Moby Dick E-book
Author: Herman Melville
Genre: Enigma, Literature, Supernatural
1851
MOBY DICK;
OR THE WHALE
by Herman Melville
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
ETYMOLOGY: (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher
to a Grammar School)
-
The pale Usher- threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see
him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a
queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of
all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars;
it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
-
"While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by
what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out,
through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the
signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true."
- HACKLUYT
-
"WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness
or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted."
- WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY
-
"WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger.
Wallen; A.S. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow."
- RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY
-
KETOS, Greek.
CETUS, Latin.
WHOEL, Anglo-Saxon.
HVALT, Danish.
WAL, Dutch.
HWAL, Swedish.
WHALE, Icelandic.
WHALE, English.
BALEINE, French.
BALLENA, Spanish.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan.
EXTRACTS: (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian)
-
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of
a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane. therefore you must not, in every case at least,
take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in
these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As
touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as
affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and
generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I
am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of
this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be
too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness- Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much more pains
ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever
go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the
Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the
royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are
clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long
pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye
strike but splintered hearts together- there, ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses!
-
"And God created great whales."
GENESIS.
-
"Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him;
One would think the deep to be hoary."
JOB.
-
"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah."
JONAH.
-
"There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made
to play therein."
PSALMS.
-
"In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."
ISAIAH
-
"And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch."
HOLLAND'S PLUTARCH'S MORALS.
-
"The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much
in length as four acres or arpens of land."
HOLLAND'S PLINY.
-
"Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise
a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
former, one was of a most monstrous size. * * This came towards us,
open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea
before him into a foam."
TOOKE'S LUCIAN. "THE TRUE HISTORY."
-
"He visited this country also with a view of catching
horse-whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth,
of which he brought some to the king. * * * The best whales were
catched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty
yards long. He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two
days."
OTHER OR OCTHER'S VERBAL NARRATIVE TAKEN DOWN FROM
HIS MOUTH BY KING ALFRED, A.D. 890.
-
"And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it
in great security, and there sleeps."
MONTAIGNE. - APOLOGY FOR RAIMOND SEBOND.
-
"Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job."
RABELAIS.
-
"This whale's liver was two cartloads."
STOWE'S ANNALS.
-
"The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling
pan."
LORD BACON'S VERSION OF THE PSALMS.
-
"Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an
incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale."
IBID. "HISTORY OF LIFE AND DEATH."
-
"The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward
bruise."
KING HENRY.
-
"Very like a whale."
HAMLET.
-
"Which to secure, no skill of leach's art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine."
THE FAERIE QUEEN.
-
"Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a
peaceful calm trouble the ocean til it boil."
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. PREFACE TO GONDIBERT.
-
"What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid
sit."
SIR T. BROWNE. OF SPERMA CETI AND THE SPERMA CETI
WHALE. VIDE HIS V. E.
-
"Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
* * * *
Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears."
WALLER'S BATTLE OF THE SUMMER ISLANDS.
-
"By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
State- (in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man."
OPENING SENTENCE OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN.
-
"Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a
sprat in the mouth of a whale."
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
-
"That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream."
PARADISE LOST.
-
--"There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea."
IBID.
-
"The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of
oil swimming in them."
FULLLER'S PROFANE AND HOLY STATE.
-
"So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way."
DRYDEN'S ANNUS MIRABILIS.
-
"While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut
off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will
come; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water."
THOMAS EDGE'S TEN VOYAGES TO SPITZBERGEN, IN PURCHAS.
-
"In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
nature has placed on their shoulders."
SIR T. HERBERT'S VOYAGES INTO ASIA AND AFRICA.
HARRIS COLL.
-
"Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced
to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their
ship upon them."
SCHOUTEN'S SIXTH CIRCUMNAVIGATION.
-
"We set sail from the Elbe, wind N. E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * *
Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that is a fable. * * *
They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a
whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * *
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel
of herrings in his belly. * * *
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in
Spitzbergen that was white all over."
A VOYAGE TO GREENLAND, A.D. 1671 HARRIS COLL.
-
"Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I
was informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight
of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of
Pitferren."
SIBBALD'S FIFE AND KINROSS.
-
"Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was
killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness."
RICHARD STRAFFORD'S LETTER FROM THE BERMUDAS. PHIL.
TRANS. A.D. 1668.
-
"Whales in the sea
God's voice obey."
N. E. PRIMER.
-
"We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to
the northward of us."
CAPTAIN COWLEY'S VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, A.D. 1729.
-
* * * * * "and the breath of the whale is frequendy attended with
such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain."
ULLOA'S SOUTH AMERICA.
-
"To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale."
RAPE OF THE LOCK.
-
"If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that
take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation."
GOLDSMITH, NAT. HIST.
-
"If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make
them speak like great wales."
GOLDSMITH TO JOHNSON.
-
"In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it
was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were
then towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves
behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us."
COOK'S VOYAGES.
-
"The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in
so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid
to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to
terrify and prevent their too near approach."
UNO VON TROIL'S LETTERS ON BANKS'S AND SOLANDER'S
VOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.
-
"The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen."
THOMAS JEFFERSON'S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH
MINISTER IN 1778.
-
"And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?"
EDMUND BURKE'S REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE
NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.
-
"Spain- a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe."
EDMUND BURKE. (SOMEWHERE.)
-
"A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be
grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the
seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are
whale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught
near the coast, are the property of the king."
BLACKSTONE.
-
"Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends."
FALCONER'S SHIPWRECK.
-
"Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven.
-
"So fire with water to compare,
The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
To express unwieldy joy."
COWPER, ON THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO LONDON.
-
"Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a
stroke, with immense velocity."
JOHN HUNTER'S ACCOUNT OF THE DISSECTION OF A WHALE.
(A SMALL SIZED ONE.)
-
"The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of
the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
gushing from the whale's heart."
PALEY'S THEOLOGY.
-
"The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet."
BARON CUVIER.
-
"In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take
any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them."
COLNETT'S VOYAGE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE
SPERMACETI WHALE FISHERY.
-
"In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
MONTGOMERY'S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.
-
"Io! Paean! Io! sing.
To the finny people's king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea."
CHARLES LAMB'S TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE.
-
"In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
there- pointing to the sea- is a green pasture where our children's
grand-children will go for bread."
OBED MACY'S HISTORY OF NANTUCKET.
-
"I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the
form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones."
HAWTHORNE'S TWICE TOLD TALES.
-
"She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been
killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago."
IBID.
-
"No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his sprout; he
threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at. He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow!"
COOPER'S PILOT.
-
"The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that
whales had been introduced on the stage there."
ECKERMANN'S CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.
-
"My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have been
stove by a whale."
"NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX OF
NANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY
A LARGE SPERM WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN." BY OWEN
CHACE OF NANTUCKET, FIRST MATE OF SAID VESSEL. NEW
YORK, 1821.
-
"A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea."
ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
-
"The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the
capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or
nearly six English miles." * * *
"Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four
miles."
SCORESBY.
-
"Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous
head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he
rushes at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him
with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.
* * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of
the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so
important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so
entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among
the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late
years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient
opportunities of witnessing their habitudes."
THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.
-
"The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True
Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon
at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at
once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being
regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of
the whale tribe."
FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE
GLOBE, 1840.
-
October 13. "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head.
"Where away?" demanded the captain.
"Three points off the lee bow, sir."
"Raise up your wheel. Steady!"
"Steady, sir."
"Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?"
"Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she
breaches!"
"Sing out! sing out every time!"
"Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there- there- thar she blows -bowes
-bo-o-os!"
"How far off?"
"Two miles and a half."
"Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands."
J. ROSS BROWNE'S ETCHINGS OF A WHALING CRUIZE. 1846.
-
"The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the
horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island
of Nantucket."
"NARRATIVE OF THE GLOBE," BY LAY AND HUSSEY SURVIVORS.
A.D. 1828.
-
Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the
assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at
length rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved
by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable."
MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF TYERMAN AND BENNETT.
-
"Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking and
peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of
eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding
largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most
persevering industry."
REPORT OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN THE U. S. SENATE,
ON THE APPLICATION FOR THE ERECTION OF A BREAKWATER AT
NANTUCKET. 1828.
-
"The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a
moment."
"THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS, OR THE WHALEMAN'S
ADVENTURES AND THE WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY, GATHERED ON THE
HOMEWARD CRUISE OF THE COMMODORE PREBLE."
BY REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER.
-
"If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, "I will
send you to hell."
LIFE OF SAMUEL COMSTOCK (THE MUTINEER), BY HIS
BROTHER, WILLIAM COMSTOCK. ANOTHER VERSION OF THE
WHALE-SHIP GLOBE NARRATIVE.
-
"The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in
order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India,
though they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the
whale."
MCCULLOCH'S COMMERCIAL DICTIONARY.
-
"These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound
forward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the
whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same
mystic North-West Passage."
FROM "SOMETHING" UNPUBLISHED.
-
"It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being
struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with
look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse
around them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regular
voyage."
CURRENTS AND WHALING. U. S. EX. EX.
-
"Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to
form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may
perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales."
TALES OF A WHALE VOYAGER TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN.
-
"It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these
whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the
savages enrolled among the crew."
NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE TAKING AND RETAKING OF THE
WHALE-SHIP HOBOMACK.
-
"It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they
departed."
CRUISE IN A WHALE BOAT.
-
"Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
perpendicularly into the air. It was the while."
MIRIAM COFFIN OR THE WHALE FISHERMAN.
-
"The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope
tied to the root of his tail."
A CHAPTER ON WHALING IN RIBS AND TRUCKS.
-
"On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably
male and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less
than a stone's throw of the shore" (Terra Del Fuego), "over which
the beech tree extended its branches."
DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST.
-
"'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw
the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the
boat, threatening it with instant destruction;- 'Stern all, for your
lives!'"
WHARTON THE WHALE KILLER.
-
"So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!"
NANTUCKET SONG.
-
"Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea."
WHALE SONG.
CHAPTER 1: Loomings
-
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely-
having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to
interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see
the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the
spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself
growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly
November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing
before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral
I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me,
that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from
deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as
soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly
take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but
knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish
very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from
Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall,
northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around
the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in
ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon
the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China;
some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better
seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath
and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water,
and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but
the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of
yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the
water as they possibly can without falling And there they stand- miles
of them- leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys,
streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all
unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the
compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in
a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic
in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he
will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that
region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try
this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and
water are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest,
shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all
the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There
stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a
crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep
his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep
into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs
of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture
lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs
like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the
shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit
the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?- Water-
there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of
sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor
poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver,
deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest
his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost
every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some
time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a
passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first
told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the
old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a
separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not
without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of
Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image
he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same
image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of
the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of
my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides,
passengers get sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't sleep of nights- do
not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;- no, I never go as a
passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea
as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and
distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I
abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of
every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of
myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and
what not. And as for going as cook,- though I confess there is
considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on
ship-board- yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;- though once
broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and
peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say
reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the
idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and
roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in
their huge bakehouses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the
mast, plumb down into the fore-castle, aloft there to the royal
mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump
from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first,
this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of
honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the
land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more
than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot,
you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest
boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure
you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong
decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear
it. But even this wears off in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think
the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular
instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old
sea-captains may order me about- however they may thump and punch me
about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that
everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way- either
in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the
universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's
shoulder-blades, and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point
of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a
single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers
themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world
between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most
uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon
us. But being paid,- what will compare with it? The urbane activity
with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that
we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills,
and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how
cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is,
if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part
the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand
from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first;
but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their
leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little
suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt
the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to
go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the
Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs
me, and influences me in some unaccountable way- he can better
answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling
voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was
drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude
and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part
of the bill must have run something like this:
-
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
-
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage,
when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and
short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces-
though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall
all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and
motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises,
induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me
into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own
unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all
my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his
island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these,
with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and
sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such
things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail
forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is
good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social
with it- would they let me- since it is but well to be on friendly
terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated
into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most
of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
CHAPTER 2: The Carpet-Bag
-
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under
my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good
city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday
night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the
little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of
reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday.
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop
at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may
as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my
mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because
there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with
that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New
Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing 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 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 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 "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 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 of that
tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer- of whose
works I possess the only copy extant- "it maketh a marvellous
difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from
that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which
the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as
this passage occurred to my mind- old black-letter, thou reasonest
well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house.
What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though,
and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to
make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone
is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus
there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow,
and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both
ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that
would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old
Dives, in his red silken wrapper- (he had a redder one afterwards)
pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what
northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of
everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own
summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding
them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in
Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise
along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery
pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone
before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an
iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he
too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being
a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of
orphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and
there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our
frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.
CHAPTER 3: The Spouter-Inn
-
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very
large oil painting 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 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 favorite 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 woolen, 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- yea, 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
snowstorm- "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 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 corncobs 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 color, here and there stuck
over with large blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought,
he's a terrible bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut,
and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced
to turn his face so towards 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 a 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 headpeddling 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 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 color of a
three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first
I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved
some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and
that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it
must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For
now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the
papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a
tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks
inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a
very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling
but ill at ease meantime- to see what was next to follow. First he
takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket,
and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship
biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the
shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty
snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers
(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded
in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a
little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the
little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he
never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by
still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be
praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other,
during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner.
At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very
unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly
as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high
time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell
in which I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal
one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it
for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at
the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next
moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk
between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not
help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he
might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.
But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill
comprehended my meaning.
"Who-e debel you?"- he at last said- "you no speak-e, dam-me, I
kill-e." And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me
in the dark.
"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord!
Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"
"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again
growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk
scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would
get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into
the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here
wouldn't harm a hair of your head."
"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that
that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"
"I thought ye know'd it;- didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin'
heads around town?- but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg,
look here- you sabbee me, I sabbee- you this man sleepe you- you
sabbee?"
"Me sabbee plenty"- grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and
sitting up in bed.
"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a
civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a
moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely
looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about,
thought I to myself- the man's a human being just as I am: he has just
as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep
with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or
pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and
I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed
with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."
This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
motioned me to get into bed- rolling over to one side as much as to
say- I won't touch a leg of ye."
"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."
I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
CHAPTER 4: The Counterpane
-
Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm
thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had
almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of
patchwork, full of odd little parti-colored squares and triangles; and
this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan
labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise
shade- owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in
sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various
times- this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a
strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as
the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt,
they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of
weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a
child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;
whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle.
The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or
other- I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen
a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who,
somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed
supperless,- my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and
packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the
afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in 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 favor 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 sunlit 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 the strangeness, to
those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm
thrown round me. But at length all the past night's events soberly
recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to
the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm- unlock
his bridegroom clasp- yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me
tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove
to rouse him- "Queequeg!"- but his only answer was a snore. I then
rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and
suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane,
there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were
a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here
in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk!
"Queequeg!- in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!" At length, by
dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the
unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort
of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew
back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from
the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me,
and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came
to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about
me seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing
him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly
observing so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made
up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were,
reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain
signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he
would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the
whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the
circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is,
these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will;
it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this
particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so
much civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;
staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions;
for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding.
Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don't see every day, he and
his ways were well worth unusual regarding.
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very
tall one, by the by, and then- still minus his trowsers- he hunted up
his boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but
his next movement was to crush himself- boots in hand, and hat on-
under the bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I
inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of
propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when
putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in
the transition stage- neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just
enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest
possible manners. His education was not yet completed. He was an
undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very
probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but
then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of
getting under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat
very much dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking
and limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots,
his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones- probably not made to order
either- rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off of a
bitter cold morning.
Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure
that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and
boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet
somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as
possible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that
time in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but
Queequeg, to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his
ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat,
and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table,
dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face. I was
watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he
takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden
stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and
striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous
scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this
is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered
the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel
the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long
straight edges are always kept.
The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out
of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting
his harpoon like a marshal's baton.
CHAPTER 5: Breakfast
-
I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted
the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards
him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter
of my bedfellow.
However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too
scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his
own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him
not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and
to be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully
laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you
perhaps think for.
The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in
the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They
were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third
mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and
harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with
bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for
morning gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.
This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue,
and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three
days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few
shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In
the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly
bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But
who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various
tints, seemed like the Andes' western slope, to show forth in one
array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.
"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in
we went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at
ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though:
Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch
one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But
perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as
Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach,
in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's
performances- this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best
mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that
sort of thing is to be had anywhere.
These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance
that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to
hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise nearly
every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they
looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom
without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high
seas- entire strangers to them- and duelled them dead without winking;
and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table- all of the same
calling, all of kindred tastes- looking round as sheepishly at each
other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold
among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these
timid warrior whalemen!
But as for Queequeg- why, Queequeg sat there among them- at the head
of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I
cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not
have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast
with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table
with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the
beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by
him, and every one knows that in most people's estimation, to do
anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he
eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention
to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he
withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his
tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking
with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.
CHAPTER 6: The Street
-
If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so
outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite
society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon
taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.
In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from
foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean
mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is
not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green,
live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats
all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see
only sailors; 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 a 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 ot flowers upon the barren refuse rocks
thrown aside at creation's final day.
And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses.
But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their
cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere
match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they
tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts
smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the
odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.
CHAPTER 7: The Chapel
-
In the same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few
are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or
Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I
did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon
this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to
driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the
cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and
sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at
times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed
purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were
insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and
there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing
several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the
following, but I do not pretend to quote:
-
- SACRED
- TO THE MEMORY
- OF
- JOHN TALBOT,
Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard
Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
- November 1st, 1836.
- THIS TABLET
- Is erected to his Memory
- BY HIS SISTER.
-
- SACRED
- TO THE MEMORY
- OF
ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
- AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
Forming one of the boats' crews
- OF
- THE SHIP ELIZA
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
On the Off-shore Ground in the
- PACIFIC,
- December 31st, 1839.
- THIS MARBLE
Is here placed by their surviving
- SHIPMATES.
-
- SACRED
- TO THE MEMORY
- OF
- The late
- CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a
Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan,
- August 3d, 1833.
- THIS TABLET
- Is erected to his Memory
- BY
- HIS WIDOW.
-
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated
myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see
Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was
a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This
savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance;
because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was
not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of
the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now
among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded
accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present
wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief,
that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose
unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically
caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing
among flowers can say- here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the
desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in
those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in
those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden
infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse
resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a
grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as
here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are
included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they
tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin
Sands! how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other
world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not
thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this
living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures
upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly,
hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round
centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for
those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable
bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore
but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All
these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky
light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen
who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine.
But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine
chance for promotion, it seems- aye, a stove boat will make me an
immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling- a
speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and
Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true
substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too
much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking
that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees
of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it
is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a
stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove
himself cannot.
CHAPTER 8: The Pulpit
-
I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back
upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the
congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the
chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the
whalemen, among whom he was a very great favorite. He had been a
sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had
dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father
Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of
old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among
all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a
newly developing 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
color, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it
was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the
foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental
knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then
with a truly 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 distant spot of
radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate
now inserted into 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
favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a
voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
CHAPTER 9: The Sermon
-
Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority
ordered the scattered people to condense. "Star board gangway,
there! side away to larboard- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships!
midships!"
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a
still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again,
and every eye on the preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his
large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and
offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and
praying at the bottom of the sea.
This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of
a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog- in such tones
he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner
towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing
exultation and joy-
-
The ribs and terrors in the whale,
Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
And lift me deepening down to doom.
-
I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell-
Oh, I was plunging to despair.
-
In black distress, I called my God,
When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints-
No more the whale did me confine.
-
With speed he flew to my relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.
-
My 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 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 |
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