newly drowned men
in the sea

below in his hammock ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn when
he came to the deck it was then recounted to him by flask not
unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings he hollowly laughed and thus
explained the wonder

those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers
of seals and some young seals that had lost their dams or some dams
that had lost their cubs must have risen nigh the ship and kept company
with her crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail but this
only the more affected some of them because most mariners cherish a
very superstitious feeling about seals arising not only from their
peculiar tones when in distress but also from the human look of their
round heads and semi-intelligent faces seen peeringly uprising from
the water alongside in the sea under certain circumstances seals have
more than once been mistaken for men

but the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning at
sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore
and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep for
sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state whether it was thus
with the man there is now no telling but be that as it may he
had not been long at his perch when a cry was heard a cry and a
rushing and looking up they saw a falling phantom in the air and
looking down a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the
sea

the life-buoy a long slender cask was dropped from the stern where it
always hung obedient to a cunning spring but no hand rose to seize it
and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken so that it
slowly filled and that parched wood also filled at its every pore and
the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom as if to
yield him his pillow though in sooth but a hard one

and thus the first man of the pequod that mounted the mast to look out
for the white whale on the white whale's own peculiar ground that man
was swallowed up in the deep but few perhaps thought of that at the
time indeed in some sort they were not grieved at this event at
least as a portent for they regarded it not as a foreshadowing of evil
in the future but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged they
declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they had
heard the night before but again the old manxman said nay

the lost life-buoy was now to be replaced starbuck was directed to see
to it but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found and as
in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of
the voyage all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly
connected with its final end whatever that might prove to be
therefore they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided with a
buoy when by certain strange signs and inuendoes queequeg hinted a hint
concerning his coffin

a life-buoy of a coffin cried starbuck starting

rather queer that i should say said stubb

it will make a good enough one said flask the carpenter here can
arrange it easily

bring it up there's nothing else for it said starbuck after a
melancholy pause rig it carpenter do not look at me so the coffin
i mean dost thou hear me rig it

and shall i nail down the lid sir moving his hand as with a hammer

aye

and shall i caulk the seams sir moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron

aye

and shall i then pay over the same with pitch sir moving his hand as
with a pitch-pot

away what possesses thee to this make a life-buoy of the coffin and
no more mr stubb mr flask come forward with me

he goes off in a huff the whole he can endure at the parts he baulks
now i don't like this i make a leg for captain ahab and he wears it
like a gentleman but i make a bandbox for queequeg and he won't put
his head into it are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin
and now i'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it it's like turning an old
coat going to bring the flesh on the other side now i don't like this
cobbling sort of business i don't like it at all it's undignified
it's not my place let tinkers brats do tinkerings we are their
betters i like to take in hand none but clean virgin fair-and-square
mathematical jobs something that regularly begins at the beginning and
is at the middle when midway and comes to an end at the conclusion not
a cobbler's job that's at an end in the middle and at the beginning at
the end it's the old woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs lord
what an affection all old women have for tinkers i know an old woman of
sixty-five who ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once and that's
the reason i never would work for lonely widow old women ashore when
i kept my job-shop in the vineyard they might have taken it into their
lonely old heads to run off with me but heigh-ho there are no caps at
sea but snow-caps let me see nail down the lid caulk the seams pay
over the same with pitch batten them down tight and hang it with the
snap-spring over the ship's stern were ever such things done before
with a coffin some superstitious old carpenters now would be tied
up in the rigging ere they would do the job but i'm made of knotty
aroostook hemlock i don't budge cruppered with a coffin sailing
about with a grave-yard tray but never mind we workers in woods make
bridal-bedsteads and card-tables as well as coffins and hearses we
work by the month or by the job or by the profit not for us to ask
the why and wherefore of our work unless it be too confounded cobbling
and then we stash it if we can hem i'll do the job now tenderly
i'll have me let's see how many in the ship's company all told but
i've forgotten any way i'll have me thirty separate turk's-headed
life-lines each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin then
if the hull go down there'll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for
one coffin a sight not seen very often beneath the sun come hammer
caulking-iron pitch-pot and marling-spike let's to it



chapter the deck


the coffin laid upon two line-tubs between the vice-bench and the open
hatchway the carpenter caulking its seams the string of twisted oakum
slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of
his frock ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway and hears pip
following him


back lad i will be with ye again presently he goes not this hand
complies with my humor more genially than that boy middle aisle of a
church what's here

life-buoy sir mr starbuck's orders oh look sir beware the
hatchway

thank ye man thy coffin lies handy to the vault

sir the hatchway oh so it does sir so it does

art not thou the leg-maker look did not this stump come from thy
shop

i believe it did sir does the ferrule stand sir

well enough but art thou not also the undertaker

aye sir i patched up this thing here as a coffin for queequeg but
they've set me now to turning it into something else

then tell me art thou not an arrant all-grasping intermeddling
monopolising heathenish old scamp to be one day making legs and the
next day coffins to clap them in and yet again life-buoys out of those
same coffins thou art as unprincipled as the gods and as much of a
jack-of-all-trades

but i do not mean anything sir i do as i do

the gods again hark ye dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin the titans they say hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes and the grave-digger in the play sings spade in
hand dost thou never

sing sir do i sing oh i'm indifferent enough sir for that but
the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there
was none in his spade sir but the caulking mallet is full of it hark
to it

aye and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board and what in
all things makes the sounding-board is this there's naught beneath and
yet a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same carpenter
hast thou ever helped carry a bier and heard the coffin knock against
the churchyard gate going in

faith sir i've 

faith what's that

why faith sir it's only a sort of exclamation-like that's all
sir

um um go on

i was about to say sir that 

art thou a silk-worm dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself
look at thy bosom despatch and get these traps out of sight

he goes aft that was sudden now but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes i've heard that the isle of albemarle one of the gallipagos
is cut by the equator right in the middle seems to me some sort of
equator cuts yon old man too right in his middle he's always under
the line fiery hot i tell ye he's looking this way come oakum
quick here we go again this wooden mallet is the cork and i'm the
professor of musical glasses tap tap

ahab to himself

there's a sight there's a sound the grey-headed woodpecker tapping
the hollow tree blind and dumb might well be envied now see that
thing rests on two line-tubs full of tow-lines a most malicious wag
that fellow rat-tat so man's seconds tick oh how immaterial are all
materials what things real are there but imponderable thoughts here
now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death by a mere hap made
the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life
a life-buoy of a coffin does it go further can it be that in some
spiritual sense the coffin is after all but an immortality-preserver
i'll think of that but no so far gone am i in the dark side of earth
that its other side the theoretic bright one seems but uncertain
twilight to me will ye never have done carpenter with that accursed
sound i go below let me not see that thing here when i return
again now then pip we'll talk this over i do suck most wondrous
philosophies from thee some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds
must empty into thee



chapter the pequod meets the rachel


next day a large ship the rachel was descried bearing directly down
upon the pequod all her spars thickly clustering with men at the
time the pequod was making good speed through the water but as the
broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her the boastful sails all
fell together as blank bladders that are burst and all life fled from
the smitten hull

bad news she brings bad news muttered the old manxman but ere her
commander who with trumpet to mouth stood up in his boat ere he
could hopefully hail ahab's voice was heard

hast seen the white whale

aye yesterday have ye seen a whale-boat adrift

throttling his joy ahab negatively answered this unexpected question
and would then have fain boarded the stranger when the stranger captain
himself having stopped his vessel's way was seen descending her
side a few keen pulls and his boat-hook soon clinched the pequod's
main-chains and he sprang to the deck immediately he was recognised by
ahab for a nantucketer he knew but no formal salutation was exchanged

where was he not killed not killed cried ahab closely advancing
how was it

it seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous while
three of the stranger's boats were engaged with a shoal of whales which
had led them some four or five miles from the ship and while they were
yet in swift chase to windward the white hump and head of moby dick had
suddenly loomed up out of the water not very far to leeward whereupon
the fourth rigged boat a reserved one had been instantly lowered in
chase after a keen sail before the wind this fourth boat the swiftest
keeled of all seemed to have succeeded in fastening at least as
well as the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it in the
distance he saw the diminished dotted boat and then a swift gleam
of bubbling white water and after that nothing more whence it was
concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with
his pursuers as often happens there was some apprehension but no
positive alarm as yet the recall signals were placed in the rigging
darkness came on and forced to pick up her three far to windward
boats ere going in quest of the fourth one in the precisely opposite
direction the ship had not only been necessitated to leave that boat to
its fate till near midnight but for the time to increase her distance
from it but the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard she crowded
all sail stunsail on stunsail after the missing boat kindling a fire
in her try-pots for a beacon and every other man aloft on the look-out
but though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the
presumed place of the absent ones when last seen though she then
paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her and not finding
anything had again dashed on again paused and lowered her boats and
though she had thus continued doing till daylight yet not the least
glimpse of the missing keel had been seen

the story told the stranger captain immediately went on to reveal his
object in boarding the pequod he desired that ship to unite with his
own in the search by sailing over the sea some four or five miles
apart on parallel lines and so sweeping a double horizon as it were

i will wager something now whispered stubb to flask that some one
in that missing boat wore off that captain's best coat mayhap his
watch he's so cursed anxious to get it back who ever heard of two
pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height of
the whaling season see flask only see how pale he looks pale in the
very buttons of his eyes look it wasn't the coat it must have been
the 

my boy my own boy is among them for god's sake i beg i
conjure here exclaimed the stranger captain to ahab who thus far
had but icily received his petition for eight-and-forty hours let me
charter your ship i will gladly pay for it and roundly pay for it if
there be no other way for eight-and-forty hours only only that you
must oh you must and you shall do this thing

his son cried stubb oh it's his son he's lost i take back the
coat and watch what says ahab we must save that boy

he's drowned with the rest on em last night said the old manx
sailor standing behind them i heard all of ye heard their spirits

now as it shortly turned out what made this incident of the rachel's
the more melancholy was the circumstance that not only was one of the
captain's sons among the number of the missing boat's crew but among
the number of the other boat's crews at the same time but on the other
hand separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase
there had been still another son as that for a time the wretched
father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity which
was only solved for him by his chief mate's instinctively adopting the
ordinary procedure of a whale-ship in such emergencies that is when
placed between jeopardized but divided boats always to pick up the
majority first but the captain for some unknown constitutional reason
had refrained from mentioning all this and not till forced to it by
ahab's iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy a little lad
but twelve years old whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving
hardihood of a nantucketer's paternal love had thus early sought to
initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially
the destiny of all his race nor does it unfrequently occur that
nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age away from them
for a protracted three or four years voyage in some other ship than
their own so that their first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall
be unenervated by any chance display of a father's natural but untimely
partiality or undue apprehensiveness and concern

meantime now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of ahab
and ahab still stood like an anvil receiving every shock but without
the least quivering of his own

i will not go said the stranger till you say aye to me do to me
as you would have me do to you in the like case for you too have a boy
captain ahab though but a child and nestling safely at home now a
child of your old age too yes yes you relent i see it run run
men now and stand by to square in the yards

avast cried ahab touch not a rope-yarn then in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word captain gardiner i will not do it
even now i lose time good-bye good-bye god bless ye man and may i
forgive myself but i must go mr starbuck look at the binnacle watch
and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers
then brace forward again and let the ship sail as before

hurriedly turning with averted face he descended into his cabin
leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter
rejection of his so earnest suit but starting from his enchantment
gardiner silently hurried to the side more fell than stepped into his
boat and returned to his ship

soon the two ships diverged their wakes and long as the strange vessel
was in view she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot
however small on the sea this way and that her yards were swung round
starboard and larboard she continued to tack now she beat against a
head sea and again it pushed her before it while all the while her
masts and yards were thickly clustered with men as three tall cherry
trees when the boys are cherrying among the boughs

but by her still halting course and winding woeful way you plainly saw
that this ship that so wept with spray still remained without comfort
she was rachel weeping for her children because they were not



chapter the cabin


ahab moving to go on deck pip catches him by the hand to follow

lad lad i tell thee thou must not follow ahab now the hour is coming
when ahab would not scare thee from him yet would not have thee by him
there is that in thee poor lad which i feel too curing to my malady
like cures like and for this hunt my malady becomes my most desired
health do thou abide below here where they shall serve thee as if
thou wert the captain aye lad thou shalt sit here in my own screwed
chair another screw to it thou must be

no no no ye have not a whole body sir do ye but use poor me for
your one lost leg only tread upon me sir i ask no more so i remain a
part of ye

oh spite of million villains this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
fidelity of man and a black and crazy but methinks like-cures-like
applies to him too he grows so sane again

they tell me sir that stubb did once desert poor little pip whose
drowned bones now show white for all the blackness of his living skin
but i will never desert ye sir as stubb did him sir i must go with
ye

if thou speakest thus to me much more ahab's purpose keels up in him
i tell thee no it cannot be

oh good master master master

weep so and i will murder thee have a care for ahab too is mad
listen and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck and still
know that i am there and now i quit thee thy hand met true art
thou lad as the circumference to its centre so god for ever bless
thee and if it come to that god for ever save thee let what will
befall

ahab goes pip steps one step forward


here he this instant stood i stand in his air but i'm alone now
were even poor pip here i could endure it but he's missing pip pip
ding dong ding who's seen pip he must be up here let's try the
door what neither lock nor bolt nor bar and yet there's no opening
it it must be the spell he told me to stay here aye and told me this
screwed chair was mine here then i'll seat me against the transom
in the ship's full middle all her keel and her three masts before me
here our old sailors say in their black seventy-fours great
admirals sometimes sit at table and lord it over rows of captains and
lieutenants ha what's this epaulets epaulets the epaulets all come
crowding pass round the decanters glad to see ye fill up monsieurs
what an odd feeling now when a black boy's host to white men with gold
lace upon their coats monsieurs have ye seen one pip a little
negro lad five feet high hang-dog look and cowardly jumped from a
whale-boat once seen him no well then fill up again captains and
let's drink shame upon all cowards i name no names shame upon them
put one foot upon the table shame upon all cowards hist above there
i hear ivory oh master master i am indeed down-hearted when you walk
over me but here i'll stay though this stern strikes rocks and they
bulge through and oysters come to join me



chapter the hat


and now that at the proper time and place after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise ahab all other whaling waters swept seemed to
have chased his foe into an ocean-fold to slay him the more securely
there now that he found himself hard by the very latitude and
longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted now that a
vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually
encountered moby dick and now that all his successive meetings with
various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference
with which the white whale tore his hunters whether sinning or sinned
against now it was that there lurked a something in the old man's eyes
which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see as the unsetting
polar star which through the livelong arctic six months night
sustains its piercing steady central gaze so ahab's purpose now
fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew it
domineered above them so that all their bodings doubts misgivings
fears were fain to hide beneath their souls and not sprout forth a
single spear or leaf

in this foreshadowing interval too all humor forced or natural
vanished stubb no more strove to raise a smile starbuck no more strove
to check one alike joy and sorrow hope and fear seemed ground to
finest dust and powdered for the time in the clamped mortar of
ahab's iron soul like machines they dumbly moved about the deck ever
conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them

but did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours when
he thought no glance but one was on him then you would have seen that
even as ahab's eyes so awed the crew's the inscrutable parsee's glance
awed his or somehow at least in some wild way at times affected it
such an added gliding strangeness began to invest the thin fedallah
now such ceaseless shudderings shook him that the men looked dubious
at him half uncertain as it seemed whether indeed he were a mortal
substance or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen
being's body and that shadow was always hovering there for not by
night even had fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber or go
below he would stand still for hours but never sat or leaned his wan
but wondrous eyes did plainly say we two watchmen never rest

nor at any time by night or day could the mariners now step upon the
deck unless ahab was before them either standing in his pivot-hole or
exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits the main-mast
and the mizen or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle his
living foot advanced upon the deck as if to step his hat slouched
heavily over his eyes so that however motionless he stood however the
days and nights were added on that he had not swung in his hammock
yet hidden beneath that slouching hat they could never tell unerringly
whether for all this his eyes were really closed at times or whether
he was still intently scanning them no matter though he stood so in
the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch and the unheeded night-damp
gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat the
clothes that the night had wet the next day's sunshine dried upon him
and so day after day and night after night he went no more beneath
the planks whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for

he ate in the same open air that is his two only meals breakfast and
dinner supper he never touched nor reaped his beard which darkly grew
all gnarled as unearthed roots of trees blown over which still grow
idly on at naked base though perished in the upper verdure but though
his whole life was now become one watch on deck and though the parsee's
mystic watch was without intermission as his own yet these two never
seemed to speak one man to the other unless at long intervals some
passing unmomentous matter made it necessary though such a potent spell
seemed secretly to join the twain openly and to the awe-struck crew
they seemed pole-like asunder if by day they chanced to speak one word
by night dumb men were both so far as concerned the slightest verbal
interchange at times for longest hours without a single hail they
stood far parted in the starlight ahab in his scuttle the parsee by
the mainmast but still fixedly gazing upon each other as if in the
parsee ahab saw his forethrown shadow in ahab the parsee his abandoned
substance

and yet somehow did ahab in his own proper self as daily hourly
and every instant commandingly revealed to his subordinates ahab
seemed an independent lord the parsee but his slave still again both
seemed yoked together and an unseen tyrant driving them the lean shade
siding the solid rib for be this parsee what he may all rib and keel
was solid ahab

at the first faintest glimmering of the dawn his iron voice was heard
from aft man the mast-heads and all through the day till after
sunset and after twilight the same voice every hour at the striking of
the helmsman's bell was heard what d'ye see sharp sharp

but when three or four days had slided by after meeting the
children-seeking rachel and no spout had yet been seen the monomaniac
old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity at least of nearly
all except the pagan harpooneers he seemed to doubt even whether
stubb and flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought but if
these suspicions were really his he sagaciously refrained from verbally
expressing them however his actions might seem to hint them

i will have the first sight of the whale myself he said aye
ahab must have the doubloon and with his own hands he rigged a nest
of basketed bowlines and sending a hand aloft with a single sheaved
block to secure to the main-mast head he received the two ends of the
downward-reeved rope and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for
the other end in order to fasten it at the rail this done with that
end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin he looked round upon
his crew sweeping from one to the other pausing his glance long upon
daggoo queequeg tashtego but shunning fedallah and then settling his
firm relying eye upon the chief mate said take the rope sir i give
it into thy hands starbuck then arranging his person in the basket
he gave the word for them to hoist him to his perch starbuck being
the one who secured the rope at last and afterwards stood near it and
thus with one hand clinging round the royal mast ahab gazed abroad
upon the sea for miles and miles ahead astern this side and
that within the wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height

when in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in
the rigging which chances to afford no foothold the sailor at sea is
hoisted up to that spot and sustained there by the rope under these
circumstances its fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge
to some one man who has the special watch of it because in such a
wilderness of running rigging whose various different relations aloft
cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at the
deck and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few minutes
cast down from the fastenings it would be but a natural fatality if
unprovided with a constant watchman the hoisted sailor should by some
carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the
sea so ahab's proceedings in this matter were not unusual the only
strange thing about them seemed to be that starbuck almost the one
only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the
slightest degree approaching to decision one of those too whose
faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt somewhat it was
strange that this was the very man he should select for his watchman
freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person's
hands

now the first time ahab was perched aloft ere he had been there ten
minutes one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly
incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these
latitudes one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head
in a maze of untrackably swift circlings then it darted a thousand feet
straight up into the air then spiralized downwards and went eddying
again round his head

but with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon ahab seemed
not to mark this wild bird nor indeed would any one else have marked
it much it being no uncommon circumstance only now almost the least
heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every
sight

your hat your hat sir suddenly cried the sicilian seaman who
being posted at the mizen-mast-head stood directly behind ahab though
somewhat lower than his level and with a deep gulf of air dividing
them

but already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes the long
hooked bill at his head with a scream the black hawk darted away with
his prize

an eagle flew thrice round tarquin's head removing his cap to replace
it and thereupon tanaquil his wife declared that tarquin would
be king of rome but only by the replacing of the cap was that omen
accounted good ahab's hat was never restored the wild hawk flew on and
on with it far in advance of the prow and at last disappeared while
from the point of that disappearance a minute black spot was dimly
discerned falling from that vast height into the sea



chapter the pequod meets the delight


the intense pequod sailed on the rolling waves and days went by the
life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung and another ship most miserably
misnamed the delight was descried as she drew nigh all eyes were
fixed upon her broad beams called shears which in some whaling-ships
cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet serving to
carry the spare unrigged or disabled boats

upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered white ribs and
some few splintered planks of what had once been a whale-boat but you
now saw through this wreck as plainly as you see through the peeled
half-unhinged and bleaching skeleton of a horse

hast seen the white whale

look replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail and with
his trumpet he pointed to the wreck

hast killed him

the harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that answered the
other sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck whose gathered
sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together

not forged and snatching perth's levelled iron from the crotch ahab
held it out exclaiming look ye nantucketer here in this hand i hold
his death tempered in blood and tempered by lightning are these barbs
and i swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin
where the white whale most feels his accursed life

then god keep thee old man see'st thou that pointing to the
hammock i bury but one of five stout men who were alive only
yesterday but were dead ere night only that one i bury the rest were
buried before they died you sail upon their tomb then turning to his
crew are ye ready there place the plank then on the rail and
lift the body so then oh god advancing towards the hammock with
uplifted hands may the resurrection and the life 

brace forward up helm cried ahab like lightning to his men

but the suddenly started pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound
of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea not so
quick indeed but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled
her hull with their ghostly baptism

as ahab now glided from the dejected delight the strange life-buoy
hanging at the pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief

ha yonder look yonder men cried a foreboding voice in her wake
in vain oh ye strangers ye fly our sad burial ye but turn us your
taffrail to show us your coffin



chapter the symphony


it was a clear steel-blue day the firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure only the pensive air was
transparently pure and soft with a woman's look and the robust and
man-like sea heaved with long strong lingering swells as samson's
chest in his sleep

hither and thither on high glided the snow-white wings of small
unspeckled birds these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air
but to and fro in the deeps far down in the bottomless blue rushed
mighty leviathans sword-fish and sharks and these were the strong
troubled murderous thinkings of the masculine sea

but though thus contrasting within the contrast was only in shades and
shadows without those two seemed one it was only the sex as it were
that distinguished them

aloft like a royal czar and king the sun seemed giving this gentle
air to this bold and rolling sea even as bride to groom and at the
girdling line of the horizon a soft and tremulous motion most seen
here at the equator denoted the fond throbbing trust the loving
alarms with which the poor bride gave her bosom away

tied up and twisted gnarled and knotted with wrinkles haggardly firm
and unyielding his eyes glowing like coals that still glow in the
ashes of ruin untottering ahab stood forth in the clearness of the
morn lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
forehead of heaven

oh immortal infancy and innocency of the azure invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us sweet childhood of air and sky how
oblivious were ye of old ahab's close-coiled woe but so have i seen
little miriam and martha laughing-eyed elves heedlessly gambol around
their old sire sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on
the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain

slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle ahab leaned over the side and
watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze the more
and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity but the lovely
aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel for a moment
the cankerous thing in his soul that glad happy air that winsome
sky did at last stroke and caress him the step-mother world so long
cruel forbidding now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck
and did seem to joyously sob over him as if over one that however
wilful and erring she could yet find it in her heart to save and to
bless from beneath his slouched hat ahab dropped a tear into the sea
nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop

starbuck saw the old man saw him how he heavily leaned over the side
and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that
stole out of the centre of the serenity around careful not to touch
him or be noticed by him he yet drew near to him and stood there

ahab turned

starbuck

sir

oh starbuck it is a mild mild wind and a mild looking sky on such
a day very much such a sweetness as this i struck my first whale a
boy-harpooneer of eighteen forty forty forty years ago ago forty
years of continual whaling forty years of privation and peril and
storm-time forty years on the pitiless sea for forty years has ahab
forsaken the peaceful land for forty years to make war on the horrors
of the deep aye and yes starbuck out of those forty years i have not
spent three ashore when i think of this life i have led the desolation
of solitude it has been the masoned walled-town of a captain's
exclusiveness which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the
green country without oh weariness heaviness guinea-coast slavery of
solitary command when i think of all this only half-suspected not so
keenly known to me before and how for forty years i have fed upon dry
salted fare fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my 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 the iron and the lance how the richer or
better is ahab now behold oh starbuck is it not hard that with this
weary load i bear one poor leg should have been snatched from under
me here brush this old hair aside it blinds me that i seem to weep
locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes but do i look
very old so very very old starbuck i feel deadly faint bowed and
humped as though i were adam staggering beneath the piled
centuries since paradise god god god crack my heart stave my
brain mockery mockery bitter biting mockery of grey hairs have
i lived enough joy to wear ye and seem and feel thus intolerably old
close stand close to me starbuck let me look into a human eye it is
better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon god by
the green land by the bright hearth-stone this is the magic glass
man i see my wife and my child in thine eye no no stay on board on
board lower not when i do when branded ahab gives chase to moby dick
that hazard shall not be thine no no not with the far away home i see
in that eye

oh my captain my captain noble soul grand old heart after all why
should any one give chase to that hated fish away with me let us
fly these deadly waters let us home wife and child too are
starbuck's wife and child of his brotherly sisterly play-fellow
youth even as thine sir are the wife and child of thy loving
longing paternal old age away let us away this instant let me alter
the course how cheerily how hilariously o my captain would we bowl
on our way to see old nantucket again i think sir they have some such
mild blue days even as this in nantucket

they have they have i have seen them some summer days in the
morning about this time yes it is his noon nap now the boy
vivaciously wakes sits up in bed and his mother tells him of me of
cannibal old me how i am abroad upon the deep but will yet come back
to dance him again

tis my mary my mary herself she promised that my boy every morning
should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's
sail yes yes no more it is done we head for nantucket come my
captain study out the course and let us away see see the boy's face
from the window the boy's hand on the hill

but ahab's glance was averted like a blighted fruit tree he shook and
cast his last cindered apple to the soil

what is it what nameless inscrutable unearthly thing is it what
cozening hidden lord and master and cruel remorseless emperor
commands me that against all natural lovings and longings i so keep
pushing and crowding and jamming myself on all the time recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper natural heart i durst not
so much as dare is ahab ahab is it i god or who that lifts this
arm but if the great sun move not of himself but is as an errand-boy
in heaven nor one single star can revolve but by some invisible power
how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think
thoughts unless god does that beating does that thinking does that
living and not i by heaven man we are turned round and round in
this world like yonder windlass and fate is the handspike and all
the time lo that smiling sky and this unsounded sea look see yon
albicore who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish where
do murderers go man who's to doom when the judge himself is dragged
to the bar but it is a mild mild wind and a mild looking sky and
the air smells now as if it blew from a far-away meadow they have been
making hay somewhere under the slopes of the andes starbuck and the
mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay sleeping aye toil we how
we may we all sleep at last on the field sleep aye and rust amid
greenness as last year's scythes flung down and left in the half-cut
swaths starbuck

but blanched to a corpse's hue with despair the mate had stolen away

ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side but started at
two reflected fixed eyes in the water there fedallah was motionlessly
leaning over the same rail



chapter the chase first day


that night in the mid-watch when the old man as his wont at
intervals stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned and went
to his pivot-hole he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely snuffing
up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will in drawing nigh to
some barbarous isle he declared that a whale must be near soon that
peculiar odor sometimes to a great distance given forth by the
living sperm whale was palpable to all the watch nor was any mariner
surprised when after inspecting the compass and then the dog-vane and
then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible
ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered and the
sail to be shortened

the acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated
at daybreak by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and
lengthwise ahead smooth as oil and resembling in the pleated watery
wrinkles bordering it the polished metallic-like marks of some swift
tide-rip at the mouth of a deep rapid stream

man the mast-heads call all hands

thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle
deck daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they
seemed to exhale from the scuttle so instantaneously did they appear
with their clothes in their hands

what d'ye see cried ahab flattening his face to the sky

nothing nothing sir was the sound hailing down in reply

t'gallant sails stunsails alow and aloft and on both sides

all sail being set he now cast loose the life-line reserved for
swaying him to the main royal-mast head and in a few moments they were
hoisting him thither when while but two thirds of the way aloft
and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the
main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail he raised a gull-like cry in the
air there she blows there she blows a hump like a snow-hill it is
moby dick

fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous
whale they had so long been pursuing ahab had now gained his final
perch some feet above the other look-outs tashtego standing just
beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast so that the indian's
head was almost on a level with ahab's heel from this height the whale
was now seen some mile or so ahead at every roll of the sea revealing
his high sparkling hump and regularly jetting his silent spout into the
air to the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had
so long ago beheld in the moonlit atlantic and indian oceans

and did none of ye see it before cried ahab hailing the perched men
all around him

i saw him almost that same instant sir that captain ahab did and i
cried out said tashtego

not the same instant not the same no the doubloon is mine fate
reserved the doubloon for me i only none of ye could have raised the
white whale first there she blows there she blows there she blows
there again there again he cried in long-drawn lingering methodic
tones attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale's visible jets
he's going to sound in stunsails down top-gallant-sails stand by
three boats mr starbuck remember stay on board and keep the ship
helm there luff luff a point so steady man steady there go
flukes no no only black water all ready the boats there stand by
stand by lower me mr starbuck lower lower quick quicker and he
slid through the air to the deck

he is heading straight to leeward sir cried stubb right away from
us cannot have seen the ship yet

be dumb man stand by the braces hard down the helm brace up
shiver her shiver her so well that boats boats

soon all the boats but starbuck's were dropped all the boat-sails
set all the paddles plying with rippling swiftness shooting to
leeward and ahab heading the onset a pale death-glimmer lit up
fedallah's sunken eyes a hideous motion gnawed his mouth

like noiseless nautilus shells their light prows sped through the sea
but only slowly they neared the foe as they neared him the ocean grew
still more smooth seemed drawing a carpet over its waves seemed a
noon-meadow so serenely it spread at length the breathless hunter came
so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey that his entire dazzling hump
was distinctly visible sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing
and continually set in a revolving ring of finest fleecy greenish
foam he saw the vast involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head
beyond before it far out on the soft turkish-rugged waters went
the glistening white shadow from his broad milky forehead a musical
rippling playfully accompanying the shade and behind the blue waters
interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake
and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side but
these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly
feathering the sea alternate with their fitful flight and like to
some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy the tall but
shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back
and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering and
to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish silently perched and
rocked on this pole the long tail feathers streaming like pennons

a gentle joyousness a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness invested
the gliding whale not the white bull jupiter swimming away with
ravished europa clinging to his graceful horns his lovely leering
eyes sideways intent upon the maid with smooth bewitching fleetness
rippling straight for the nuptial bower in crete not jove not that
great majesty supreme did surpass the glorified white whale as he so
divinely swam

on each soft side coincident with the parted swell that but once
leaving him then flowed so wide away on each bright side the whale
shed off enticings no wonder there had been some among the hunters who
namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity had ventured
to assail it but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of
tornadoes yet calm enticing calm oh whale thou glidest on to all
who for the first time eye thee no matter how many in that same way
thou may'st have bejuggled and destroyed before

and thus through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea among
waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture moby
dick moved on still withholding from sight the full terrors of his
submerged trunk entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw
but soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water for an instant
his whole marbleized body formed a high arch like virginia's natural
bridge and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air the
grand god revealed himself sounded and went out of sight hoveringly
halting and dipping on the wing the white sea-fowls longingly lingered
over the agitated pool that he left

with oars apeak and paddles down the sheets of their sails adrift the
three boats now stilly floated awaiting moby dick's reappearance

an hour said ahab standing rooted in his boat's stern and he gazed
beyond the whale's place towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing
vacancies to leeward it was only an instant for again his eyes seemed
whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle the breeze now
freshened the sea began to swell

the birds the birds cried tashtego

in long indian file as when herons take wing the white birds were
now all flying towards ahab's boat and when within a few yards began
fluttering over the water there wheeling round and round with joyous
expectant cries their vision was keener than man's ahab could discover
no sign in the sea but suddenly as he peered down and down into its
depths he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white
weasel with wonderful celerity uprising and magnifying as it rose
till it turned and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked
rows of white glistening teeth floating up from the undiscoverable
bottom it was moby dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw his vast
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea the
glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble
tomb and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar ahab whirled
the craft aside from this tremendous apparition then calling upon
fedallah to change places with him went forward to the bows and
seizing perth's harpoon commanded his crew to grasp their oars and
stand by to stern

now by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis its
bow by anticipation was made to face the whale's head while yet
under water but as if perceiving this stratagem moby dick with that
malicious intelligence ascribed to him sidelingly transplanted himself
as it were in an instant shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath
the boat

through and through through every plank and each rib it thrilled for
an instant the whale obliquely lying on his back in the manner of
a biting shark slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his
mouth so that the long narrow scrolled lower jaw curled high up into
the open air and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock the bluish
pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of ahab's
head and reached higher than that in this attitude the white whale
now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse with
unastonished eyes fedallah gazed and crossed his arms but the
tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to gain the
uttermost stern

and now while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out as the
whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way and from his
body being submerged beneath the boat he could not be darted at from
the bows for the bows were almost inside of him as it were and
while the other boats involuntarily paused as before a quick crisis
impossible to withstand then it was that monomaniac ahab furious with
this tantalizing vicinity of his foe which placed him all alive and
helpless in the very jaws he hated frenzied with all this he seized
the long bone with his naked hands and wildly strove to wrench it from
its gripe as now he thus vainly strove the jaw slipped from him the
frail gunwales bent in collapsed and snapped as both jaws like an
enormous shears sliding further aft bit the craft completely in twain
and locked themselves fast again in the sea midway between the two
floating wrecks these floated aside the broken ends drooping the crew
at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales and striving to hold fast
to the oars to lash them across

at that preluding moment ere the boat was yet snapped ahab the first
to perceive the whale's intent by the crafty upraising of his head a
movement that loosed his hold for the time at that moment his hand
had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite but only
slipping further into the whale's mouth and tilting over sideways as it
slipped the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw spilled him out of
it as he leaned to the push and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea

ripplingly withdrawing from his prey moby dick now lay at a little
distance vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the
billows and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body
so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose some twenty or more feet
out of the water the now rising swells with all their confluent waves
dazzlingly broke against it vindictively tossing their shivered spray
still higher into the air so in a gale the but half baffled channel
billows only recoil from the base of the eddystone triumphantly to
overleap its summit with their scud


this motion is peculiar to the sperm whale it receives its designation
pitchpoling from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down
poise of the whale-lance in the exercise called pitchpoling previously
described by this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively
view whatever objects may be encircling him


but soon resuming his horizontal attitude moby dick swam swiftly round
and round the wrecked crew sideways churning the water in his vengeful
wake as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault
the sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him as the blood of
grapes and mulberries cast before antiochus's elephants in the book
of maccabees meanwhile ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's
insolent tail and too much of a cripple to swim though he could still
keep afloat even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that helpless
ahab's head was seen like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock
might burst from the boat's fragmentary stern fedallah incuriously and
mildly eyed him the clinging crew at the other drifting end could not
succor him more than enough was it for them to look to themselves
for so revolvingly appalling was the white whale's aspect and so
planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made that he seemed
horizontally swooping upon them and though the other boats unharmed
still hovered hard by still they dared not pull into the eddy to
strike lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of
the jeopardized castaways ahab and all nor in that case could they
themselves hope to escape with straining eyes then they remained on
the outer edge of the direful zone whose centre had now become the old
man's head

meantime from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's
mast heads and squaring her yards she had borne down upon the scene
and was now so nigh that ahab in the water hailed her sail on
the but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from moby dick and
whelmed him for the time but struggling out of it again and chancing
to rise on a towering crest he shouted sail on the whale drive him
off

the pequod's prows were pointed and breaking up the charmed circle she
effectually parted the white whale from his victim as he sullenly swam
off the boats flew to the rescue

dragged into stubb's boat with blood-shot blinded eyes the white brine
caking in his wrinkles the long tension of ahab's bodily strength did
crack and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom for a time lying
all crushed in the bottom of stubb's boat like one trodden under foot
of herds of elephants far inland nameless wails came from him as
desolate sounds from out ravines

but this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
abbreviate it in an instant's compass great hearts sometimes condense
to one deep pang the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused
through feebler men's whole lives and so such hearts though summary
in each one suffering still if the gods decree it in their
life-time aggregate a whole age of woe wholly made up of instantaneous
intensities for even in their pointless centres those noble natures
contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls

the harpoon said ahab half way rising and draggingly leaning on one
bended arm is it safe

aye sir for it was not darted this is it said stubb showing it

lay it before me any missing men

one two three four five there were five oars sir and here are
five men

that's good help me man i wish to stand so so i see him there
there going to leeward still what a leaping spout hands off from me
the eternal sap runs up in ahab's bones again set the sail out oars
the helm

it is often the case that when a boat is stove its crew being picked
up by another boat help to work that second boat and the chase is thus
continued with what is called double-banked oars it was thus now but
the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale
for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin swimming with a
velocity which plainly showed that if now under these circumstances
pushed on the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged if not a
hopeless one nor could any crew endure for so long a period such an
unintermitted intense straining at the oar a thing barely tolerable
only in some one brief vicissitude the ship itself then as it
sometimes happens offered the most promising intermediate means of
overtaking the chase accordingly the boats now made for her and were
soon swayed up to their cranes the two parts of the wrecked boat having
been previously secured by her and then hoisting everything to her
side and stacking her canvas high up and sideways outstretching it
with stun-sails like the double-jointed wings of an albatross the
pequod bore down in the leeward wake of moby-dick at the well known
methodic intervals the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced
from the manned mast-heads and when he would be reported as just gone
down ahab would take the time and then pacing the deck binnacle-watch
in hand so soon as the last second of the allotted hour expired his
voice was heard whose is the doubloon now d'ye see him and if the
reply was no sir straightway he commanded them to lift him to his
perch in this way the day wore on ahab now aloft and motionless
anon unrestingly pacing the planks

as he was thus walking uttering no sound except to hail the men aloft
or to bid them hoist a sail still higher or to spread one to a still
greater breadth thus to and fro pacing beneath his slouched hat at
every turn he passed his own wrecked boat which had been dropped upon
the quarter-deck and lay there reversed broken bow to shattered stern
at last he paused before it and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh
troops of clouds will sometimes sail across so over the old man's face
there now stole some such added gloom as this

stubb saw him pause and perhaps intending not vainly though to
evince his own unabated fortitude and thus keep up a valiant place in
his captain's mind he advanced and eyeing the wreck exclaimed the
thistle the ass refused it pricked his mouth too keenly sir ha ha

what soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck man man did
i not know thee brave as fearless fire and as mechanical i could swear
thou wert a poltroon groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck

aye sir said starbuck drawing near tis a solemn sight an omen
and an ill one

omen omen the dictionary if the gods think to speak outright to
man they will honourably speak outright not shake their heads and
give an old wives darkling hint begone ye two are the opposite poles
of one thing starbuck is stubb reversed and stubb is starbuck and
ye two are all mankind and ahab stands alone among the millions of
the peopled earth nor gods nor men his neighbors cold cold i
shiver how now aloft there d'ye see him sing out for every spout
though he spout ten times a second

the day was nearly done only the hem of his golden robe was rustling
soon it was almost dark but the look-out men still remained unset

can't see the spout now sir too dark cried a voice from the air

how heading when last seen

as before sir straight to leeward

good he will travel slower now tis night down royals and top-gallant
stun-sails mr starbuck we must not run over him before morning he's
making a passage now and may heave-to a while helm there keep her
full before the wind aloft come down mr stubb send a fresh hand
to the fore-mast head and see it manned till morning then advancing
towards the doubloon in the main-mast men this gold is mine for i
earned it but i shall let it abide here till the white whale is dead
and then whosoever of ye first raises him upon the day he shall be
killed this gold is that man's and if on that day i shall again raise
him then ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye away
now the deck is thine sir

and so saying he placed himself half way within the scuttle and
slouching his hat stood there till dawn except when at intervals
rousing himself to see how the night wore on



chapter the chase second day


at day-break the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh

d'ye see him cried ahab after allowing a little space for the light
to spread

see nothing sir

turn up all hands and make sail he travels faster than i thought
for the top-gallant sails aye they should have been kept on her all
night but no matter tis but resting for the rush

here be it said that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale
continued through day into night and through night into day is a thing
by no means unprecedented in the south sea fishery for such is the
wonderful skill prescience of experience and invincible confidence
acquired by some great natural geniuses among the nantucket commanders
that from the simple observation of a whale when last descried they
will under certain given circumstances pretty accurately foretell both
the direction in which he will continue to swim for a time while out of
sight as well as his probable rate of progression during that period
and in these cases somewhat as a pilot when about losing sight of
a coast whose general trending he well knows and which he desires
shortly to return to again but at some further point like as this
pilot stands by his compass and takes the precise bearing of the
cape at present visible in order the more certainly to hit aright
the remote unseen headland eventually to be visited so does the
fisherman at his compass with the whale for after being chased and
diligently marked through several hours of daylight then when night
obscures the fish the creature's future wake through the darkness
is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter as the
pilot's coast is to him so that to this hunter's wondrous skill the
proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water a wake is to all
desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land and as the
mighty iron leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in
its every pace that with watches in their hands men time his rate as
doctors that of a baby's pulse and lightly say of it the up train or
the down train will reach such or such a spot at such or such an hour
even so almost there are occasions when these nantucketers time that
other leviathan of the deep according to the observed humor of his
speed and say to themselves so many hours hence this whale will have
gone two hundred miles will have about reached this or that degree of
latitude or longitude but to render this acuteness at all successful in
the end the wind and the sea must be the whaleman's allies for of what
present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that
assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his
port inferable from these statements are many collateral subtile
matters touching the chase of whales

the ship tore on leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a
cannon-ball missent becomes a plough-share and turns up the level
field

by salt and hemp cried stubb but this swift motion of the deck
creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart this ship and i are two
brave fellows ha ha some one take me up and launch me spine-wise
on the sea for by live-oaks my spine's a keel ha ha we go the gait
that leaves no dust behind

there she blows she blows she blows right ahead was now the
mast-head cry

aye aye cried stubb i knew it ye can't escape blow on and
split your spout o whale the mad fiend himself is after ye blow your
trump blister your lungs ahab will dam off your blood as a miller
shuts his watergate upon the stream

and stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew the frenzies
of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up like old wine
worked anew whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might
have felt before these were not only now kept out of sight through the
growing awe of ahab but they were broken up and on all sides routed
as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison the hand
of fate had snatched all their souls and by the stirring perils of
the previous day the rack of the past night's suspense the fixed
unfearing blind reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging
towards its flying mark by all these things their hearts were bowled
along the wind that made great bellies of their sails and rushed the
vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible this seemed the symbol of
that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race

they were one man not thirty for as the one ship that held them all
though it was put together of all contrasting things oak and maple
and pine wood iron and pitch and hemp yet all these ran into each
other in the one concrete hull which shot on its way both balanced and
directed by the long central keel even so all the individualities of
the crew this man's valor that man's fear guilt and guiltiness all
varieties were welded into oneness and were all directed to that fatal
goal which ahab their one lord and keel did point to

the rigging lived the mast-heads like the tops of tall palms were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs clinging to a spar with one
hand some reached forth the other with impatient wavings others
shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight sat far out on the rocking
yards all the spars in full bearing of mortals ready and ripe for
their fate ah how they still strove through that infinite blueness to
seek out the thing that might destroy them

why sing ye not out for him if ye see him cried ahab when after
the lapse of some minutes since the first cry no more had been heard
sway me up men ye have been deceived not moby dick casts one odd jet
that way and then disappears

it was even so in their headlong eagerness the men had mistaken some
other thing for the whale-spout as the event itself soon proved for
hardly had ahab reached his perch hardly was the rope belayed to its
pin on deck when he struck the key-note to an orchestra that made the
air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles the triumphant
halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard as much nearer to the ship
than the place of the imaginary jet less than a mile ahead moby dick
bodily burst into view for not by any calm and indolent spoutings not
by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head did the white
whale now reveal his vicinity but by the far more wondrous phenomenon
of breaching rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths
the sperm whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of
air and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam shows his place to the
distance of seven miles and more in those moments the torn enraged
waves he shakes off seem his mane in some cases this breaching is his
act of defiance

there she breaches there she breaches was the cry as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the white whale tossed himself salmon-like to
heaven so suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea and relieved
against the still bluer margin of the sky the spray that he raised for
the moment intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier and
stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling
intensity to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale

aye breach your last to the sun moby dick cried ahab thy hour and
thy harpoon are at hand down down all of ye but one man at the fore
the boats stand by

unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds the men like
shooting stars slid to the deck by the isolated backstays and
halyards while ahab less dartingly but still rapidly was dropped from
his perch

lower away he cried so soon as he had reached his boat a spare one
rigged the afternoon previous mr starbuck the ship is thine keep
away from the boats but keep near them lower all

as if to strike a quick terror into them by this time being the first
assailant himself moby dick had turned and was now coming for the
three crews ahab's boat was central and cheering his men he told them
he would take the whale head-and-head that is pull straight up to his
forehead a not uncommon thing for when within a certain limit such
a course excludes the coming onset from the whale's sidelong vision
but ere that close limit was gained and while yet all three boats were
plain as the ship's three masts to his eye the white whale churning
himself into furious speed almost in an instant as it were rushing
among the boats with open jaws and a lashing tail offered appalling
battle on every side and heedless of the irons darted at him from every
boat seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which
those boats were made but skilfully manoeuvred incessantly wheeling
like trained chargers in the field the boats for a while eluded him
though at times but by a plank's breadth while all the time ahab's
unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds

but at last in his untraceable evolutions the white whale so crossed
and recrossed and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three
lines now fast to him that they foreshortened and of themselves
warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him though now
for a moment the whale drew aside a little as if to rally for a more
tremendous charge seizing that opportunity ahab first paid out more
line and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again hoping
that way to disencumber it of some snarls when lo a sight more savage
than the embattled teeth of sharks

caught and twisted corkscrewed in the mazes of the line loose harpoons
and lances with all their bristling barbs and points came flashing
and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of ahab's boat only one
thing could be done seizing the boat-knife he critically reached
within through and then without the rays of steel dragged in
the line beyond passed it inboard to the bowsman and then twice
sundering the rope near the chocks dropped the intercepted fagot of
steel into the sea and was all fast again that instant the white
whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines
by so doing irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of stubb and
flask towards his flukes dashed them together like two rolling husks on
a surf-beaten beach and then diving down into the sea disappeared in
a boiling maelstrom in which for a space the odorous cedar chips of
the wrecks danced round and round like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
stirred bowl of punch

while the two crews were yet circling in the waters reaching out after
the revolving line-tubs oars and other floating furniture while
aslope little flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial twitching his
legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks and stubb was lustily
singing out for some one to ladle him up and while the old man's
line now parting admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to
rescue whom he could in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand
concreted perils ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards
heaven by invisible wires as arrow-like shooting perpendicularly
from the sea the white whale dashed his broad forehead against its
bottom and sent it turning over and over into the air till it fell
again gunwale downwards and ahab and his men struggled out from under
it like seals from a sea-side cave

the first uprising momentum of the whale modifying its direction as
he struck the surface involuntarily launched him along it to a little
distance from the centre of the destruction he had made and with his
back to it he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from
side to side and whenever a stray oar bit of plank the least chip
or crumb of the boats touched his skin his tail swiftly drew back and
came sideways smiting the sea but soon as if satisfied that his work
for that time was done he pushed his pleated forehead through the
ocean and trailing after him the intertangled lines continued his
leeward way at a traveller's methodic pace

as before the attentive ship having descried the whole fight again
came bearing down to the rescue and dropping a boat picked up the
floating mariners tubs oars and whatever else could be caught at and
safely landed them on her decks some sprained shoulders wrists and
ankles livid contusions wrenched harpoons and lances inextricable
intricacies of rope shattered oars and planks all these were there
but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one as
with fedallah the day before so ahab was now found grimly clinging to
his boat's broken half which afforded a comparatively easy float nor
did it so exhaust him as the previous day's mishap

but when he was helped to the deck all eyes were fastened upon him as
instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of
starbuck who had thus far been the foremost to assist him his ivory
leg had been snapped off leaving but one short sharp splinter

aye aye starbuck tis sweet to lean sometimes be the leaner who he
will and would old ahab had leaned oftener than he has

the ferrule has not stood sir said the carpenter now coming up i
put good work into that leg

but no bones broken sir i hope said stubb with true concern

aye and all splintered to pieces stubb d'ye see it but even with
a broken bone old ahab is untouched and i account no living bone of
mine one jot more me than this dead one that's lost nor white whale
nor man nor fiend can so much as graze old ahab in his own proper and
inaccessible being can any lead touch yonder floor any mast scrape
yonder roof aloft there which way

dead to leeward sir

up helm then pile on the sail again ship keepers down the rest of
the spare boats and rig them mr starbuck away and muster the boat's
crews

let me first help thee towards the bulwarks sir

oh oh oh how this splinter gores me now accursed fate that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate

sir

my body man not thee give me something for a cane there that
shivered lance will do muster the men surely i have not seen him yet
by heaven it cannot be missing quick call them all

the old man's hinted thought was true upon mustering the company the
parsee was not there

the parsee cried stubb he must have been caught in 

the black vomit wrench thee run all of ye above alow cabin
forecastle find him not gone not gone

but quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the parsee was
nowhere to be found

aye sir said stubb caught among the tangles of your line i
thought i saw him dragging under

my line my line gone gone what means that little word what
death-knell rings in it that old ahab shakes as if he were the belfry
the harpoon too toss over the litter there d'ye see it the forged
iron men the white whale's no no no blistered fool this hand did
dart it tis in the fish aloft there keep him nailed quick all
hands to the rigging of the boats collect the oars harpooneers
the irons the irons hoist the royals higher a pull on all the
sheets helm there steady steady for your life i'll ten times girdle
the unmeasured globe yea and dive straight through it but i'll slay
him yet

great god but for one single instant show thyself cried starbuck
never never wilt thou capture him old man in jesus name no more of
this that's worse than devil's madness two days chased twice stove
to splinters thy very leg once more snatched from under thee thy evil
shadow gone all good angels mobbing thee with warnings 

what more wouldst thou have shall we keep chasing this murderous fish
till he swamps the last man shall we be dragged by him to the bottom
of the sea shall we be towed by him to the infernal world oh
oh impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more

starbuck of late i've felt strangely moved to thee ever since that
hour we both saw thou know'st what in one another's eyes but in this
matter of the whale be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this
hand a lipless unfeatured blank ahab is for ever ahab man this
whole act's immutably decreed twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion
years before this ocean rolled fool i am the fates lieutenant i act
under orders look thou underling that thou obeyest mine stand round
me men ye see an old man cut down to the stump leaning on a shivered
lance propped up on a lonely foot tis ahab his body's part but
ahab's soul's a centipede that moves upon a hundred legs i feel
strained half stranded as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale
and i may look so but ere i break ye'll hear me crack and till ye hear
that know that ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet believe ye men in
the things called omens then laugh aloud and cry encore for ere they
drown drowning things will twice rise to the surface then rise again
to sink for evermore so with moby dick two days he's floated tomorrow
will be the third aye men he'll rise once more but only to spout
his last d'ye feel brave men brave

as fearless fire cried stubb

and as mechanical muttered ahab then as the men went forward he
muttered on the things called omens and yesterday i talked the same
to starbuck there concerning my broken boat oh how valiantly i seek
to drive out of others hearts what's clinched so fast in mine the
parsee the parsee gone gone and he was to go before but still was
to be seen again ere i could perish how's that there's a riddle now
might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line
of judges like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain i'll i'll solve it
though

when dusk descended the whale was still in sight to leeward

so once more the sail was shortened and everything passed nearly as
on the previous night only the sound of hammers and the hum of the
grindstone was heard till nearly daylight as the men toiled by lanterns
in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening
their fresh weapons for the morrow meantime of the broken keel of
ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg while still as
on the night before slouched ahab stood fixed within his scuttle his
hid heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial sat due
eastward for the earliest sun



chapter the chase third day


the morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh and once more the
solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the
daylight look-outs who dotted every mast and almost every spar

d'ye see him cried ahab but the whale was not yet in sight

in his infallible wake though but follow that wake that's all helm
there steady as thou goest and hast been going what a lovely day
again were it a new-made world and made for a summer-house to the
angels and this morning the first of its throwing open to them a
fairer day could not dawn upon that world here's food for thought had
ahab time to think but ahab never thinks he only feels feels feels
that's tingling enough for mortal man to think's audacity god only has
that right and privilege thinking is or ought to be a coolness and a
calmness and our poor hearts throb and our poor brains beat too much
for that and yet i've sometimes thought my brain was very calm frozen
calm this old skull cracks so like a glass in which the contents
turned to ice and shiver it and still this hair is growing now this
moment growing and heat must breed it but no it's like that sort
of common grass that will grow anywhere between the earthy clefts of
greenland ice or in vesuvius lava how the wild winds blow it they whip
it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they
cling to a vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison
corridors and cells and wards of hospitals and ventilated them and
now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces out upon it it's
tainted were i the wind i'd blow no more on such a wicked miserable
world i'd crawl somewhere to a cave and slink there and yet tis a
noble and heroic thing the wind who ever conquered it in every fight
it has the last and bitterest blow run tilting at it and you but run
through it ha a coward wind that strikes stark naked men but will not
stand to receive a single blow even ahab is a braver thing a nobler
thing than that would now the wind but had a body but all the things
that most exasperate and outrage mortal man all these things are
bodiless but only bodiless as objects not as agents there's a most
special a most cunning oh a most malicious difference and yet i
say again and swear it now that there's something all glorious and
gracious in the wind these warm trade winds at least that in the
clear heavens blow straight on in strong and steadfast vigorous
mildness and veer not from their mark however the baser currents of
the sea may turn and tack and mightiest mississippies of the land swift
and swerve about uncertain where to go at last and by the eternal
poles these same trades that so directly blow my good ship on these
trades or something like them something so unchangeable and full as
strong blow my keeled soul along to it aloft there what d'ye see

nothing sir

nothing and noon at hand the doubloon goes a-begging see the sun
aye aye it must be so i've oversailed him how got the start aye
he's chasing me now not i him that's bad i might have known it too
fool the lines the harpoons he's towing aye aye i have run him by
last night about about come down all of ye but the regular look
outs man the braces

steering as she had done the wind had been somewhat on the pequod's
quarter so that now being pointed in the reverse direction the braced
ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own
white wake

against the wind he now steers for the open jaw murmured starbuck to
himself as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail god keep
us but already my bones feel damp within me and from the inside wet my
flesh i misdoubt me that i disobey my god in obeying him

stand by to sway me up cried ahab advancing to the hempen basket
we should meet him soon

aye aye sir and straightway starbuck did ahab's bidding and once
more ahab swung on high

a whole hour now passed gold-beaten out to ages time itself now held
long breaths with keen suspense but at last some three points off the
weather bow ahab descried the spout again and instantly from the three
mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced
it

forehead to forehead i meet thee this third time moby dick on deck
there brace sharper up crowd her into the wind's eye he's too
far off to lower yet mr starbuck the sails shake stand over that
helmsman with a top-maul so so he travels fast and i must down but
let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea there's
time for that an old old sight and yet somehow so young aye and
not changed a wink since i first saw it a boy from the sand-hills of
nantucket the same the same the same to noah as to me there's
a soft shower to leeward such lovely leewardings they must lead
somewhere to something else than common land more palmy than the
palms leeward the white whale goes that way look to windward
then the better if the bitterer quarter but good bye good bye old
mast-head what's this green aye tiny mosses in these warped cracks
no such green weather stains on ahab's head there's the difference now
between man's old age and matter's but aye old mast we both grow old
together sound in our hulls though are we not my ship aye minus
a leg that's all by heaven this dead wood has the better of my live
flesh every way i can't compare with it and i've known some ships made
of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of
vital fathers what's that he said he should still go before me my
pilot and yet to be seen again but where will i have eyes at the
bottom of the sea supposing i descend those endless stairs and all
night i've been sailing from him wherever he did sink to aye aye
like many more thou told'st direful truth as touching thyself o parsee
but ahab there thy shot fell short good-bye mast-head keep a good
eye upon the whale the while i'm gone we'll talk to-morrow nay
to-night when the white whale lies down there tied by head and tail

he gave the word and still gazing round him was steadily lowered
through the cloven blue air to the deck

in due time the boats were lowered but as standing in his shallop's
stern ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent he waved to the
mate who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck and bade him pause

starbuck

sir

for the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage starbuck

aye sir thou wilt have it so

some ships sail from their ports and ever afterwards are missing
starbuck

truth sir saddest truth

some men die at ebb tide some at low water some at the full of
the flood and i feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb
starbuck i am old shake hands with me man

their hands met their eyes fastened starbuck's tears the glue

oh my captain my captain noble heart go not go not see it's a
brave man that weeps how great the agony of the persuasion then

lower away cried ahab tossing the mate's arm from him stand by
the crew

in an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern

the sharks the sharks cried a voice from the low cabin-window there
o master my master come back

but ahab heard nothing for his own voice was high-lifted then and the
boat leaped on

yet the voice spake true for scarce had he pushed from the ship when
numbers of sharks seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath
the hull maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars every time they
dipped in the water and in this way accompanied the boat with their
bites it is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in
those swarming seas the sharks at times apparently following them in
the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching
regiments in the east but these were the first sharks that had been
observed by the pequod since the white whale had been first descried
and whether it was that ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow
barbarians and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the
sharks a matter sometimes well known to affect them however it was
they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others

heart of wrought steel murmured starbuck gazing over the side and
following with his eyes the receding boat canst thou yet ring boldly
to that sight lowering thy keel among ravening sharks and followed by
them open-mouthed to the chase and this the critical third day for
when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit be sure
the first is the morning the second the noon and the third the evening
and the end of that thing be that end what it may oh my god what
is this that shoots through me and leaves me so deadly calm yet
expectant fixed at the top of a shudder future things swim before me
as in empty outlines and skeletons all the past is somehow grown dim
mary girl thou fadest in pale glories behind me boy i seem to
see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue strangest problems of life seem
clearing but clouds sweep between is my journey's end coming my legs
feel faint like his who has footed it all day feel thy heart beats
it yet stir thyself starbuck stave it off move move
speak aloud mast-head there see ye my boy's hand on the
hill crazed aloft there keep thy keenest eye upon the boats 

mark well the whale ho again drive off that hawk see he pecks he
tears the vane pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck ha
he soars away with it where's the old man now see'st thou that sight
oh ahab shudder shudder

the boats had not gone very far when by a signal from the mast-heads a
downward pointed arm ahab knew that the whale had sounded but
intending to be near him at the next rising he held on his way a little
sideways from the vessel the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest
silence as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered against the
opposing bow

drive drive in your nails oh ye waves to their uttermost heads
drive them in ye but strike a thing without a lid and no coffin and no
hearse can be mine and hemp only can kill me ha ha

suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles then
quickly upheaved as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of
ice swiftly rising to the surface a low rumbling sound was heard a
subterraneous hum and then all held their breaths as bedraggled with
trailing ropes and harpoons and lances a vast form shot lengthwise
but obliquely from the sea shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist it
hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air and then fell swamping back
into the deep crushed thirty feet upwards the waters flashed for
an instant like heaps of fountains then brokenly sank in a shower of
flakes leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the
marble trunk of the whale

give way cried ahab to the oarsmen and the boats darted forward to
the attack but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in
him moby dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell
from heaven the wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad
white forehead beneath the transparent skin looked knitted together
as head on he came churning his tail among the boats and once more
flailed them apart spilling out the irons and lances from the two
mates boats and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows
but leaving ahab's almost without a scar

while daggoo and queequeg were stopping the strained planks and as the
whale swimming out from them turned and showed one entire flank as he
shot by them again at that moment a quick cry went up lashed round
and round to the fish's back pinioned in the turns upon turns in which
during the past night the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines
around him the half torn body of the parsee was seen his sable raiment
frayed to shreds his distended eyes turned full upon old ahab

the harpoon dropped from his hand

befooled befooled drawing in a long lean breath aye parsee i
see thee again aye and thou goest before and this this then is the
hearse that thou didst promise but i hold thee to the last letter of
thy word where is the second hearse away mates to the ship those
boats are useless now repair them if ye can in time and return to
me if not ahab is enough to die down men the first thing that but
offers to jump from this boat i stand in that thing i harpoon ye are
not other men but my arms and my legs and so obey me where's the
whale gone down again

but he looked too nigh the boat for as if bent upon escaping with the
corpse he bore and as if the particular place of the last encounter had
been but a stage in his leeward voyage moby dick was now again steadily
swimming forward and had almost passed the ship which thus far had
been sailing in the contrary direction to him though for the present
her headway had been stopped he seemed swimming with his utmost
velocity and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the
sea

oh ahab cried starbuck not too late is it even now the third
day to desist see moby dick seeks thee not it is thou thou that
madly seekest him

setting sail to the rising wind the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to
leeward by both oars and canvas and at last when ahab was sliding
by the vessel so near as plainly to distinguish starbuck's face as he
leaned over the rail he hailed him to turn the vessel about and follow
him not too swiftly at a judicious interval glancing upwards he
saw tashtego queequeg and daggoo eagerly mounting to the three
mast-heads while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats
which had but just been hoisted to the side and were busily at work in
repairing them one after the other through the port-holes as he sped
he also caught flying glimpses of stubb and flask busying themselves
on deck among bundles of new irons and lances as he saw all this as he
heard the hammers in the broken boats far other hammers seemed driving
a nail into his heart but he rallied and now marking that the vane or
flag was gone from the main-mast-head he shouted to tashtego who had
just gained that perch to descend again for another flag and a hammer
and nails and so nail it to the mast

whether fagged by the three days running chase and the resistance
to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore or whether it was some
latent deceitfulness and malice in him whichever was true the white
whale's way now began to abate as it seemed from the boat so rapidly
nearing him once more though indeed the whale's last start had not been
so long a one as before and still as ahab glided over the waves the
unpitying sharks accompanied him and so pertinaciously stuck to the
boat and so continually bit at the plying oars that the blades became
jagged and crunched and left small splinters in the sea at almost
every dip

heed them not those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars pull on
tis the better rest the shark's jaw than the yielding water

but at every bite sir the thin blades grow smaller and smaller

they will last long enough pull on but who can tell he
muttered whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
ahab but pull on aye all alive now we near him the helm take the
helm let me pass and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward
to the bows of the still flying boat

at length as the craft was cast to one side and ran ranging along
with the white whale's flank he seemed strangely oblivious of its
advance as the whale sometimes will and ahab was fairly within the
smoky mountain mist which thrown off from the whale's spout curled
round his great monadnock hump he was even thus close to him when
with body arched back and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
poise he darted his fierce iron and his far fiercer curse into the
hated whale as both steel and curse sank to the socket as if sucked
into a morass moby dick sideways writhed spasmodically rolled his nigh
flank against the bow and without staving a hole in it so suddenly
canted the boat over that had it not been for the elevated part of the
gunwale to which he then clung ahab would once more have been tossed
into the sea as it was three of the oarsmen who foreknew not the
precise instant of the dart and were therefore unprepared for its
effects these were flung out but so fell that in an instant two of
them clutched the gunwale again and rising to its level on a combing
wave hurled themselves bodily inboard again the third man helplessly
dropping astern but still afloat and swimming

almost simultaneously with a mighty volition of ungraduated
instantaneous swiftness the white whale darted through the weltering
sea but when ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with
the line and hold it so and commanded the crew to turn round on their
seats and tow the boat up to the mark the moment the treacherous line
felt that double strain and tug it snapped in the empty air

what breaks in me some sinew cracks tis whole again oars oars
burst in upon him

hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat the whale wheeled
round to present his blank forehead at bay but in that evolution
catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship seemingly seeing
in it the source of all his persecutions bethinking it it may be a
larger and nobler foe of a sudden he bore down upon its advancing
prow smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam

ahab staggered his hand smote his forehead i grow blind hands
stretch out before me that i may yet grope my way is't night

the whale the ship cried the cringing oarsmen

oars oars slope downwards to thy depths o sea that ere it be for
ever too late ahab may slide this last last time upon his mark i see
the ship the ship dash on my men will ye not save my ship

but as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the
sledge-hammering seas the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks
burst through and in an instant almost the temporarily disabled boat
lay nearly level with the waves its half-wading splashing crew trying
hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water

meantime for that one beholding instant tashtego's mast-head hammer
remained suspended in his hand and the red flag half-wrapping him as
with a plaid then streamed itself straight out from him as his own
forward-flowing heart while starbuck and stubb standing upon the
bowsprit beneath caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon
as he

the whale the whale up helm up helm oh all ye sweet powers of air
now hug me close let not starbuck die if die he must in a woman's
fainting fit up helm i say ye fools the jaw the jaw is this the
end of all my bursting prayers all my life-long fidelities oh ahab
ahab lo thy work steady helmsman steady nay nay up helm again
he turns to meet us oh his unappeasable brow drives on towards one
whose duty tells him he cannot depart my god stand by me now

stand not by me but stand under me whoever you are that will now help
stubb for stubb too sticks here i grin at thee thou grinning whale
who ever helped stubb or kept stubb awake but stubb's own unwinking
eye and now poor stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too
soft would it were stuffed with brushwood i grin at thee thou
grinning whale look ye sun moon and stars i call ye assassins of
as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost for all that i would yet
ring glasses with ye would ye but hand the cup oh oh oh oh thou
grinning whale but there'll be plenty of gulping soon why fly ye
not o ahab for me off shoes and jacket to it let stubb die in
his drawers a most mouldy and over salted death though cherries
cherries cherries oh flask for one red cherry ere we die

cherries i only wish that we were where they grow oh stubb i hope
my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this if not few coppers will
now come to her for the voyage is up

from the ship's bows nearly all the seamen now hung inactive hammers
bits of plank lances and harpoons mechanically retained in their
hands just as they had darted from their various employments all their
enchanted eyes intent upon the whale which from side to side strangely
vibrating his predestinating head sent a broad band of overspreading
semicircular foam before him as he rushed retribution swift vengeance
eternal malice were in his whole aspect and spite of all that mortal
man could do the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's
starboard bow till men and timbers reeled some fell flat upon their
faces like dislodged trucks the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook
on their bull-like necks through the breach they heard the waters
pour as mountain torrents down a flume

the ship the hearse the second hearse cried ahab from the boat
its wood could only be american

diving beneath the settling ship the whale ran quivering along its
keel but turning under water swiftly shot to the surface again far
off the other bow but within a few yards of ahab's boat where for a
time he lay quiescent

i turn my body from the sun what ho tashtego let me hear thy hammer
oh ye three unsurrendered spires of mine thou uncracked keel and only
god-bullied hull thou firm deck and haughty helm and pole-pointed
prow death-glorious ship must ye then perish and without me am i
cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains oh
lonely death on lonely life oh now i feel my topmost greatness lies in
my topmost grief ho ho from all your furthest bounds pour ye now in
ye bold billows of my whole foregone life and top this one piled comber
of my death towards thee i roll thou all-destroying but unconquering
whale to the last i grapple with thee from hell's heart i stab at
thee for hate's sake i spit my last breath at thee sink all coffins
and all hearses to one common pool and since neither can be mine let
me then tow to pieces while still chasing thee though tied to thee
thou damned whale thus i give up the spear

the harpoon was darted the stricken whale flew forward with igniting
velocity the line ran through the grooves ran foul ahab stooped to
clear it he did clear it but the flying turn caught him round the
neck and voicelessly as turkish mutes bowstring their victim he was
shot out of the boat ere the crew knew he was gone next instant the
heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty
tub knocked down an oarsman and smiting the sea disappeared in its
depths

for an instant the tranced boat's crew stood still then turned the
ship great god where is the ship soon they through dim bewildering
mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom as in the gaseous fata morgana
only the uppermost masts out of water while fixed by infatuation or
fidelity or fate to their once lofty perches the pagan harpooneers
still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea and now concentric
circles seized the lone boat itself and all its crew and each floating
oar and every lance-pole and spinning animate and inanimate all
round and round in one vortex carried the smallest chip of the pequod
out of sight

but as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
sunken head of the indian at the mainmast leaving a few inches of the
erect spar yet visible together with long streaming yards of the flag
which calmly undulated with ironical coincidings over the destroying
billows they almost touched at that instant a red arm and a hammer
hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air in the act of nailing
the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar a sky-hawk that
tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home
among the stars pecking at the flag and incommoding tashtego there
this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the
hammer and the wood and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill
the submerged savage beneath in his death-gasp kept his hammer frozen
there and so the bird of heaven with archangelic shrieks and his
imperial beak thrust upwards and his whole captive form folded in the
flag of ahab went down with his ship which like satan would not sink
to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her and
helmeted herself with it

now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf a sullen white
surf beat against its steep sides then all collapsed and the great
shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago




epilogue

and i only am escaped alone to tell thee job

the drama's done why then here does any one step forth because one
did survive the wreck

it so chanced that after the parsee's disappearance i was he whom the
fates ordained to take the place of ahab's bowsman when that bowsman
assumed the vacant post the same who when on the last day the three
men were tossed from out of the rocking boat was dropped astern so
floating on the margin of the ensuing scene and in full sight of it
when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me i was then
but slowly drawn towards the closing vortex when i reached it it had
subsided to a creamy pool round and round then and ever contracting
towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling
circle like another ixion i did revolve till gaining that vital
centre the black bubble upward burst and now liberated by reason of
its cunning spring and owing to its great buoyancy rising with great
force the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea fell over and
floated by my side buoyed up by that coffin for almost one whole day
and night i floated on a soft and dirgelike main the unharming sharks
they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths the savage sea-hawks
sailed with sheathed beaks on the second day a sail drew near nearer
and picked me up at last it was the devious-cruising rachel that in
her retracing search after her missing children only found another
orphan


