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 down town is the battery where that noble mole is washed by waves and cooled by breezes which a few hours previous were out of sight of land look at the crowds of water gazers there circumambulate the city of a dreamy sabbath afternoon go from corlears hook to coenties slip and from thence by whitehall northward what do you see posted like 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 glasses of ships from china some high aloft in the rigging as if striving to get a still better seaward peep but these are all landsmen of week days pent up in lath and plaster tied to counters nailed to benches clinched to desks how then is this are the green fields gone what do they here but look here come more crowds pacing straight for the water and seemingly bound for a dive strange nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice no they must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in and there they stand miles of them leagues inlanders all they come from lanes and alleys streets and avenues north east south and west yet here they all unite tell me does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither once more say you are in the country in some high land of lakes take almost any path you please and ten to one it carries you down in a dale and leaves you there by a pool in the stream there is magic in it let the most absent minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries stand that man on his legs set his feet a going and he will infallibly lead you to water if water there be in all that region should you ever be athirst in the great american desert try this experiment if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor yes as every one knows meditation and water are wedded for ever but here is an artist he desires to paint you the dreamiest shadiest quietest most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the saco what is the chief element he employs there stand his trees each with a hollow trunk as if a hermit and a crucifix were within and here sleeps his meadow and there sleep his cattle and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill side blue but though the picture lies thus tranced and though this pine tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd s head yet all were vain unless the shepherd s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him go visit the prairies in june when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee deep among tiger lilies what is the one charm wanting water there is not a drop of water there were niagara but a cataract of sand would you travel your thousand miles to see it why did the poor poet of tennessee upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver deliberate whether to buy him a coat which he sadly needed or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to rockaway beach why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him at some time or other crazy to go to sea why upon your first voyage as a passenger did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land why did the old persians hold the sea holy why did the greeks give it a separate deity and own brother of jove surely all this is not without meaning and still deeper the meaning of that story of narcissus who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain plunged into it and was drowned but that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans it is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life and this is the key to it all now when i say that i am in the habit of going to sea whenever i begin to grow hazy about the eyes and begin to be over conscious of my lungs i do not mean to have it inferred that i ever go to sea as a passenger for to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it besides passengers get sea sick grow quarrelsome don t sleep of nights do not enjoy themselves much as a general thing no i never go as a passenger nor though i am something of a salt do i ever go to sea as a commodore or a captain or a cook i abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them for my part i abominate all honorable respectable toils trials and tribulations of every kind whatsoever it is quite as much as i can do to take care of myself without taking care of ships barques brigs schooners and what not and as for going as cook though i confess there is considerable glory in that a cook being a sort of officer on ship board yet somehow i never fancied broiling fowls though once broiled judiciously buttered and judgmatically salted and peppered there is no one who will speak more respectfully not to say reverentially of a broiled fowl than i will it is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake houses the pyramids no when i go to sea i go as a simple sailor right before the mast plumb down into the forecastle aloft there to the royal mast head true they rather order me about some and make me jump from spar to spar like a grasshopper in a may meadow and at first this sort of thing is unpleasant enough it touches one s sense of honor particularly if you come of an old established family in the land the van rensselaers or randolphs or hardicanutes and more than all if just previous to putting your hand into the tar pot you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster making the tallest boys stand in awe of you the transition is a keen one i assure you from the schoolmaster to a sailor and requires a strong decoction of seneca and the stoics to enable you to grin and bear it but even this wears off in time what of it if some old hunks of a sea captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks what does that indignity amount to weighed i mean in the scales of the new testament do you think the archangel gabriel thinks anything the less of me because i promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance who aint a slave tell me that well then however the old sea captains may order me 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 forecastle deck for as in this world head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern that is if you never violate the pythagorean maxim so for the most part the commodore on the quarter deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle he thinks he breathes it first but not so in much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things at the same time that the leaders little suspect it but wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor i should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage this the invisible police officer of the fates who has the constant surveillance of me and secretly dogs me and influences me in some unaccountable 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 i stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet bag tucked it under my arm and started for cape horn and the pacific quitting the good city of old manhatto i duly arrived in new bedford it was on a saturday night in december much was i disappointed upon learning that the little packet for nantucket had already sailed and that no way of reaching that place would offer till the following monday as most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same new bedford thence to embark on their voyage it may as well be related that i for one had no idea of so doing for my mind was made up to sail in no other than a nantucket craft because there was a fine boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island which amazingly pleased me besides though new bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling and though in this matter poor old nantucket is now much behind her yet nantucket was her great 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 cobble stones so goes the story to throw at the whales in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit now having a night a day and still another night following before me in new bedford ere i could embark for my destined port it became a matter of concernment where i was to eat and sleep meanwhile it was a very dubious looking nay a very dark and dismal night bitingly cold and cheerless i knew no one in the place with anxious grapnels i had sounded my pocket and only brought up a few pieces of silver so wherever you go ishmael said i to myself as i stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night my dear ishmael be sure to inquire the price and don t be too particular with halting steps i paced the streets and passed the sign of the crossed harpoons but it looked too expensive and jolly there further on from the bright red windows of the sword fish inn there came such fervent rays that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard asphaltic pavement rather weary for me when i struck my foot against the flinty projections because from hard remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight too expensive and jolly again thought i pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within but go on ishmael said i at last don t you hear get away from before the door your patched boots are stopping the way so on i went i now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward for there doubtless were the cheapest if not the cheeriest inns such dreary streets blocks of blackness not houses on either hand and here and there a candle like a candle moving about in a tomb at this hour of the night of the last day of the week that quarter of the town proved all but deserted but presently i came to a smoky light proceeding from a low wide building the door of which stood invitingly open it had a careless look as if it were meant for the uses of the public so entering the first thing i did was to stumble over an ash box in the porch ha thought i ha as the flying particles almost choked me are these ashes from that destroyed city gomorrah but the crossed harpoons and the sword fish this then must needs be the sign of the trap however i picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within pushed on and opened a second interior door it seemed the great black parliament sitting in tophet a hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer and beyond a black angel of doom was beating a book in a pulpit it was a negro church and the preacher s text was about the blackness of darkness and the weeping and wailing and teeth gnashing there ha ishmael muttered i backing out wretched entertainment at the sign of the trap moving on i at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks and heard a forlorn creaking in the air and looking up saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray and these words underneath the spouter inn peter coffin coffin spouter rather ominous in that particular connexion thought i but it is a common name in nantucket they say and i suppose this peter here is an emigrant from there as the light looked so dim and the place for the time looked quiet enough and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district and as the swinging sign had a poverty stricken sort of creak to it i thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings and the best of pea coffee it was a queer sort of place a gable ended old house one side palsied as it were and leaning over sadly it stood on a sharp bleak corner where that tempestuous wind euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor paul s tossed craft euroclydon nevertheless is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in doors with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed in judging of that tempestuous wind called euroclydon says an old writer of whose works i possess the only copy extant it maketh a marvellous difference whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside or whether thou observest it from that sashless window where the frost is on both sides and of which the wight death is the only glazier true enough thought i as this passage occurred to my mind old black letter thou reasonest well yes these eyes are windows and this body of mine is the house what a pity they didn t stop up the chinks and the crannies though and thrust in a little lint here and there but it s too late to make any improvements now the universe is finished the copestone is on and the chips were carted off a million years ago poor lazarus there chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings he might plug up both ears with rags and put a corn cob into his mouth and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous euroclydon euroclydon says old dives in his red silken wrapper he had a redder one afterwards pooh pooh what a fine frosty night how orion glitters what northern lights let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals but what thinks lazarus can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights would not lazarus rather be in sumatra than here would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator yea ye gods go down to the fiery pit itself in order to keep out this frost now that lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of dives this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the moluccas yet dives himself he too lives like a czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs and being a president of a temperance society he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans but no more of this blubbering now we are going a whaling and there is plenty of that yet to come let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet and see what sort of a place this spouter may be entering that gable ended spouter inn you found yourself in a wide low straggling entry with old fashioned wainscots reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft on one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked and every way defaced that in the unequal cross lights by which you viewed it it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it and careful inquiry of the neighbors that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist in the time of the new england hags had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched but by dint of much and earnest contemplation and oft repeated ponderings and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea however wild might not be altogether unwarranted but what most puzzled and confounded you was a long limber portentous black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue dim perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast a boggy soggy squitchy picture truly enough to drive a nervous man distracted yet was there a sort of indefinite half attained unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant ever and anon a bright but alas deceptive idea would dart you through it s the black sea in a midnight gale it s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements it s a blasted heath it s a hyperborean winter scene it s the breaking up of the ice bound stream of time but at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture s midst that once found out and all the rest were plain but stop does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish even the great leviathan himself 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 afterward slain off the cape of blanco the original iron entered nigh the tail and like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man travelled full forty feet and at last was found imbedded in the hump crossing this dusky entry and on through yon low arched way cut through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fire places 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 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 alleganian ridge in virginia when the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height this man slipped away unobserved and i saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea in a few minutes however he was missed by his shipmates and being it seems for some reason a huge favorite with them they raised a cry of bulkington bulkington where s bulkington and darted out of the house in pursuit of him it was now about nine o clock and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies i began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen no man prefers to sleep two in a bed in fact you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother i don t know how it is but people like to be private when they are sleeping and when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger in a strange inn in a strange town and that stranger a harpooneer then your objections indefinitely multiply nor was there any earthly reason why i as a sailor should sleep two in a bed more than anybody else for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea than bachelor kings do ashore to be sure they all sleep together in one apartment but you have your own hammock and cover yourself with your own blanket and sleep in your own skin the more i pondered over this harpooneer the more i abominated the thought of sleeping with him it was fair to presume that being a harpooneer his linen or woollen as the case might be would not be of the tidiest certainly none of the finest i began to twitch all over besides it was getting late and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards suppose now he should tumble in upon me at midnight how could i tell from what vile hole he had been coming landlord i ve changed my mind about that harpooneer i shan t sleep with him i ll try the bench here just as you please i m sorry i cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress and it s a plaguy rough board here feeling of the knots and notches but wait a bit skrimshander i ve got a carpenter s plane there in the bar wait i say and i ll make ye snug enough so saying he procured the plane and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench vigorously set to planing away at my bed the while grinning like an ape the shavings flew right and left till at last the plane iron came bump against an indestructible knot the landlord was near spraining his wrist and i told him for heaven s sake to quit the bed was soft enough to suit me and i did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank so gathering up the shavings with another grin and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room he went about his business and left me in a brown study i now took the measure of the bench and found that it was a foot too short but that could be mended with a chair but it was a foot too narrow and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one so there was no yoking them i then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall leaving a little interval between for my back to settle down in but i soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of the window that this plan would never do at all especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where i had thought to spend the night the devil fetch that harpooneer thought i but stop couldn t i steal a march on him bolt his door inside and jump into his bed not to be wakened by the most violent knockings it seemed no bad idea but upon second thoughts i dismissed it for who could tell but what the next morning so soon as i popped out of the room the harpooneer might be standing in the entry all ready to knock me down still looking around me again and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person s bed i began to think that after all i might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown harpooneer thinks i i ll wait awhile he must be dropping in before long i ll have a good look at him then and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all there s no telling but though the other boarders kept coming in by ones twos and threes and going to bed yet no sign of my harpooneer landlord said i what sort of a chap is he does he always keep such late hours it was now hard upon twelve o clock the landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension no he answered generally he s an early bird airley to bed and airley to rise yes he s the bird what catches the worm but to night he went out a peddling you see and i don t see what on airth keeps him so late unless may be he can t sell his head can t sell his head what sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me getting into a towering rage do you pretend to say landlord that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed saturday night or rather sunday morning in peddling his head around this town that s precisely it said the landlord and i told him he couldn t sell it here the market s overstocked with what shouted i with heads to be sure ain t there too many heads in the world i tell you what it is landlord said i quite calmly you d better stop spinning that yarn to me i m not green may be not taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick but i rayther guess you ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin his head i ll break it for him said i now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord s it s broke a ready said he broke said i broke do you mean sartain and that s the very reason he can t sell it i guess landlord said i going up to him as cool as mt hecla in a snow storm landlord stop whittling you and i must understand one another and that too without delay i come to your house and want a bed you tell me you can only give me half a one that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer and about this harpooneer whom i have not yet seen you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow a sort of connexion landlord which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree i now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is and whether i shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him and in the first place you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head which if true i take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad and i ve no idea of sleeping with a madman and you sir you i mean landlord you sir by trying to induce me to do so knowingly would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution wall said the landlord fetching a long breath that s a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then but be easy be easy this here harpooneer i have been tellin you of has just arrived from the south seas where he bought up a lot of balmed new zealand heads great curios you know and he s sold all on em but one and that one he s trying to sell to night cause to morrow s sunday and it would not do to be sellin human heads about the streets when folks is goin to churches he wanted to last sunday but i stopped him just as he was goin out of the door with four heads strung on a string for all the airth like a string of inions this account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery and showed that the landlord after all had had no idea of fooling me but at the same time what could i think of a harpooneer who stayed out a saturday night clean into the holy sabbath engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators depend upon it landlord that harpooneer is a dangerous man he pays reg lar was the rejoinder but come it s getting dreadful late you had better be turning flukes it s a nice bed sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced there s plenty 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 after that sal said it wouldn t do come along here i ll give ye a glim in a jiffy and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me offering to lead the way but i stood irresolute when looking at a clock in the corner he exclaimed i vum it s sunday you won t see that harpooneer to night he s come to anchor somewhere come along then do come won t ye come i considered the matter a moment and then up stairs we went and i was ushered into a small room cold as a clam and furnished sure enough with a prodigious bed almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast there said the landlord placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty as a wash stand and centre table there make yourself comfortable now and good night to ye i turned round from eyeing the bed but he had disappeared folding back the counterpane i stooped over the bed though none of the most elegant it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well i then glanced round the room and besides the bedstead and centre table could see no other furniture belonging to the place but a rude shelf the four walls and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale of things not properly belonging to the room there was a hammock lashed up and thrown upon the floor in one corner also a large seaman s bag containing the harpooneer s wardrobe no doubt in lieu of a land trunk likewise there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire place and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed but what is this on the chest i took it up and held it close to the light and felt it and smelt it and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it i can compare it to nothing but a large door mat ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an indian moccasin there was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat as you see the same in south american ponchos but could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat and parade the streets of any christian town in that sort of guise i put it on to try it and it weighed me down like a hamper being uncommonly shaggy and thick and i thought a little damp as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day i went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall and i never saw such a sight in my life i tore myself out of it in such a hurry that i gave myself a kink in the neck i sat down on the side of the bed and commenced thinking about this head peddling harpooneer and his door mat after thinking some time on the bed side i got up and took off my monkey jacket and then stood in the middle of the room thinking i then took off my coat and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves but beginning to feel very cold now half undressed as i was and remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer s not coming home at all that night it being so very late i made no more ado but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed and commended myself to the care of heaven whether that mattress was stuffed with corn cobs or broken crockery there is no telling but i rolled about a good deal and could not sleep for a long time at last i slid off into a light doze and had pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of nod when i heard a heavy footfall in the passage and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door lord save me thinks i that must be the harpooneer the infernal head peddler but i lay perfectly still and resolved not to say a word till spoken to holding a light in one hand and that identical new zealand head in the other the stranger entered the room and without looking towards the bed placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner and then began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag i before spoke of as being in the room i was all eagerness to see his face but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag s mouth this accomplished however he turned round when good heavens what a sight such a face it was of a dark purplish yellow 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 the room he then took the new zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it down into the bag he now took off his hat a new beaver hat when i came nigh singing out with fresh surprise there was no hair on his head none to speak of at least nothing but a small scalp knot twisted up on his forehead his bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull had not the stranger stood between me and the door i would have bolted out of it quicker than ever i bolted a dinner even as it was i thought something of slipping out of the window but it was the second floor back i am no coward but what to make of this head peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension ignorance is the parent of fear and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger i confess i was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night in fact i was so afraid of him that i was not game enough just then to address him and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him meanwhile he continued the business of undressing and at last showed his chest and arms as i live these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face his back too was all over the same dark squares he seemed to have been in a thirty years war and just escaped from it with a sticking plaster shirt still more his very legs were marked as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms it was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the south seas and so landed in this christian country i quaked to think of it a peddler of heads too perhaps the heads of his own brothers he might take a fancy to mine heavens look at that tomahawk but there was no time for shuddering for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen going to his heavy grego or wrapall or dreadnaught which he had previously hung on a chair he fumbled in the pockets and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back and exactly the color of a three days old congo baby remembering the embalmed head at first i almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner but seeing that it was not at all limber and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony i concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol which indeed it proved to be for now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace and removing the papered fire board sets up this little hunchbacked image like a tenpin between the andirons the chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty so that i thought this fire place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his congo idol i now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image feeling but ill at ease 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 into which i had so long been bound but the interval i spent in deliberating what to say was a fatal one taking up his tomahawk from the table he examined the head of it for an instant and then holding it to the light with his mouth at the handle he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke the next moment the light was extinguished and this wild cannibal tomahawk between his teeth sprang into bed with me i sang out i could not help it now and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me stammering out something i knew not what i rolled away from him against the wall and then conjured him whoever or whatever he might be to keep quiet and let me get up and light the lamp again but his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning who e debel you he at last 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 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 aint 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 wont touch a leg of ye good night landlord said i you may go i turned in and never slept better in my life 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 st june the longest day in the year in our hemisphere i felt dreadfully but there was no help for it so up stairs i went to my little room in the third floor undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets i lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before i could hope for a resurrection sixteen hours in bed the small of my back ached to think of it and it was so light too the sun shining in at the window and a great rattling of coaches in the streets and the sound of gay voices all over the house i felt worse and worse at last i got up dressed and softly going down in my stockinged feet sought out my stepmother and suddenly threw myself at her feet beseeching her as a particular favor to give me a good slippering for my misbehavior anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time but she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers and back i had to go to my room for several hours i lay there broad awake feeling a great deal worse than i have ever done since even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes at last i must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze and slowly waking from it half steeped in dreams i opened my eyes and the before sun lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness instantly i felt a shock running through all my frame nothing was to be seen and nothing was to be heard but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine my arm hung over the counterpane and the nameless unimaginable silent form or phantom to which the hand belonged seemed closely seated by my bedside for what seemed ages piled on ages i lay there frozen with the most awful fears not daring to drag away my hand yet ever thinking that if i could but stir it one single inch the horrid spell would be broken i knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me but waking in the morning i shudderingly remembered it all and for days and weeks and months afterwards i lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery nay to this very hour i often puzzle myself with it now take away the awful fear and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar in their strangeness to those which i experienced on waking up and seeing queequeg s pagan arm thrown round me but at length all the past night s events soberly recurred one by one in fixed reality and then i lay only alive to the comical predicament for though i tried to move his arm unlock his bridegroom clasp yet sleeping as he was he still hugged me tightly as though naught but death should part us twain i now strove to rouse him queequeg but his only answer was a snore i then rolled over my neck feeling as if it were in a horse collar and suddenly felt a slight scratch throwing aside the counterpane there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage s side as if it were a hatchet faced baby a pretty pickle truly thought i abed here in a strange house in the broad day with a cannibal and a tomahawk queequeg in the name of goodness queequeg wake at length by dint of much wriggling and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style i succeeded in extracting a grunt and presently he drew back his arm shook himself all over like a newfoundland dog just from the water and sat up in bed stiff as a pike staff looking at me and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how i came to be there though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him meanwhile i lay quietly eyeing him having no serious misgivings now and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature when at last his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow and he became as it were reconciled to the fact he jumped out upon the floor and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that if it pleased me he would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards leaving the whole apartment to myself thinks i queequeg under the circumstances this is a very civilized overture but the truth is these savages have an innate sense of delicacy say what you will it is marvellous how essentially polite they are i pay this particular compliment to queequeg because he treated me with so much civility and consideration while i was guilty of great rudeness staring at him from the bed and watching all his toilette motions for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding nevertheless a man like queequeg you don t see every day he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding he commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat a very tall one by the by and then still minus his trowsers he hunted up his boots what under the heavens he did it for i cannot tell but his next movement was to crush himself boots in hand and hat on under the bed when from sundry violent gaspings and strainings i inferred he was hard at work booting himself though by no law of propriety that i ever heard of is any man required to be private when putting on his boots but queequeg do you see was a creature in the transition state neither caterpillar nor butterfly he was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner his education was not yet completed he was an undergraduate if he had not been a small degree civilized he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all but then if he had not been still a savage he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on at last he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes and began creaking and limping about the room as if not being much accustomed to boots his pair of damp wrinkled cowhide 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 i quickly followed suit and descending into the bar room accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly i cherished no malice towards him though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow however a good laugh is a mighty good thing and rather too scarce a good thing the more s the pity so if any one man in his own proper person afford stuff for a good joke to anybody let him not be backward but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way and the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for the bar room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night previous and whom i had not as yet had a good look at they were nearly all whalemen chief mates and second mates and third mates and sea carpenters and sea coopers and sea blacksmiths and harpooneers and ship keepers a brown and brawny company with bosky beards an unshorn shaggy set all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns you could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore this young fellow s healthy cheek is like a sun toasted pear in hue and would seem to smell almost as musky he cannot have been three days landed from his indian voyage that man next him looks a few shades lighter you might say a touch of satin wood is in him in the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn but slightly bleached withal he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore but who could show a cheek like queequeg which barred with various tints seemed like the andes western slope to show forth in one array contrasting climates zone by zone grub ho now cried the landlord flinging open a door and in we went to breakfast they say that men who have seen the world thereby become quite at ease in manner quite self possessed in company not always though ledyard the great new england traveller and mungo park the scotch one of all men they possessed the least assurance in the parlor but perhaps the mere crossing of siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as ledyard did or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach in the negro heart of africa which was the sum of poor mungo s performances this kind of travel i say may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish still for the most part that sort of thing is to be had anywhere these reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the table and i was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling to my no small surprise nearly every man maintained a profound silence and not only that but they looked embarrassed yes here were a set of sea dogs many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas entire strangers to them and duelled them dead without winking and yet here they sat at a social breakfast table all of the same calling all of kindred tastes looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the green mountains a curious sight these bashful bears these timid warrior whalemen but as for queequeg why queequeg sat there among them at the head of the table too it so chanced as cool as an icicle to be sure i cannot say much for his breeding his greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him and using it there without ceremony reaching over the table with it to the imminent jeopardy of many heads and grappling the beefsteaks towards him but that was certainly very coolly done by him and every one knows that in most people s estimation to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly we will not speak of all queequeg s peculiarities here how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks done rare enough that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public room lighted his tomahawk pipe and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on when i sallied out for a stroll if i had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of new bedford in thoroughfares nigh the docks any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts even in broadway and chestnut streets mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies regent street is not unknown to lascars and malays and at bombay in the apollo green live yankees have often scared the natives but new bedford beats all water street and wapping in these last mentioned haunts you see only sailors but in new bedford actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners savages outright many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh it makes a stranger stare but besides the feegeeans tongatabooarrs erromanggoans pannangians and brighggians and besides the wild specimens of the whaling craft which unheeded reel about the streets you will see other sights still more curious certainly more comical there weekly arrive in this town scores of green vermonters and new hampshire men all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery they are mostly young of stalwart frames fellows who have felled forests and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale lance many are as green as the green mountains whence they came in some things you would think them but a few hours old look there that chap strutting round the corner he wears a beaver hat and swallow tailed coat girdled with a sailor belt and sheath knife here comes another with a sou wester and a bombazine cloak no town bred dandy will compare with a country bred one i mean a downright bumpkin dandy a fellow that in the dog days will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation and joins the great whale fishery you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport in bespeaking his sea outfit he orders bell buttons to his waistcoats straps to his canvas trowsers ah poor hay seed how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale when thou art driven straps buttons and all down the throat of the tempest but think not that this famous town has only harpooneers cannibals and bumpkins to show her visitors not at all still new bedford is a queer place had it not been for us whalemen that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of labrador as it is parts of her back country are enough to frighten one they look so bony the town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in in all new england it is a land of oil true enough but not like canaan a land also of corn and wine the streets do not run with milk nor in the spring time do they pave them with fresh eggs yet in spite of this nowhere in all america will you find more patrician like houses parks and gardens more opulent than in new bedford whence came they how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion and your question will be answered yes all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the atlantic pacific and indian oceans one and all they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea can herr alexander perform a feat like that in new bedford fathers they say give whales for dowers to their daughters and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a piece you must go to new bedford to see a brilliant wedding for they say they have reservoirs of oil in every house and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles in summer time the town is sweet to see full of fine maples long avenues of green and gold and in august high in air the beautiful and bountiful horse chestnuts candelabra wise proffer the passer by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms so omnipotent is art which in many a district of new bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation s final day and the women of new bedford they bloom like their own red roses but roses only bloom in summer whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens elsewhere match that bloom of theirs ye cannot save in salem where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore as though they were drawing nigh the odorous moluccas instead of the puritanic sands in this same new bedford there stands a whaleman s chapel and few are the moody fishermen shortly bound for the indian ocean or pacific who fail to make a sunday visit to the spot i am sure that i did not returning from my first morning stroll i again sallied out upon this special errand the sky had changed from clear sunny cold to driving sleet and mist wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin i fought my way against the stubborn storm entering i found a small scattered congregation of sailors and sailors wives and widows a muffled silence reigned only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable the chaplain had not yet arrived and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets with black borders masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit three of them ran something like the following but i do not pretend to quote sacred to the memory of john talbot who at the age of eighteen was lost overboard near the isle of desolation off patagonia november st this tablet is erected to his memory by his sister sacred to the memory of robert long willis ellery nathan coleman walter canny seth macy and samuel gleig forming one of the boats crews of the ship eliza who were towed out of sight by a whale on the off shore ground in the pacific december st this marble is here placed by their surviving shipmates sacred to the memory of the late captain ezekiel hardy who in the bows of his boat was killed by a sperm whale on the coast of japan august d this tablet is erected to his memory by his widow shaking off the sleet from my ice glazed hat and jacket i seated myself near the door and turning sideways was surprised to see queequeg near me affected by the solemnity of the scene there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance this savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance because he was the only one who could not read and therefore was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation i knew not but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief that i feel sure that here before me were assembled those in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh oh ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass who standing among flowers can say here here lies my beloved ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these what bitter blanks in those black bordered marbles which cover no ashes what despair in those immovable inscriptions what deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all faith and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave as well might those tablets stand in the cave of elephanta as here in what census of living creatures the dead of mankind are included why it is that a universal proverb says of them that they tell no tales though containing more secrets than the goodwin sands how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world we prefix so significant and infidel a word and yet do not thus entitle him if he but embarks for the remotest indies of this living earth why the life insurance companies pay death forfeitures upon immortals in what eternal unstirring paralysis and deadly hopeless trance yet lies antique adam who died sixty round centuries ago how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss why all the living so strive to hush all the dead wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city all these things are not without their meanings but faith like a jackal feeds among the tombs and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope it needs scarcely to be told with what feelings on the eve of a nantucket voyage i regarded those marble tablets and by the murky light of that darkened doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me yes ishmael the same fate may be thine but somehow i grew merry again delightful inducements to embark fine chance for promotion it seems aye a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet yes there is death in this business of whaling a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into eternity but what then methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of life and death methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance methinks that in looking at things spiritual we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air methinks my body is but the lees of my better being in fact take my body who will take it i say it is not me and therefore three cheers for nantucket and come a stove boat and stove body when they will for stave my soul jove himself cannot 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 sailorlike but still reverential dexterity hand over hand mounted the steps as if ascending the main top of his vessel the perpendicular parts of this side ladder as is usually the case with swinging ones were of cloth covered rope only the rounds were of wood so that at every step there was a joint at my first glimpse of the pulpit it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary for i was not prepared to see father mapple after gaining the height slowly turn round and stooping over the pulpit deliberately drag up the ladder step by step till the whole was deposited within leaving him impregnable in his little quebec i pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this father mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity that i could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage no thought i there must be some sober reason for this thing furthermore it must symbolize something unseen can it be then that by that act of physical isolation he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time from all outward worldly ties and connexions yes for replenished with the meat and wine of the word to the faithful man of god this pulpit i see is a self containing stronghold a lofty ehrenbreitstein with a perennial well of water within the walls but the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place borrowed from the chaplain s former sea farings between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers but high above the flying scud and dark rolling clouds there floated a little isle of sunlight from which beamed forth an angel s face and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship s tossed deck something like that silver plate now inserted into the victory s plank where nelson fell ah noble ship the angel seemed to say beat on beat on thou noble ship and bear a hardy helm for lo the sun is breaking through the clouds are rolling off serenest azure is at hand nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship s bluff bows and the holy bible rested on the 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 father mapple rose and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense starboard gangway there side away to larboard larboard gangway to starboard midships midships there was a low rumbling of heavy sea boots among the benches and a still slighter shuffling of women s shoes and all was quiet again and every eye on the preacher he paused a little then kneeling in the pulpit s bows folded his large brown hands across his chest uplifted his closed eyes and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea this ended in prolonged solemn tones like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy the ribs and terrors in the whale arched over me a dismal gloom while all god s sun lit waves rolled by and lift me deepening down to doom i saw the opening maw of hell with endless pains and sorrows there which none but they that feel can tell oh i was plunging to despair in black distress i called my god when i could scarce believe him mine he bowed his ear to my complaints no more the whale did me confine with speed he flew to my relief as on a radiant dolphin borne awful yet bright as lightning shone the face of my deliverer god my song for ever shall record that terrible that joyful hour i give the glory to my god his all the mercy and the power nearly all joined in singing this hymn which swelled high above the howling of the storm a brief pause ensued the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the bible and at last folding his hand down upon the proper page said beloved shipmates clinch the last verse of the first chapter of jonah and god had prepared a great fish to swallow up jonah shipmates this book containing only four chapters four yarns is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the scriptures yet what depths of the soul does jonah s deep sealine sound what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet what a noble thing is that canticle in the fish s belly how billow like and boisterously grand we feel the floods surging over us we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters sea weed and all the slime of the sea is about us but what is this lesson that the book of jonah teaches shipmates it is a two stranded lesson a lesson to us all as sinful men and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living god as sinful men it is a lesson to us all because it is a story of the sin hard heartedness suddenly awakened fears the swift punishment repentance prayers and finally the deliverance and joy of jonah as with all sinners among men the sin of this son of amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of god never mind now what that command was or how conveyed which he found a hard command but all the things that god would have us do are hard for us to do remember that and hence he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade and if we obey god we must disobey ourselves and it is in this disobeying ourselves wherein the hardness of obeying god consists with this sin of disobedience in him jonah still further flouts at god by seeking to flee from him he thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into countries where god does not reign but only the captains of this earth he skulks about the wharves of joppa and seeks a ship that s bound for tarshish there lurks perhaps a hitherto unheeded meaning here by all accounts tarshish could have been no other city than the modern cadiz that s the opinion of learned men and where is cadiz shipmates cadiz is in spain as far by water from joppa as jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days when the atlantic was an almost unknown sea because joppa the modern jaffa shipmates is on the most easterly coast of the mediterranean the syrian and tarshish or cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that just outside the straits of gibraltar see ye not then shipmates that jonah sought to flee world wide from god miserable man oh most contemptible and worthy of all scorn with slouched hat and guilty eye skulking from his god prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas so disordered self condemning is his look that had there been policemen in those days jonah on the mere suspicion of something wrong had been arrested ere he touched a deck how plainly he s a fugitive no baggage not a hat box valise or carpet bag no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux at last after much dodging search he finds the tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo and as he steps on board to see its captain in the cabin all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods to mark the stranger s evil eye jonah sees this but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence in vain essays his wretched smile strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent in their gamesome but still serious way one whispers to the other jack he s robbed a widow or joe do you mark him he s a bigamist or harry lad i guess he s the adulterer that broke jail in old gomorrah or belike one of the missing murderers from sodom another runs to read the bill that s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide and containing a description of his person he reads and looks from jonah to the bill while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round jonah prepared to lay their hands upon him frighted jonah trembles and summoning all his boldness to his face only looks so much the more a coward he will not confess himself suspected but that itself is strong suspicion so he makes the best of it and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised they let him pass and he descends into the cabin who s there cries the captain at his busy desk hurriedly making out his papers for the customs who s there oh how that harmless question mangles jonah for the instant he almost turns to flee again but he rallies i seek a passage in this ship to tarshish how soon sail ye sir thus far the busy captain had not looked up to jonah though the man now stands before him but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice than he darts a scrutinizing glance we sail with the next coming tide at last he slowly answered still intently eyeing him no sooner sir soon enough for any honest man that goes a passenger ha jonah that s another stab but he swiftly calls away the captain from that scent i ll sail with ye he says the passage money how much is that i ll pay now for it is particularly written shipmates as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history that he paid the fare thereof ere the craft did sail and taken with the context this is full of meaning now jonah s captain shipmates was one whose discernment detects crime in any but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless in this world shipmates sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport whereas virtue if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers so jonah s captain prepares to test the length of jonah s purse ere he judge him openly he charges him thrice the usual sum and it s assented to then the captain knows that jonah is a fugitive but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold yet when jonah fairly takes out his purse prudent suspicions still molest the captain he rings every coin to find a counterfeit not a forger any way he mutters and jonah is put down for his passage point out my state room sir says jonah now i m travel weary i need sleep thou look st like it says the captain there s thy room jonah enters and would lock the door but the lock contains no key hearing him foolishly fumbling there the captain laughs lowly to himself and mutters something about the doors of convicts cells being never allowed to be locked within all dressed and dusty as he is jonah throws himself into his berth and finds the little state room ceiling almost resting on his forehead the air is close and jonah gasps then in that contracted hole sunk too beneath the ship s water line jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowel s wards screwed at its axis against the side a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in jonah s room and the ship heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received the lamp flame and all though in slight motion still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room though in truth infallibly straight itself it but made obvious the false lying levels among which it hung the lamp alarms and frightens jonah as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance but that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him the floor the ceiling and the side are all awry oh so my conscience hangs in me he groans straight upward so it burns but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed still reeling but with conscience yet pricking him as the plungings of the roman race horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish praying god for annihilation until the fit be passed and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels a deep stupor steals over him as over the man who bleeds to death for conscience is the wound and there s naught to staunch it so after sore wrestlings in his berth jonah s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep and now the time of tide has come the ship casts off her cables and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for tarshish all careening glides to sea that ship my friends was the first of recorded smugglers the contraband was jonah but the sea rebels he will not bear the wicked burden a dreadful storm comes on the ship is like to break but now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her when boxes bales and jars are clattering overboard when the wind is shrieking and the men are yelling and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over jonah s head in all this raging tumult jonah sleeps his hideous sleep he sees no black sky and raging sea feels not the reeling timbers and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him aye shipmates jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship a berth in the cabin as i have taken it and was fast asleep but the frightened master comes to him and shrieks in his dead ear what meanest thou o sleeper arise startled from his lethargy by that direful cry jonah staggers to his feet and stumbling to the deck grasps a shroud to look out upon the sea but at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks wave after wave thus leaps into the ship and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat and ever as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead aghast jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul in all his cringing attitudes the god fugitive is now too plainly known the sailors mark him more and more certain grow their suspicions of him and at last fully to test the truth by referring the whole matter to high heaven they fall to casting lots to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them the lot is jonah s that discovered then how furiously they mob him with their questions what is thine occupation whence comest thou thy country what people but mark now my shipmates the behavior of poor jonah the eager mariners but ask him who he is and where from whereas they not only receive an answer to those questions but likewise another answer to a question not put by them but the unsolicited answer is forced from jonah by the hard hand of god that is upon him i am a hebrew he cries and then i fear the lord the god of heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land fear him o jonah aye well mightest thou fear the lord god then straightway he now goes on to make a full confession whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled but still are pitiful for when jonah not yet supplicating god for mercy since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts when wretched jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into the sea for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was upon them they mercifully turn from him and seek by other means to save the ship but all in vain the indignant gale howls louder then with one hand raised invokingly to god with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of jonah and now behold jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east and the sea is still as jonah carries down the gale with him leaving smooth water behind he goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him and the whale shoots to all his ivory teeth like the lord out of the fish s belly but observe his prayer and so many white bolts upon his prison then jonah prayed unto learn a weighty lesson for sinful as he is jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance he feels that his dreadful punishment is just he leaves all his deliverance to god contenting himself with this that spite of all his pains and pangs he will still look towards his holy temple and here shipmates is true and faithful repentance not clamorous for pardon but grateful for punishment and how pleasing to god was this conduct in jonah is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale shipmates i do not place jonah before you to be copied for his sin but i do place him before you as a model for repentance sin not but if you do take heed to repent of it like jonah while he was speaking these words the howling of the shrieking slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher who when describing jonah s sea storm seemed tossed by a storm himself his deep chest heaved as with a ground swell his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow and the light leaping from his eye made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them there now came a lull in his look as he silently turned over the leaves of the book once more and at last standing motionless with closed eyes for the moment seemed communing with god and himself but again he leaned over towards the people and bowing his head lowly with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility he spake these words shipmates god has laid but one hand upon you both his hands press upon me i have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that jonah teaches to all sinners and therefore to ye and still more to me for i am a greater sinner than ye and now how gladly would i come down from this mast head and sit on the hatches there where you sit and listen as you listen while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which jonah teaches to me as a pilot of the living god how being an anointed pilot prophet or speaker of true things and bidden by the lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked nineveh jonah appalled at the hostility he should raise fled from his mission and sought to escape his duty and his god by taking ship at joppa but god is everywhere tarshish he never reached as we have seen god came upon him in the whale and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom and with swift slantings tore him along into the midst of the seas where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down and the weeds were wrapped about his head and all the watery world of woe bowled over him yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet out of the belly of hell when the whale grounded upon the ocean s utmost bones even then god heard the engulphed repenting prophet when he cried then god spake unto the fish and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun and all the delights of air and earth and vomited out jonah upon the dry land when the word of the lord came a second time and jonah bruised and beaten his ears like two sea shells still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean jonah did the almighty s bidding and what was that shipmates to preach the truth to the face of falsehood that was it this shipmates this is that other lesson and woe to that pilot of the living god who slights it woe to him whom this world charms from gospel duty woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when god has brewed them into a gale woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness woe to him who in this world courts not dishonor woe to him who would not be true even though to be false were salvation yea woe to him who as the great pilot paul has it while preaching to others is himself a castaway he drooped and fell away from himself for a moment then lifting his face to them again showed a deep joy in his eyes as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm but oh shipmates on the starboard hand of every woe there is a sure delight and higher the top of that delight than the bottom of the woe is deep is not the main truck higher than the kelson is low delight is to him a far far upward and inward delight who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth ever stands forth his own inexorable self delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him delight is to him who gives no quarter in the truth and kills burns and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of senators and judges delight top gallant delight is to him who acknowledges no law or lord but the lord his god and is only a patriot to heaven delight is to him whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure keel of the ages and eternal delight and deliciousness will be his who coming to lay him down can say with his final breath o father chiefly known to me by thy rod mortal or immortal here i die i have striven to be thine more than to be this world s or mine own yet this is nothing i leave eternity to thee for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his god he said no more but slowly waving a benediction covered his face with his hands and so remained kneeling till all the people had departed and he was left alone in the place returning to the spouter inn from the chapel i found queequeg there quite alone he having left the chapel before the benediction some time he was sitting on a bench before the fire with his feet on the stove hearth and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his peering hard into its face and with a jack knife gently whittling away at its nose meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way but being now interrupted he put up the image and pretty soon going to the table took up a large book there and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity at every fiftieth page as i fancied stopping a moment looking vacantly around him and giving utterance to a long drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment he would then begin again at the next fifty seeming to commence at number one each time as though he could not count more than fifty and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited with much interest i sat watching him savage though he was and hideously marred about the face at least to my taste his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable you cannot hide the soul through all his unearthly tattooings i thought i saw the traces of a simple honest heart and in his large deep eyes fiery black and bold there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils and besides all this there was a certain lofty bearing about the pagan which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim he looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor whether it was too that his head being shaved his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief and looked more expansive than it otherwise would this i will not venture to decide but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one it may seem ridiculous but it reminded me of general washington s head as seen in the popular busts of him it had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows which were likewise very projecting like two long promontories thickly wooded on top queequeg was george washington cannibalistically developed whilst i was thus closely scanning him half pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement he never heeded my presence never troubled himself with so much as a single glance but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous and especially considering the affectionate arm i had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning i thought this indifference of his very strange but savages are strange beings at times you do not know exactly how to take them at first they are overawing their calm self collectedness of simplicity seems a socratic wisdom i had noticed also that queequeg never consorted at all or but very little with the other seamen in the inn he made no advances whatever appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances all this struck me as mighty singular yet upon second thoughts there was something almost sublime in it here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home by the way of cape horn that is which was the only way he could get there thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet jupiter and yet he seemed entirely at his ease preserving the utmost serenity content with his own companionship always equal to himself surely this was a touch of fine philosophy though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that but perhaps to be true philosophers we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving so soon as i hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher i conclude that like the dyspeptic old woman he must have broken his digester as i sat there in that now lonely room the fire burning low in that mild stage when after its first intensity has warmed the air it then only glows to be looked at the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements and peering in upon us silent solitary twain the storm booming without in solemn swells i began to be sensible of strange feelings i felt a melting in me no more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world this soothing savage had redeemed it there he sat his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits wild he was a very sight of sights to see yet i began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him and those same things that would have repelled most others they were the very magnets that thus drew me i ll try a pagan friend thought i since christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy i drew my bench near him and made some friendly signs and hints doing my best to talk with him meanwhile at first he little noticed these advances but presently upon my referring to his last night s hospitalities he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows i told him yes whereat i thought he looked pleased perhaps a little complimented we then turned over the book together and i endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it thus i soon engaged his interest and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town soon i proposed a social smoke and producing his pouch and tomahawk he quietly offered me a puff and then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his and keeping it regularly passing between us if there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the pagan s breast this pleasant genial smoke we had soon thawed it out and left us cronies he seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as i to him and when our smoke was over he pressed his forehead against mine clasped me round the waist and said that henceforth we were married meaning in his country s phrase that we were bosom friends he would gladly die for me if need should be in a countryman this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature a thing to be much distrusted but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply after supper and another social chat and smoke we went to our room together he made me a present of his embalmed head took out his enormous tobacco wallet and groping under the tobacco drew out some thirty dollars in silver then spreading them on the table and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions pushed one of them towards me and said it was mine i was going to remonstrate but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers pockets i let them stay he then went about his evening prayers took out his idol and removed the paper fireboard by certain signs and symptoms i thought he seemed anxious for me to join him but well knowing what was to follow i deliberated a moment whether in case he invited me i would comply or otherwise i was a good christian born and bred in the bosom of the infallible presbyterian church how then could i unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood but what is worship thought i do you suppose now ishmael that the magnanimous god of heaven and earth pagans and all included can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood impossible but what is worship to do the will of god that is worship and what is the will of god to do to my fellow man what i would have my fellow man to do to me that is the will of god now queequeg is my fellow man and what do i wish that this queequeg would do to me why unite with me in my particular presbyterian form of worship consequently i must then unite with him in his ergo i must turn idolator so i kindled the shavings helped prop up the innocent little idol offered him burnt biscuit with queequeg salamed before him twice or thrice kissed his nose and that done we undressed and went to bed at peace with our own consciences and all the world but we did not go to sleep without some little chat how it is i know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends man and wife they say there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning thus then in our hearts honeymoon lay i and queequeg a cosy loving pair we had lain thus in bed chatting and napping at short intervals and queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine and then drawing them back so entirely sociable and free and easy were we when at last by reason of our confabulations what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed and we felt like getting up again though day break was yet some way down the future yes we became very wakeful so much so that our recumbent position began to grow wearisome and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up the clothes well tucked around us leaning against the head board with our four knees drawn up close together and our two noses bending over them as if our knee pans were warming pans we felt very nice and snug the more so since it was so chilly out of doors indeed out of bed clothes too seeing that there was no fire in the room the more so i say because truly to enjoy bodily warmth some small part of you must be cold for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast nothing exists in itself if you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable and have been so a long time then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more but if like queequeg and me in the bed the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled why then indeed in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm for this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich for the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal we had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time when all at once i thought i would open my eyes for when between sheets whether by day or by night and whether asleep or awake i have a way of always keeping my eyes shut in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences though light be more congenial to our clayey part upon opening my eyes then and coming out of my own pleasant and self created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated twelve o clock at night i experienced a disagreeable revulsion nor did i at all object to the hint from queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light seeing that we were so wide awake and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his tomahawk be it said that though i had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them for now i liked nothing better than to have queequeg smoking by me even in bed because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then i no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord s policy of insurance i was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend with our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders we now passed the tomahawk from one to the other till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke illuminated by the flame of the new lit lamp whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes i know not but he now spoke of his native island and eager to hear his history i begged him to go on and tell it he gladly complied though at the time i but ill comprehended not a few of his words yet subsequent disclosures when i had become more familiar with his broken phraseology now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton i give queequeg was a native of kokovoko an island far away to the west and south it is not down in any map true places never are when a new hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout followed by the nibbling goats as if he were a green sapling even then in queequeg s ambitious soul lurked a strong desire to see something more of christendom than a specimen whaler or two his father was a high chief a king his uncle a high priest and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors there was excellent blood in his veins royal stuff though sadly vitiated i fear by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth a sag harbor ship visited his father s bay and queequeg sought a passage to christian lands but the ship having her full complement of seamen spurned his suit and not all the king his father s influence could prevail but queequeg vowed a vow alone in his canoe he paddled off to a distant strait which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island on one side was a coral reef on the other a low tongue of land covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water hiding his canoe still afloat among these thickets with its prow seaward he sat down in the stern paddle low in hand and when the ship was gliding by like a flash he darted out gained her side with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe climbed up the chains and throwing himself at full length upon the deck grappled a ringbolt there and swore not to let it go though hacked in pieces in vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists queequeg was the son of a king and queequeg budged not struck by his desperate dauntlessness and his wild desire to visit christendom the captain at last relented and told him he might make himself at home but this fine young savage this sea prince of wales never saw the captain s cabin they put him down among the sailors and made a whaleman of him but like czar peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen for at bottom so he told me he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were and more than that still better than they were but alas the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even christians could be both miserable and wicked infinitely more so than all his father s heathens arrived at last in old sag harbor and seeing what the sailors did there and then going on to nantucket and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also poor queequeg gave it up for lost thought he it s a wicked world in all meridians i ll die a pagan and thus an old idolator at heart he yet lived among these christians wore their clothes and tried to talk their gibberish hence the queer ways about him though now some time from home by hints i asked him whether he did not propose going back and having a coronation since he might now consider his father dead and gone he being very old and feeble at the last accounts he answered no not yet and added that he was fearful christianity or rather christians had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan kings before him but by and by he said he would return as soon as he felt himself baptized again for the nonce however he proposed to sail about and sow his wild oats in all four oceans they had made a harpooneer of him and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now i asked him what might be his immediate purpose touching his future movements he answered to go to sea again in his old vocation upon this i told him that whaling was my own design and informed him of my intention to sail out of nantucket as being the most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from he at once resolved to accompany me to that island ship aboard the same vessel get into the same watch the same boat the same mess with me in short to share my every hap with both my hands in his boldly dip into the potluck of both worlds to all this i joyously assented for besides the affection i now felt for queequeg he was an experienced harpooneer and as such could not fail to be of great usefulness to one who like me was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling though well acquainted with the sea as known to merchant seamen his story being ended with his pipe s last dying puff queequeg embraced me pressed his forehead against mine and blowing out the light we rolled over from each other this way and that and very soon were sleeping wheelbarrow next morning monday after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber for a block i settled my own and comrade s bill using however my comrade s money the grinning landlord as well as the boarders seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and queequeg especially as peter coffin s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom i now companied with we borrowed a wheelbarrow and embarking our things including my own poor carpet bag and queequeg s canvas sack and hammock away we went down to the moss the little nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf as we were going along the people stared not at queequeg so much for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms but we heeded them not going along wheeling the barrow by turns and queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs i asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons to this in substance he replied that though what i hinted was true enough yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon because it was of assured stuff well tried in many a mortal combat and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales in short like many inland reapers and mowers who go into the farmers meadows armed with their own scythes though in no wise obliged to furnished them even so queequeg for his own private reasons preferred his own harpoon shifting the barrow from my hand to his he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen it was in sag harbor the owners of his ship it seems had lent him one in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house not to seem ignorant about the thing though in truth he was entirely so concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow queequeg puts his chest upon it lashes it fast and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf why said i queequeg you might have known better than that one would think didn t the people laugh upon this he told me another story the people of his island of rokovoko it seems at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at rokovoko and its commander from all accounts a very stately punctilious gentleman at least for a sea captain this commander was invited to the wedding feast of queequeg s sister a pretty young princess just turned of ten well when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride s bamboo cottage this captain marches in and being assigned the post of honor placed himself over against the punchbowl and between the high priest and his majesty the king queequeg s father grace being said for those people have their grace as well as we though queequeg told me that unlike us who at such times look downwards to our platters they on the contrary copying the ducks glance upwards to the great giver of all feasts grace i say being said the high priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island that is dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates seeing himself placed next the priest and noting the ceremony and thinking himself being captain of a ship as having plain precedence over a mere island king especially in the king s own house the captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl taking it i suppose for a huge finger glass now said queequeg what you tink now didn t our people laugh at last passage paid and luggage safe we stood on board the schooner hoisting sail it glided down the acushnet river on one side new bedford rose in terraces of streets their ice covered trees all glittering in the clear cold air huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves and side by side the world wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch all betokening that new cruises were on the start that one most perilous and long voyage ended only begins a second and a second ended only begins a third and so on for ever and for aye such is the endlessness yea the intolerableness of all earthly effort gaining the more open water the bracing breeze waxed fresh the little moss tossed the quick foam from her bows as a young colt his snortings how i snuffed that tartar air how i spurned that turnpike earth that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records at the same foam fountain queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me his dusky nostrils swelled apart he showed his filed and pointed teeth on on we flew and our offing gained the moss did homage to the blast ducked and dived her brows as a slave before the sultan sideways leaning we sideways darted every ropeyarn tingling like a wire the two tall masts buckling like indian canes in land tornadoes so full of this reeling scene were we as we stood by the plunging bowsprit that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers a lubber like assembly who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable as though a white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro but there were some boobies and bumpkins there who by their intense greenness must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his back i thought the bumpkin s hour of doom was come dropping his harpoon the brawny savage caught him in his arms and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength sent him high up bodily into the air then slightly tapping his stern in mid somerset the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet while queequeg turning his back upon him lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff capting capting yelled the bumpkin running towards that officer capting capting here s the devil hallo you sir cried the captain a gaunt rib of the sea stalking up to queequeg what in thunder do you mean by that don t you know you might have killed that chap what him say said queequeg as he mildly turned to me he say said i that you came near kill e that man there pointing to the still shivering greenhorn kill e cried queequeg twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly expression of disdain ah him bevy small e fish e queequeg no kill e so small e fish e queequeg kill e big whale look you roared the captain i ll kill e you you cannibal if you try any more of your tricks aboard here so mind your eye but it so happened just then that it was high time for the captain to mind his own eye the prodigious strain upon the main sail had parted the weather sheet and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck the poor fellow whom queequeg had handled so roughly was swept overboard all hands were in a panic and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it seemed madness it flew from right to left and back again almost in one ticking of a watch and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters nothing was done and nothing seemed capable of being done those on deck rushed towards the bows and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale in the midst of this consternation queequeg dropped deftly to his knees and crawling under the path of the boom whipped hold of a rope secured one end to the bulwarks and then flinging the other like a lasso caught it round the boom as it swept over his head and at the next jerk the spar was that way trapped and all was safe the schooner was run into the wind and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat queequeg stripped to the waist darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap for three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog throwing his long arms straight out before him and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam i looked at the grand and glorious fellow but saw no one to be saved the greenhorn had gone down shooting himself perpendicularly from the water queequeg now took an instant s glance around him and seeming to see just how matters were dived down and disappeared a few minutes more and he rose again one arm still striking out and with the other dragging a lifeless form the boat soon picked them up the poor bumpkin was restored all hands voted queequeg a noble trump the captain begged his pardon from that hour i clove to queequeg like a barnacle yea till poor queequeg took his last long dive was there ever such unconsciousness he did not seem to think that he at all deserved a medal from the humane and magnanimous societies he only asked for water fresh water something to wipe the brine off that done he put on dry clothes lighted his pipe and leaning against the bulwarks and mildly eyeing those around him seemed to be saying to himself it s a mutual joint stock world in all meridians we cannibals must help these christians nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning so after a fine run we safely arrived in nantucket nantucket take out your map and look at it see what a real corner of the world it occupies how it stands there away off shore more lonely than the eddystone lighthouse look at it a mere hillock and elbow of sand all beach without a background there is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there they don t grow naturally that they import canada thistles that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask that pieces of wood in nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in rome that people there plant toadstools before their houses to get under the shade in summer time that one blade of grass makes an oasis three blades in a day s walk a prairie that they wear quicksand shoes something like laplander snowshoes that they are so shut up belted about every way inclosed surrounded and made an utter island of by the ocean that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles but these extravaganzas only show that nantucket is no illinois look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red men thus goes the legend in olden times an eagle swooped down upon the new england coast and carried off an infant indian in his talons with loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters they resolved to follow in the same direction setting out in their canoes after a perilous passage they discovered the island and there they found an empty ivory casket the poor little indian s skeleton what wonder then that these nantucketers born on a beach should take to the sea for a livelihood they first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand grown bolder they waded out with nets for mackerel more experienced they pushed off in boats and captured cod and at last launching a navy of great ships on the sea explored this watery world put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it peeped in at behring s straits and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood most monstrous and most mountainous that himmalehan salt sea mastodon clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults and thus have these naked nantucketers these sea hermits issuing from their ant hill in the sea overrun and conquered the watery world like so many alexanders parcelling out among them the atlantic pacific and indian oceans as the three pirate powers did poland let america add mexico to texas and pile cuba upon canada let the english overswarm all india and hang out their blazing banner from the sun two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the nantucketer s for the sea is his he owns it as emperors own empires other seamen having but a right of way through it merchant ships are but extension bridges armed ones but floating forts even pirates and privateers though following the sea as highwaymen the road they but plunder other ships other fragments of the land like themselves without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself the nantucketer he alone resides and riots on the sea he alone in bible language goes down to it in ships to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation there is his home there lies his business which a noah s flood would not interrupt though it overwhelmed all the millions in china he lives on the sea as prairie cocks in the prairie he hides among the waves he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the alps for years he knows not the land so that when he comes to it at last it smells like another world more strangely than the moon would to an earthsman with the landless gull that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows so at nightfall the nantucketer out of sight of land furls his sails and lays him to his rest while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales it was quite late in the evening when the little moss came snugly to anchor and queequeg and i went ashore so we could attend to no business that day at least none but a supper and a bed the landlord of the spouter inn had recommended us to his cousin hosea hussey of the try pots whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all nantucket and moreover he had assured us that cousin hosea as he called him was famous for his chowders in short he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot luck at the try pots but the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to the starboard and that done then ask the first man we met where the place was these crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first especially as at the outset queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse our first point of departure must be left on the larboard hand whereas i had understood peter coffin to say it was on the starboard however by dint of beating about a little in the dark and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way we at last came to something which there was no mistaking two enormous wooden pots painted black and suspended by asses ears swung from the cross trees of an old top mast planted in front of an old doorway the horns of the cross trees were sawed off on the other side so that this old top mast looked not a little like a gallows perhaps i was over sensitive to such impressions at the time but i could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving a sort of crick was in my neck as i gazed up to the two remaining horns yes two of them one for queequeg and one for me it s ominous thinks i a coffin my innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port tombstones staring at me in the whalemen s chapel and here a gallows and a pair of prodigious black pots too are these last throwing out oblique hints touching tophet i was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown standing in the porch of the inn under a dull red lamp swinging there that looked much like an injured eye and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt get along with ye said she to the man or i ll be combing ye come on queequeg said i all right there s mrs hussey and so it turned out mr hosea hussey being from home but leaving mrs hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs upon making known our desires for a supper and a bed mrs hussey postponing further scolding for the present ushered us into a little room and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded repast turned round to us and said clam or cod what s that about cods ma am said i with much politeness clam or cod she repeated a clam for supper a cold clam is that what you mean mrs hussey says i but that s a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter time ain t it mrs hussey but being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple shirt who was waiting for it in the entry and seeming to hear nothing but the word clam mrs hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen and bawling out clam for two disappeared queequeg said i do you think that we can make out a supper for us both on one clam however a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us but when that smoking chowder came in the mystery was delightfully explained oh sweet friends hearken to me it was made of small juicy clams scarcely bigger than hazel nuts mixed with pounded ship biscuit and salted pork cut up into little flakes the whole enriched with butter and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage and in particular queequeg seeing his favorite fishing food before him and the chowder being surpassingly excellent we despatched it with great expedition when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of mrs hussey s clam and cod announcement i thought i would try a little experiment stepping to the kitchen door i uttered the word cod with great emphasis and resumed my seat in a few moments the savory steam came forth again but with a different flavor and in good time a fine cod chowder was placed before us we resumed business and while plying our spoons in the bowl thinks i to myself i wonder now if this here has any effect on the head what s that stultifying saying about chowder headed people but look queequeg ain t that a live eel in your bowl where s your harpoon fishiest of all fishy places was the try pots which well deserved its name for the pots there were always boiling chowders chowder for breakfast and chowder for dinner and chowder for supper till you began to look for fish bones coming through your clothes the area before the house was paved with clam shells mrs hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra and hosea hussey had his account books bound in superior old shark skin there was a fishy flavor to the milk too which i could not at all account for till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen s boats i saw hosea s brindled cow feeding on fish remnants and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod s decapitated head looking very slip shod i assure ye supper concluded we received a lamp and directions from mrs hussey concerning the nearest way to bed but as queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs the lady reached forth her arm and demanded his harpoon she allowed no harpoon in her chambers why not said i every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon but why not because it s dangerous says she ever since young stiggs coming from that unfort nt v y ge of his when he was gone four years and a half with only three barrels of ile was found dead in my first floor back with his harpoon in his side ever since then i allow no boarders to take sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night so mr queequeg for she had learned his name i will just take this here iron and keep it for you till morning but the chowder clam or cod to morrow for breakfast men both says i and let s have a couple of smoked herring by way of variety in bed we concocted our plans for the morrow but to my surprise and no small concern queequeg now gave me to understand that he had been diligently consulting yojo the name of his black little god and yojo had told him two or three times over and strongly insisted upon it everyway that instead of our going together among the whaling fleet in harbor and in concert selecting our craft instead of this i say yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly with me inasmuch as yojo purposed befriending us and in order to do so had already pitched upon a vessel which if left to myself i ishmael should infallibly light upon for all the world as though it had turned out by chance and in that vessel i must immediately ship myself for the present irrespective of queequeg i have forgotten to mention that in many things queequeg placed great confidence in the excellence of yojo s judgment and surprising forecast of things and cherished yojo with considerable esteem as a rather good sort of god who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs now this plan of queequeg s or rather yojo s touching the selection of our craft i did not like that plan at all i had not a little relied on queequeg s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our fortunes securely but as all my remonstrances produced no effect upon queequeg i was obliged to acquiesce and accordingly prepared to set about this business with a determined rushing sort of energy and vigor that should quickly settle that trifling little affair next morning early leaving queequeg shut up with yojo in our little bedroom for it seemed that it was some sort of lent or ramadan or day of fasting humiliation and prayer with queequeg and yojo that day how it was i never could find out for though i applied myself to it several times i never could master his liturgies and xxxix articles leaving queequeg then fasting on his tomahawk pipe and yojo warming himself at his sacrificial fire of shavings i sallied out among the shipping after much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries i learnt that there were three ships up for three years voyages the devil dam the tit bit and the pequod devil dam i do not know the origin of tit bit is obvious pequod you will no doubt remember was the name of a celebrated tribe of massachusetts indians now extinct as the ancient medes i peered and pryed about the devil dam from her hopped over to the tit bit and finally going on board the pequod looked around her for a moment and then decided that this was the very ship for us you may have seen many a quaint craft in your day for aught i know squared toed luggers mountainous japanese junks butter box galliots and what not but take my word for it you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old pequod she was a ship of the old school rather small if anything with an old fashioned claw footed look about her long seasoned and weather stained in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans her old hull s complexion was darkened like a french grenadier s who has alike fought in egypt and siberia her venerable bows looked bearded her masts cut somewhere on the coast of japan where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of cologne her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled like the pilgrim worshipped flag stone in canterbury cathedral where beckett bled but to all these her old antiquities were added new and marvellous features pertaining to the wild business that for more than half a century she had followed old captain peleg many years her chief mate before he commanded another vessel of his own and now a retired seaman and one of the principal owners of the pequod this old peleg during the term of his chief mateship had built upon her original grotesqueness and inlaid it all over with a quaintness both of material and device unmatched by anything except it be thorkill hake s carved buckler or bedstead she was apparelled like any barbaric ethiopian emperor his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory she was a thing of trophies a cannibal of a craft tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies all round her unpanelled open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale inserted there for pins to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea ivory scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm she sported there a tiller and that tiller was in one mass curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe the helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest felt like the tartar when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw a noble craft but somehow a most melancholy all noble things are touched with that now when i looked about the quarter deck for some one having authority in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage at first i saw nobody but i could not well overlook a strange sort of tent or rather wigwam pitched a little behind the main mast it seemed only a temporary erection used in port it was of a conical shape some ten feet high consisting of the long huge slabs of limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the right whale planted with their broad ends on the deck a circle of these slabs laced together mutually sloped towards each other and at the apex united in a tufted point where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like a top knot on some old pottowotamie sachem s head a triangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship so that the insider commanded a complete view forward and half concealed in this queer tenement i at length found one who by his aspect seemed to have authority and who it being noon and the ship s work suspended was now enjoying respite from the burden of command he was seated on an old fashioned oaken chair wriggling all over with curious carving and the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed there was nothing so very particular perhaps about the appearance of the elderly man i saw he was brown and brawny like most old seamen and heavily rolled up in blue pilot cloth cut in the quaker style only there was a fine and almost microscopic net work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales and always looking to windward for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together such eye wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl is this the captain of the pequod said i advancing to the door of the tent supposing it be the captain of the pequod what dost thou want of him he demanded i was thinking of shipping thou wast wast thou i see thou are no nantucketer ever been in a stove boat no sir i never have dost know nothing at all about whaling i dare say eh nothing sir but i have no doubt i shall soon learn i ve been several voyages in the merchant service and i think that merchant service be damned talk not that lingo to me dost see that leg i ll take that leg away from thy stern if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again marchant service indeed i suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships but flukes man what makes thee want to go a whaling eh it looks a little suspicious don t it eh hast not been a pirate hast thou didst not rob thy last captain didst thou dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea i protested my innocence of these things i saw that under the mask of these half humorous inuendoes this old seaman as an insulated quakerish nantucketer was full of his insular prejudices and rather distrustful of all aliens unless they hailed from cape cod or the vineyard but what takes thee a whaling i want to know that before i think of shipping ye well sir i want to see what whaling is i want to see the world want to see what whaling is eh have ye clapped eye on captain ahab who is captain ahab sir aye aye i thought so captain ahab is the captain of this ship i am mistaken then i thought i was speaking to the captain himself thou art speaking to captain peleg that s who ye are speaking to young man it belongs to me and captain bildad to see the pequod fitted out for the voyage and supplied with all her needs including crew we are part owners and agents but as i was going to say if thou wantest to know what whaling is as thou tellest ye do i can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it past backing out clap eye on captain ahab young man and thou wilt find that he has only one leg what do you mean sir was the other one lost by a whale lost by a whale young man come nearer to me it was devoured chewed up crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat ah ah i was a little alarmed by his energy perhaps also a little touched at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation but said as calmly as i could what you say is no doubt true enough sir but how could i know there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale though indeed i might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident look ye now young man thy lungs are a sort of soft d ye see thou dost not talk shark a bit sure ye ve been to sea before now sure of that sir said i i thought i told you that i had been four voyages in the merchant hard down out of that mind what i said about the marchant service don t aggravate me i won t have it but let us understand each other i have given thee a hint about what whaling is do ye yet feel inclined for it i do sir very good now art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale s throat and then jump after it answer quick i am sir if it should be positively indispensable to do so not to be got rid of that is which i don t take to be the fact good again now then thou not only wantest to go a whaling to find out by experience what whaling is but ye also want to go in order to see the world was not that what ye said i thought so well then just step forward there and take a peep over the weather bow and then back to me and tell me what ye see there for a moment i stood a little puzzled by this curious request not knowing exactly how to take it whether humorously or in earnest but concentrating all his crow s feet into one scowl captain peleg started me on the errand going forward and glancing over the weather bow i perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood tide was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean the prospect was unlimited but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding not the slightest variety that i could see well what s the report said peleg when i came back what did ye see not much i replied nothing but water considerable horizon though and there s a squall coming up i think well what dost thou think then of seeing the world do ye wish to go round cape horn to see any more of it eh can t ye see the world where you stand i was a little staggered but go a whaling i must and i would and the pequod was as good a ship as any i thought the best and all this i now repeated to peleg seeing me so determined he expressed his willingness to ship me and thou mayest as well sign the papers right off he added come along with ye and so saying he led the way below deck into the cabin seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and surprising figure it turned out to be captain bildad who along with captain peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel the other shares as is sometimes the case in these ports being held by a crowd of old annuitants widows fatherless children and chancery wards each owning about the value of a timber head or a foot of plank or a nail or two in the ship people in nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest now bildad like peleg and indeed many other nantucketers was a quaker the island having been originally settled by that sect and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the quaker only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous for some of these same quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale hunters they are fighting quakers they are quakers with a vengeance so that there are instances among them of men who named with scripture names a singularly common fashion on the island and in childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the quaker idiom still from the audacious daring and boundless adventure of their subsequent lives strangely blend with these unoutgrown peculiarities a thousand bold dashes of character not unworthy a scandinavian sea king or a poetical pagan roman and when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force with a globular brain and a ponderous heart who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night watches in the remotest waters and beneath constellations never seen here at the north been led to think untraditionally and independently receiving all nature s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding breast and thereby chiefly but with some help from accidental advantages to learn a bold and nervous lofty language that man makes one in a whole nation s census a mighty pageant creature formed for noble tragedies nor will it at all detract from him dramatically regarded if either by birth or other circumstances he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature for all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness be sure of this o young ambition all mortal greatness is but disease but as yet we have not to do with such an one but with quite another and still a man who if indeed peculiar it only results again from another phase of the quaker modified by individual circumstances like captain peleg captain bildad was a well to do retired whaleman but unlike captain peleg who cared not a rush for what are called serious things and indeed deemed those selfsame serious things the veriest of all trifles captain bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of nantucket quakerism but all his subsequent ocean life and the sight of many unclad lovely island creatures round the horn all that had not moved this native born quaker one single jot had not so much as altered one angle of his vest still for all this immutableness was there some lack of common consistency about worthy captain bildad though refusing from conscientious scruples to bear arms against land invaders yet himself had illimitably invaded the atlantic and pacific and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed yet had he in his straight bodied coat spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore how now in the contemplative evening of his days the pious bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence i do not know but it did not seem to concern him much and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man s religion is one thing and this practical world quite another this world pays dividends rising from a little cabin boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab to a harpooneer in a broad shad bellied waistcoat from that becoming boat header chief mate and captain and finally a ship owner bildad as i hinted before had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well earned income now bildad i am sorry to say had the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks and in his sea going days a bitter hard task master they told me in nantucket though it certainly seems a curious story that when he sailed the old categut whaleman his crew upon arriving home were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital sore exhausted and worn out for a pious man especially for a quaker he was certainly rather hard hearted to say the least he never used to swear though at his men they said but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel unmitigated hard work out of them when bildad was a chief mate to have his drab colored eye intently looking at you made you feel completely nervous till you could clutch something a hammer or a marling spike and go to work like mad at something or other never mind what indolence and idleness perished from before him his own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character on his long gaunt body he carried no spare flesh no superfluous beard his chin having a soft economical nap to it like the worn nap of his broad brimmed hat such then was the person that i saw seated on the transom when i followed captain peleg down into the cabin the space between the decks was small and there bolt upright sat old bildad who always sat so and never leaned and this to save his coat tails his broad brim was placed beside him his legs were stiffly crossed his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin and spectacles on nose he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume bildad cried captain peleg at it again bildad eh ye have been studying those scriptures now for the last thirty years to my certain knowledge how far ye got bildad as if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate bildad without noticing his present irreverence quietly looked up and seeing me glanced again inquiringly towards peleg he says he s our man bildad said peleg he wants to ship dost thee said bildad in a hollow tone and turning round to me i dost said i unconsciously he was so intense a quaker what do ye think of him bildad said peleg he ll do said bildad eyeing me and then went on spelling away at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible i thought him the queerest old quaker i ever saw especially as peleg his friend and old shipmate seemed such a blusterer but i said nothing only looking round me sharply peleg now threw open a chest and drawing forth the ship s articles placed pen and ink before him and seated himself at a little table i began to think it was high time to settle with myself at what terms i would be willing to engage for the voyage i was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages but all hands including the captain received certain shares of the profits called lays and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship s company i was also aware that being a green hand at whaling my own lay would not be very large but considering that i was used to the sea could steer a ship splice a rope and all that i made no doubt that from all i had heard i should be offered at least the th lay that is the th part of the clear nett proceeds of the voyage whatever that might eventually amount to and though the th lay was what they call a rather long lay yet it was better than nothing and if we had a lucky voyage might pretty nearly pay for the clothing i would wear out on it not to speak of my three years beef and board for which i would not have to pay one stiver it might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune and so it was a very poor way indeed but i am one of those that never take on about princely fortunes and am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me while i am putting up at this grim sign of the thunder cloud upon the whole i thought that the th lay would be about the fair thing but would not have been surprised had i been offered the th considering i was of a broad shouldered make but one thing nevertheless that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was this ashore i had heard something of both captain peleg and his unaccountable old crony bildad how that they being the principal proprietors of the pequod therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners left nearly the whole management of the ship s affairs to these two and i did not know but what the stingy old bildad might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands especially as i now found him on board the pequod quite at home there in the cabin and reading his bible as if at his own fireside now while peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack knife old bildad to my no small surprise considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings bildad never heeded us but went on mumbling to himself out of his book lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth well captain bildad interrupted peleg what d ye say what lay shall we give this young man thou knowest best was the sepulchral reply the seven hundred and seventy seventh wouldn t be too much would it where moth and rust do corrupt but lay lay indeed thought i and such a lay the seven hundred and seventy seventh well old bildad you are determined that i for one shall not lay up many lays here below where moth and rust do corrupt it was an exceedingly long lay that indeed and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy seven is a pretty large number yet when you come to make a teenth of it you will then see i say that the seven hundred and seventy seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy seven gold doubloons and so i thought at the time why blast your eyes bildad cried peleg thou dost not want to swindle this young man he must have more than that seven hundred and seventy seventh again said bildad without lifting his eyes and then went on mumbling for where your treasure is there will your heart be also i am going to put him down for the three hundredth said peleg do ye hear that bildad the three hundredth lay i say bildad laid down his book and turning solemnly towards him said captain peleg thou hast a generous heart but thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship widows and orphans many of them and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans the seven hundred and seventy seventh lay captain peleg thou bildad roared peleg starting up and clattering about the cabin blast ye captain bildad if i had followed thy advice in these matters i would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round cape horn captain peleg said bildad steadily thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water or ten fathoms i can t tell but as thou art still an impenitent man captain peleg i greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit captain peleg fiery pit fiery pit ye insult me man past all natural bearing ye insult me it s an all fired outrage to tell any human creature that he s bound to hell flukes and flames bildad say that again to me and start my soul bolts but i ll i ll yes i ll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on out of the cabin ye canting drab colored son of a wooden gun a straight wake with ye as he thundered out this he made a rush at bildad but with a marvellous oblique sliding celerity bildad for that time eluded him alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and responsible owners of the ship and feeling half a mind to give up all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded i stepped aside from the door to give egress to bildad who i made no doubt was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened wrath of peleg but to my astonishment he sat down again on the transom very quietly and seemed to have not the slightest intention of withdrawing he seemed quite used to impenitent peleg and his ways as for peleg after letting off his rage as he had there seemed no more left in him and he too sat down like a lamb though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated whew he whistled at last the squall s gone off to leeward i think bildad thou used to be good at sharpening a lance mend that pen will ye my jack knife here needs the grindstone that s he thank ye bildad now then my young man ishmael s thy name didn t ye say well then down ye go here ishmael for the three hundredth lay captain peleg said i i have a friend with me who wants to ship too shall i bring him down to morrow to be sure said peleg fetch him along and we ll look at him what lay does he want groaned bildad glancing up from the book in which he had again been burying himself oh never thee mind about that bildad said peleg has he ever whaled it any turning to me killed more whales than i can count captain peleg well bring him along then and after signing the papers off i went nothing doubting but that i had done a good morning s work and that the pequod was the identical ship that yojo had provided to carry queequeg and me round the cape but i had not proceeded far when i began to bethink me that the captain with whom i was to sail yet remained unseen by me though indeed in many cases a whale ship will be completely fitted out and receive all her crew on board ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief that if the captain have a family or any absorbing concernment of that sort he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea however it is always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands turning back i accosted captain peleg inquiring where captain ahab was to be found and what dost thou want of captain ahab it s all right enough thou art shipped yes but i should like to see him but i don t think thou wilt be able to at present i don t know exactly what s the matter with him but he keeps close inside the house a sort of sick and yet he don t look so in fact he ain t sick but no he isn t well either any how young man he won t always see me so i don t suppose he will thee he s a queer man captain ahab so some think but a good one oh thou lt like him well enough no fear no fear he s a grand ungodly god like man captain ahab doesn t speak much but when he does speak then you may well listen mark ye be forewarned ahab s above the common ahab s been in colleges as well as mong the cannibals been used to deeper wonders than the waves fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales his lance aye the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle oh he ain t captain bildad no and he ain t captain peleg he s ahab boy and ahab of old thou knowest was a crowned king and a very vile one when that wicked king was slain the dogs did they not lick his blood come hither to me hither hither said peleg with a significance in his eye that almost startled me look ye lad never say that on board the pequod never say it anywhere captain ahab did not name himself twas a foolish ignorant whim of his crazy widowed mother who died when he was only a twelvemonth old and yet the old squaw tistig at gayhead said that the name would somehow prove prophetic and perhaps other fools like her may tell thee the same i wish to warn thee it s a lie i know captain ahab well i ve sailed with him as mate years ago i know what he is a good man not a pious good man like bildad but a swearing good man something like me only there s a good deal more of him aye aye i know that he was never very jolly and i know that on the passage home he was a little out of his mind for a spell but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about as any one might see i know too that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale he s been a kind of moody desperate moody and savage sometimes but that will all pass off and once for all let me tell thee and assure thee young man it s better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one so good bye to thee and wrong not captain ahab because he happens to have a wicked name besides my boy he has a wife not three voyages wedded a sweet resigned girl think of that by that sweet girl that old man has a child hold ye then there can be any utter hopeless harm in ahab no no my lad stricken blasted if he be ahab has his humanities as i walked away i was full of thoughtfulness what had been incidentally revealed to me of captain ahab filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him and somehow at the time i felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him but for i don t know what unless it was the cruel loss of his leg and yet i also felt a strange awe of him but that sort of awe which i cannot at all describe was not exactly awe i do not know what it was but i felt it and it did not disincline me towards him though i felt impatience at what seemed like mystery in him so imperfectly as he was known to me then however my thoughts were at length carried in other directions so that for the present dark ahab slipped my mind as queequeg s ramadan or fasting and humiliation was to continue all day i did not choose to disturb him till towards night fall for i cherish the greatest respect towards everybody s religious obligations never mind how comical and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad stool or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name i say we good presbyterian christians should be charitable in these things and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals pagans and what not because of their half crazy conceits on these subjects there was queequeg now certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about yojo and his ramadan but what of that queequeg thought he knew what he was about i suppose he seemed to be content and there let him rest all our arguing with him would not avail let him be i say and heaven have mercy on us all presbyterians and pagans alike for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head and sadly need mending towards evening when i felt assured that all his performances and rituals must be over i went up to his room and knocked at the door but no answer i tried to open it but it was fastened inside queequeg said i softly through the key hole all silent i say queequeg why don t you speak it s i ishmael but all remained still as before i began to grow alarmed i had allowed him such abundant time i thought he might have had an apoplectic fit i looked through the key hole but the door opening into an odd corner of the room the key hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one i could only see part of the foot board of the bed and a line of the wall but nothing more i was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden shaft of queequeg s harpoon which the landlady the evening previous had taken from him before our mounting to the chamber that s strange thought i but at any rate since the harpoon stands yonder and he seldom or never goes abroad without it therefore he must be inside here and no possible mistake queequeg queequeg all still something must have happened apoplexy i tried to burst open the door but it stubbornly resisted running down stairs i quickly stated my suspicions to the first person i met the chambermaid la la she cried i thought something must be the matter i went to make the bed after breakfast and the door was locked and not a mouse to be heard and it s been just so silent ever since but i thought may be you had both gone off and locked your baggage in for safe keeping la la ma am mistress murder mrs hussey apoplexy and with these cries she ran towards the kitchen i following mrs hussey soon appeared with a mustard pot in one hand and a vinegar cruet in the other having just broken away from the occupation of attending to the castors and scolding her little black boy meantime wood house cried i which way to it run for god s sake and fetch something to pry open the door the axe the axe he s had a stroke depend upon it and so saying i was unmethodically rushing up stairs again empty handed when mrs hussey interposed the mustard pot and vinegar cruet and the entire castor of her countenance what s the matter with you young man get the axe for god s sake run for the doctor some one while i pry it open look here said the landlady quickly putting down the vinegar cruet so as to have one hand free look here are you talking about prying open any of my doors and with that she seized my arm what s the matter with you what s the matter with you shipmate in as calm but rapid a manner as possible i gave her to understand the whole case unconsciously clapping the vinegar cruet to one side of her nose she ruminated for an instant then exclaimed no i haven t seen it since i put it there running to a little closet under the landing of the stairs she glanced in and returning told me that queequeg s harpoon was missing he s killed himself she cried it s unfort nate stiggs done over again there goes another counterpane god pity his poor mother it will be the ruin of my house has the poor lad a sister where s that girl there betty go to snarles the painter and tell him to paint me a sign with no suicides permitted here and no smoking in the parlor might as well kill both birds at once kill the lord be merciful to his ghost what s that noise there you young man avast there and running up after me she caught me as i was again trying to force open the door i won t allow it i won t have my premises spoiled go for the locksmith there s one about a mile from here but avast putting her hand in her side pocket here s a key that ll fit i guess let s see and with that she turned it in the lock but alas queequeg s supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within have to burst it open said i and was running down the entry a little for a good start when the landlady caught at me again vowing i should not break down her premises but i tore from her and with a sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark with a prodigious noise the door flew open and the knob slamming against the wall sent the plaster to the ceiling and there good heavens there sat queequeg altogether cool and self collected right in the middle of the room squatting on his hams and holding yojo on top of his head he looked neither one way nor the other way but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life queequeg said i going up to him queequeg what s the matter with you he hain t been a sittin so all day has he said the landlady but all we said not a word could we drag out of him i almost felt like pushing him over so as to change his position for it was almost intolerable it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained especially as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of eight or ten hours going too without his regular meals mrs hussey said i he s alive at all events so leave us if you please and i will see to this strange affair myself closing the door upon the landlady i endeavored to prevail upon queequeg to take a chair but in vain there he sat and all he could do for all my polite arts and blandishments he would not move a peg nor say a single word nor even look at me nor notice my presence in any the slightest way i wonder thought i if this can possibly be a part of his ramadan do they fast on their hams that way in his native island it must be so yes it s part of his creed i suppose well then let him rest he ll get up sooner or later no doubt it can t last for ever thank god and his ramadan only comes once a year and i don t believe it s very punctual then i went down to supper after sitting a long time listening to the long stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum pudding voyage as they called it that is a short whaling voyage in a schooner or brig confined to the north of the line in the atlantic ocean only after listening to these plum puddingers till nearly eleven o clock i went up stairs to go to bed feeling quite sure by this time queequeg must certainly have brought his ramadan to a termination but no there he was just where i had left him he had not stirred an inch i began to grow vexed with him it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room holding a piece of wood on his head for heaven s sake queequeg get up and shake yourself get up and have some supper you ll starve you ll kill yourself queequeg but not a word did he reply despairing of him therefore i determined to go to bed and to sleep and no doubt before a great while he would follow me but previous to turning in i took my heavy bearskin jacket and threw it over him as it promised to be a very cold night and he had nothing but his ordinary round jacket on for some time do all i would i could not get into the faintest doze i had blown out the candle and the mere thought of queequeg not four feet off sitting there in that uneasy position stark alone in the cold and dark this made me really wretched think of it sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary unaccountable ramadan but somehow i dropped off at last and knew nothing more till break of day when looking over the bedside there squatted queequeg as if he had been screwed down to the floor but as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the window up he got with stiff and grating joints but with a cheerful look limped towards me where i lay pressed his forehead again against mine and said his ramadan was over now as i before hinted i have no objection to any person s religion be it what it may so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person because that other person don t believe it also but when a man s religion becomes really frantic when it is a positive torment to him and in fine makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in then i think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him and just so i now did with queequeg queequeg said i get into bed now and lie and listen to me i then went on beginning with the rise and progress of the primitive religions and coming down to the various religions of the present time during which time i labored to show queequeg that all these lents ramadans and prolonged ham squattings in cold cheerless rooms were stark nonsense bad for the health useless for the soul opposed in short to the obvious laws of hygiene and common sense i told him too that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage it pained me very badly pained me to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous ramadan of his besides argued i fasting makes the body cave in hence the spirit caves in and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half starved this is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters in one word queequeg said i rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by ramadans i then asked queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia expressing the idea very plainly so that he could take it in he said no only upon one memorable occasion it was after a great feast given by his father the king on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o clock in the afternoon and all cooked and eaten that very evening no more queequeg said i shuddering that will do for i knew the inferences without his further hinting them i had seen a sailor who had visited that very island and he told me that it was the custom when a great battle had been gained there to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of the victor and then one by one they were placed in great wooden trenchers and garnished round like a pilau with breadfruit and cocoanuts and with some parsley in their mouths were sent round with the victor s compliments to all his friends just as though these presents were so many christmas turkeys after all i do not think that my remarks about religion made much impression upon queequeg because in the first place he somehow seemed dull of hearing on that important subject unless considered from his own point of view and in the second place he did not more than one third understand me couch my ideas simply as i would and finally he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than i did he looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety at last we rose and dressed and queequeg taking a prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of his ramadan we sallied out to board the pequod sauntering along and picking our teeth with halibut bones as we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship queequeg carrying his harpoon captain peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft unless they previously produced their papers what do you mean by that captain peleg said i now jumping on the bulwarks and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf i mean he replied he must show his papers yea said captain bildad in his hollow voice sticking his head from behind peleg s out of the wigwam he must show that he s converted son of darkness he added turning to queequeg art thou at present in communion with any christian church why said i he s a member of the first congregational church here be it said that many tattooed savages sailing in nantucket ships at last come to be converted into the churches first congregational church cried bildad what that worships in deacon deuteronomy coleman s meeting house and so saying taking out his spectacles he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief and putting them on very carefully came out of the wigwam and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks took a good long look at queequeg how long hath he been a member he then said turning to me not very long i rather guess young man no said peleg and he hasn t been baptized right either or it would have washed some of that devil s blue off his face do tell now cried bildad is this philistine a regular member of deacon deuteronomy s meeting i never saw him going there and i pass it every lord s day i don t know anything about deacon deuteronomy or his meeeting said i all i know is that queequeg here is a born member of the first congregational church he is a deacon himself queequeg is young man said bildad sternly thou art skylarking with me explain thyself thou young hittite what church dost thee mean answer me finding myself thus hard pushed i replied i mean sir the same ancient catholic church to which you and i and captain peleg there and queequeg here and all of us and every mother s son and soul of us belong the great and everlasting first congregation of this whole worshipping world we all belong to that only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief in that we all join hands splice thou mean st splice hands cried peleg drawing nearer young man you d better ship for a missionary instead of a fore mast hand i never heard a better sermon deacon deuteronomy why father mapple himself couldn t beat it and he s reckoned something come aboard come aboard never mind about the papers i say tell quohog there what s that you call him tell quohog to step along by the great anchor what a harpoon he s got there looks like good stuff that and he handles it about right i say quohog or whatever your name is did you ever stand in the head of a whale boat did you ever strike a fish without saying a word queequeg in his wild sort of way jumped upon the bulwarks from thence into the bows of one of the whale boats hanging to the side and then bracing his left knee and poising his harpoon cried out in some such way as this cap ain you see him small drop tar on water dere you see him well spose him one whale eye well den and taking sharp aim at it he darted the iron right over old bildad s broad brim clean across the ship s decks and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight now said queequeg quietly hauling in the line spos ee him whale e eye why dad whale dead quick bildad said peleg his partner who aghast at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon had retreated towards the cabin gangway quick i say you bildad and get the ship s papers we must have hedgehog there i mean quohog in one of our boats look ye quohog we ll give ye the ninetieth lay and that s more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of nantucket so down we went into the cabin and to my great joy queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship s company to which i myself belonged when all preliminaries were over and peleg had got everything ready for signing he turned to me and said i guess quohog there don t know how to write does he i say quohog blast ye dost thou sign thy name or make thy mark but at this question queequeg who had twice or thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies looked no ways abashed but taking the offered pen copied upon the paper in the proper place an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm so that through captain peleg s obstinate mistake touching his appellative it stood something like this quohog his mark meanwhile captain bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing queequeg and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his broad skirted drab coat took out a bundle of tracts and selecting one entitled the latter day coming or no time to lose placed it in queequeg s hands and then grasping them and the book with both his looked earnestly into his eyes and said son of darkness i must do my duty by thee i am part owner of this ship and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew if thou still clingest to thy pagan ways which i sadly fear i beseech thee remain not for aye a belial bondsman spurn the idol bell and the hideous dragon turn from the wrath to come mind thine eye i say oh goodness gracious steer clear of the fiery pit something of the salt sea yet lingered in old bildad s language heterogeneously mixed with scriptural and domestic phrases avast there avast there bildad avast now spoiling our harpooneer cried peleg pious harpooneers never make good voyagers it takes the shark out of em no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish there was young nat swaine once the bravest boat header out of all nantucket and the vineyard he joined the meeting and never came to good he got so frightened about his plaguy soul that he shrinked and sheered away from whales for fear of after claps in case he got stove and went to davy jones peleg peleg said bildad lifting his eyes and hands thou thyself as i myself hast seen many a perilous time thou knowest peleg what it is to have the fear of death how then can st thou prate in this ungodly guise thou beliest thine own heart peleg tell me when this same pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on japan that same voyage when thou went mate with captain ahab did st thou not think of death and the judgment then hear him hear him now cried peleg marching across the cabin and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets hear him all of ye think of that when every moment we thought the ship would sink death and the judgment then what with all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side and every sea breaking over us fore and aft think of death and the judgment then no no time to think about death then life was what captain ahab and i was thinking of and how to save all hands how to rig jury masts how to get into the nearest port that was what i was thinking of bildad said no more but buttoning up his coat stalked on deck where we followed him there he stood very quietly overlooking some sail makers who were mending a top sail in the waist now and then he stooped to pick up a patch or save an end of tarred twine which otherwise might have been wasted shipmates have ye shipped in that ship queequeg and i had just left the pequod and were sauntering away from the water for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts when the above words were put to us by a stranger who pausing before us levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question he was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck a confluent small pox had in all directions flowed over his face and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent when the rushing waters have been dried up have ye shipped in her he repeated you mean the ship pequod i suppose said i trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him aye the pequod that ship there he said drawing back his whole arm and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object yes said i we have just signed the articles anything down there about your souls about what oh perhaps you hav n t got any he said quickly no matter though i know many chaps that hav n t got any good luck to em and they are all the better off for it a soul s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon what are you jabbering about shipmate said i he s got enough though to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps abruptly said the stranger placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he queequeg said i let s go this fellow has broken loose from somewhere he s talking about something and somebody we don t know stop cried the stranger ye said true ye hav n t seen old thunder yet have ye who s old thunder said i again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner captain ahab what the captain of our ship the pequod aye among some of us old sailor chaps he goes by that name ye hav n t seen him yet have ye no we hav n t he s sick they say but is getting better and will be all right again before long all right again before long laughed the stranger with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh look ye when captain ahab is all right then this left arm of mine will be all right not before what do you know about him what did they tell you about him say that they didn t tell much of anything about him only i ve heard that he s a good whale hunter and a good captain to his crew that s true that s true yes both true enough but you must jump when he gives an order step and growl growl and go that s the word with captain ahab but nothing about that thing that happened to him off cape horn long ago when he lay like dead for three days and nights nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the spaniard afore the altar in santa heard nothing about that eh nothing about the silver calabash he spat into and nothing about his losing his leg last voyage according to the prophecy didn t ye hear a word about them matters and something more eh no i don t think ye did how could ye who knows it not all nantucket i guess but hows ever mayhap ye ve heard tell about the leg and how he lost it aye ye have heard of that i dare say oh yes that every one knows a most i mean they know he s only one leg and that a parmacetti took the other off my friend said i what all this gibberish of yours is about i don t know and i don t much care for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head but if you are speaking of captain ahab of that ship there the pequod then let me tell you that i know all about the loss of his leg all about it eh sure you do all pretty sure with finger pointed and eye levelled at the pequod the beggar like stranger stood a moment as if in a troubled reverie then starting a little turned and said ye ve shipped have ye names down on the papers well well what s signed is signed and what s to be will be and then again perhaps it wont be after all any how it s all fixed and arranged a ready and some sailors or other must go with him i suppose as well these as any other men god pity em morning to ye shipmates morning the ineffable heavens bless ye i m sorry i stopped ye look here friend said i if you have anything important to tell us out with it but if you are only trying to bamboozle us you are mistaken in your game that s all i have to say and it s said very well and i like to hear a chap talk up that way you are just the man for him the likes of ye morning to ye shipmates morning oh when ye get there tell em i ve concluded not to make one of em ah my dear fellow you can t fool us that way you can t fool us it is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him morning to ye shipmates morning morning it is said i come along queequeg let s leave this crazy man but stop tell me your name will you elijah elijah thought i and we walked away both commenting after each other s fashion upon this ragged old sailor and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug trying to be a bugbear but we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards when chancing to turn a corner and looking back as i did so who should be seen but elijah following us though at a distance somehow the sight of him struck me so that i said nothing to queequeg of his being behind but passed on with my comrade anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did he did and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us but with what intent i could not for the life of me imagine this circumstance coupled with his ambiguous half hinting half revealing shrouded sort of talk now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half apprehensions and all connected with the pequod and captain ahab and the leg he had lost and the cape horn fit and the silver calabash and what captain peleg had said of him when i left the ship the day previous and the prediction of the squaw tistig and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail and a hundred other shadowy things i was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged elijah was really dogging us or not and with that intent crossed the way with queequeg and on that side of it retraced our steps but elijah passed on without seeming to notice us this relieved me and once more and finally as it seemed to me i pronounced him in my heart a humbug a day or two passed and there was great activity aboard the pequod not only were the old sails being mended but new sails were coming on board and bolts of canvas and coils of rigging in short everything betokened that the ship s preparations were hurrying to a close captain peleg seldom or never went ashore but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look out upon the hands bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night fall on the day following queequeg s signing the articles word was given at all the inns where the ship s company were stopping that their chests must be on board before night for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing so queequeg and i got down our traps resolving however to sleep ashore till the last but it seems they always give very long notice in these cases and the ship did not sail for several days but no wonder there was a good deal to be done and there is no telling how many things to be thought of before the pequod was fully equipped every one knows what a multitude of things beds sauce pans knives and forks shovels and tongs napkins nut crackers and what not are indispensable to the business of housekeeping just so with whaling which necessitates a three years housekeeping upon the wide ocean far from all grocers costermongers doctors bakers and bankers and though this also holds true of merchant vessels yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen for besides the great length of the whaling voyage the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented it must be remembered that of all ships whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends hence the spare boats spare spars and spare lines and harpoons and spare everythings almost but a spare captain and duplicate ship at the period of our arrival at the island the heaviest storage of the pequod had been almost completed comprising her beef bread water fuel and iron hoops and staves but as before hinted for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things both large and small chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was captain bildad s sister a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit but withal very kindhearted who seemed resolved that if she could help it nothing should be found wanting in the pequod after once fairly getting to sea at one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward s pantry another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate s desk where he kept his log a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one s rheumatic back never did any woman better deserve her name which was charity aunt charity as everybody called her and like a sister of charity did this charitable aunt charity bustle about hither and thither ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety comfort and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother bildad was concerned and in which she herself owned a score or two of well saved dollars but it was startling to see this excellent hearted quakeress coming on board as she did the last day with a long oil ladle in one hand and a still longer whaling lance in the other nor was bildad himself nor captain peleg at all backward as for bildad he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed and at every fresh arrival down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper every once and a while peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den roaring at the men down the hatchways roaring up to the riggers at the mast head and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam during these days of preparation queequeg and i often visited the craft and as often i asked about captain ahab and how he was and when he was going to come on board his ship to these questions they would answer that he was getting better and better and was expected aboard every day meantime the two captains peleg and bildad could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage if i had been downright honest with myself i would have seen very plainly in my heart that i did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea but when a man suspects any wrong it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself and much this way it was with me i said nothing and tried to think nothing at last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail so next morning queequeg and i took a very early start it was nearly six o clock but only grey imperfect misty dawn when we drew nigh the wharf there are some sailors running ahead there if i see right said i to queequeg it can t be shadows she s off by sunrise i guess come on avast cried a voice whose owner at the same time coming close behind us laid a hand upon both our shoulders and then insinuating himself between us stood stooping forward a little in the uncertain twilight strangely peering from queequeg to me it was elijah going aboard hands off will you said i lookee here said queequeg shaking himself go way aint going aboard then yes we are said i but what business is that of yours do you know mr elijah that i consider you a little impertinent no no no i wasn t aware of that said elijah slowly and wonderingly looking from me to queequeg with the most unaccountable glances elijah said i you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing we are going to the indian and pacific oceans and would prefer not to be detained ye be be ye coming back afore breakfast he s cracked queequeg said i come on holloa cried stationary elijah hailing us when we had removed a few paces never mind him said i queequeg come on but he stole up to us again and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder said did ye see anything looking like men going towards that ship a while ago struck by this plain matter of fact question i answered saying yes i thought i did see four or five men but it was too dim to be sure very dim very dim said elijah morning to ye once more we quitted him but once more he came softly after us and touching my shoulder again said see if you can find em now will ye find who morning to ye morning to ye he rejoined again moving off oh i was going to warn ye against but never mind never mind it s all one all in the family too sharp frost this morning ain t it good bye to ye shan t see ye again very soon i guess unless it s before the grand jury and with these cracked words he finally departed leaving me for the moment in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence at last stepping on board the pequod we found everything in profound quiet not a soul moving the cabin entrance was locked within the hatches were all on and lumbered with coils of rigging going forward to the forecastle we found the slide of the scuttle open seeing a light we went down and found only an old rigger there wrapped in a tattered pea jacket he was thrown at whole length upon two chests his face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms the profoundest slumber slept upon him those sailors we saw queequeg where can they have gone to said i looking dubiously at the sleeper but it seemed that when on the wharf queequeg had not at all noticed what i now alluded to hence i would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter were it not for elijah s otherwise inexplicable question but i beat the thing down and again marking the sleeper jocularly hinted to queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body telling him to establish himself accordingly he put his hand upon the sleeper s rear as though feeling if it was soft enough and then without more ado sat quietly down there gracious queequeg don t sit there said i oh perry dood seat said queequeg my country way won t hurt him face face said i call that his face very benevolent countenance then but how hard he breathes he s heaving himself get off queequeg you are heavy it s grinding the face of the poor get off queequeg look he ll twitch you off soon i wonder he don t wake queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper and lighted his tomahawk pipe i sat at the feet we kept the pipe passing over the sleeper from one to the other meanwhile upon questioning him in his broken fashion queequeg gave me to understand that in his land owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts the king chiefs and great people generally were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows and lay them round in the piers and alcoves besides it was very convenient on an excursion much better than those garden chairs which are convertible into walking sticks upon occasion a chief calling his attendant and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree perhaps in some damp marshy place while narrating these things every time queequeg received the tomahawk from me he flourished the hatchet side of it over the sleeper s head what s that for queequeg perry easy kill e oh perry easy he was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk pipe which it seemed had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger the strong vapor now completely filling the contracted hole it began to tell upon him he breathed with a sort of muffledness then seemed troubled in the nose then revolved over once or twice then sat up and rubbed his eyes holloa he breathed at last who be ye smokers shipped men answered i when does she sail aye aye ye are going in her be ye she sails to day the captain came aboard last night what captain ahab who but him indeed i was going to ask him some further questions concerning ahab when we heard a noise on deck halloa starbuck s astir said the rigger he s a lively chief mate that good man and a pious but all alive now i must turn to and so saying he went on deck and we followed it was now clear sunrise soon the crew came on board in twos and threes the riggers bestirred themselves the mates were actively engaged and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board meanwhile captain ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin at length towards noon upon the final dismissal of the ship s riggers and after the pequod had been hauled out from the wharf and after the ever thoughtful charity had come off in a whaleboat with her last gift a night cap for stubb the second mate her brother in law and a spare bible for the steward after all this the two captains peleg and bildad issued from the cabin and turning to the chief mate peleg said now mr starbuck are you sure everything is right captain ahab is all ready just spoke to him nothing more to be got from shore eh well call all hands then muster em aft here blast em no need of profane words however great the hurry peleg said bildad but away with thee friend starbuck and do our bidding how now here upon the very point of starting for the voyage captain peleg and captain bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarter deck just as if they were to be joint commanders at sea as well as to all appearances in port and as for captain ahab no sign of him was yet to be seen only they said he was in the cabin but then the idea was that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh and steering her well out to sea indeed as that was not at all his proper business but the pilot s and as he was not yet completely recovered so they said therefore captain ahab stayed below and all this seemed natural enough especially as in the merchant service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up the anchor but remain over the cabin table having a farewell merrymaking with their shore friends before they quit the ship for good with the pilot but there was not much chance to think over the matter for captain peleg was now all alive he seemed to do most of the talking and commanding and not bildad aft here ye sons of bachelors he cried as the sailors lingered at the main mast mr starbuck drive em aft strike the tent there was the next order as i hinted before this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port and on board the pequod for thirty years the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor man the capstan blood and thunder jump was the next command and the crew sprang for the handspikes now in getting under weigh the station generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship and here bildad who with peleg be it known in addition to his other offices was one of the licensed pilots of the port he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the nantucket pilot fee to all the ships he was concerned in for he never piloted any other craft bildad i say might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody to cheer the hands at the windlass who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in booble alley with hearty good will nevertheless not three days previous bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed on board the pequod particularly in getting under weigh and charity his sister had placed a small choice copy of watts in each seaman s berth meantime overseeing the other part of the ship captain peleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner i almost thought he would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up involuntarily i paused on my handspike and told queequeg to do the same thinking of the perils we both ran in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot i was comforting myself however with the thought that in pious bildad might be found some salvation spite of his seven hundred and seventy seventh lay when i felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear and turning round was horrified at the apparition of captain peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity that was my first kick is that the way they heave in the marchant service he roared spring thou sheep head spring and break thy backbone why don t ye spring i say all of ye spring quohog spring thou chap with the red whiskers spring there scotchcap spring thou green pants spring i say all of ye and spring your eyes out and so saying he moved along the windlass here and there using his leg very freely while imperturbable bildad kept leading off with his psalmody thinks i captain peleg must have been drinking something to day at last the anchor was up the sails were set and off we glided it was a short cold christmas and as the short northern day merged into night we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean whose freezing spray cased us in ice as in polished armor the long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant vast curving icicles depended from the bows lank bildad as pilot headed the first watch and ever and anon as the old craft deep dived into the green seas and sent the shivering frost all over her and the winds howled and the cordage rang his steady notes were heard sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in living green so to the jews old canaan stood while jordan rolled between never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then they were full of hope and fruition spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous atlantic spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket there was yet it then seemed to me many a pleasant haven in store and meads and glades so eternally vernal that the grass shot up by the spring untrodden unwilted remains at midsummer at last we gained such an offing that the two pilots were needed no longer the stout sail boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside it was curious and not unpleasing how peleg and bildad were affected at this juncture especially captain bildad for loath to depart yet very loath to leave for good a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage beyond both stormy capes a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested a ship in which an old shipmate sailed as captain a man almost as old as he once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw loath to say good bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him poor old bildad lingered long paced the deck with anxious strides ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there again came on deck and looked to windward looked towards the wide and endless waters only bounded by the far off unseen eastern continents looked towards the land looked aloft looked right and left looked everywhere and nowhere and at last mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin convulsively grasped stout peleg by the hand and holding up a lantern for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face as much as to say nevertheless friend peleg i can stand it yes i can as for peleg himself he took it more like a philosopher but for all his philosophy there was a tear twinkling in his eye when the lantern came too near and he too did not a little run from cabin to deck now a word below and now a word with starbuck the chief mate but at last he turned to his comrade with a final sort of look about him captain bildad come old shipmate we must go back the main yard there boat ahoy stand by to come close alongside now careful careful come bildad boy say your last luck to ye starbuck luck to ye mr stubb luck to ye mr flask good bye and good luck to ye all and this day three years i ll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old nantucket hurrah and away god bless ye and have ye in his holy keeping men murmured old bildad almost incoherently i hope ye ll have fine weather now so that captain ahab may soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun is all he needs and ye ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go be careful in the hunt ye mates don t stave the boats needlessly ye harpooneers good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent within the year don t forget your prayers either mr starbuck mind that cooper don t waste the spare staves oh the sail needles are in the green locker don t whale it too much a lord s days men but don t miss a fair chance either that s rejecting heaven s good gifts have an eye to the molasses tierce mr stubb it was a little leaky i thought if ye touch at the islands mr flask beware of fornication good bye good bye don t keep that cheese too long down in the hold mr starbuck it ll spoil be careful with the butter twenty cents the pound it was and mind ye if come come captain bildad stop palavering away and with that peleg hurried him over the side and both dropt into the boat ship and boat diverged the cold damp night breeze blew between a screaming gull flew overhead the two hulls wildly rolled we gave three heavy hearted cheers and blindly plunged like fate into the lone atlantic some chapters back one bulkington was spoken of a tall new landed mariner encountered in new bedford at the inn when on that shivering winter s night the pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves who should i see standing at her helm but bulkington i looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man who in mid winter just landed from a four years dangerous voyage could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term the land seemed scorching to his feet wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable deep memories yield no epitaphs this six inch chapter is the stoneless grave of bulkington let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm tossed ship that miserably drives along the leeward land the port would fain give succor the port is pitiful in the port is safety comfort hearthstone supper warm blankets friends all that s kind to our mortalities but in that gale the port the land is that ship s direst jeopardy she must fly all hospitality one touch of land though it but graze the keel would make her shudder through and through with all her might she crowds all sail off shore in so doing fights gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward seeks all the lashed sea s landlessness again for refuge s sake forlornly rushing into peril her only friend her bitterest foe know ye now bulkington glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth that all deep earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous slavish shore but as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth shoreless indefinite as god so better is it to perish in that howling infinite than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee even if that were safety for worm like then oh who would craven crawl to land terrors of the terrible is all this agony so vain take heart take heart o bulkington bear thee grimly demigod up from the spray of thy ocean perishing straight up leaps thy apotheosis as queequeg and i are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit therefore i am all anxiety to convince ye ye landsmen of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales in the first place it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact that among people at large the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions if a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits were he presented to the company as a harpooneer say and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials s w f sperm whale fishery to his visiting card such a procedure would be deemed pre eminently presuming and ridiculous doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen is this they think that at best our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business and that when actively engaged therein we are surrounded by all manner of defilements butchers we are that is true but butchers also and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all martial commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor and as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown and which upon the whole will triumphantly plant the sperm whale ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth but even granting the charge in question to be true what disordered slippery decks of a whale ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies plaudits and if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier s profession let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale s vast tail fanning into eddies the air over his head for what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of god but though the world scouts at us whale hunters yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage yea an all abounding adoration for almost all the tapers lamps and candles that burn round the globe burn as before so many shrines to our glory but look at this matter in other lights weigh it in all sorts of scales see what we whalemen are and have been why did the dutch in dewitt s time have admirals of their whaling fleets why did louis xvi of france at his own personal expense fit out whaling ships from dunkirk and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of nantucket why did britain between the years and pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of pounds and lastly how comes it that we whalemen of america now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels manned by eighteen thousand men yearly consuming of dollars the ships worth at the time of sailing dollars and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of dollars how comes all this if there be not something puissant in whaling but this is not the half look again i freely assert that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot for his life point out one single peaceful influence which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world taken in one aggregate than the high and mighty business of whaling one way and another it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues that whaling may well be regarded as that egyptian mother who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb it would be a hopeless endless task to catalogue all these things let a handful suffice for many years past the whale ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth she has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart where no cook or vancouver had ever sailed if american and european men of war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the whale ship which originally showed them the way and first interpreted between them and the savages they may celebrate as they will the heroes of exploring expeditions your cookes your krusensterns but i say that scores of anonymous captains have sailed out of nantucket that were as great and greater than your cooke and your krusenstern for in their succorless emptyhandedness they in the heathenish sharked waters and by the beaches of unrecorded javelin islands battled with virgin wonders and terrors that cooke with all his marines and muskets would not willingly have dared all that is made such a flourish of in the old south sea voyages those things were but the lifetime commonplaces of our heroic nantucketers often adventures which vancouver dedicates three chapters to these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship s common log ah the world oh the world until the whale fishery rounded cape horn no commerce but colonial scarcely any intercourse but colonial was carried on between europe and the long line of the opulent spanish provinces on the pacific coast it was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the spanish crown touching those colonies and if space permitted it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of peru chili and bolivia from the yoke of old spain and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts that great america on the other side of the sphere australia was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman after its first blunder born discovery by a dutchman all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous but the whale ship touched there the whale ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony moreover in the infancy of the first australian settlement the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters the uncounted isles of all polynesia confess the same truth and do commercial homage to the whale ship that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations if that double bolted land japan is ever to become hospitable it is the whale ship alone to whom the credit will be due for already she is on the threshold but if in the face of all this you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it then am i ready to shiver fifty lances with you there and unhorse you with a split helmet every time the whale has no famous author and whaling no famous chronicler you will say the whale no famous author and whaling no famous chronicler who wrote the first account of our leviathan who but mighty job and who composed the first narrative of a whaling voyage who but no less a prince than alfred the great who with his own royal pen took down the words from other the norwegian whale hunter of those times and who pronounced our glowing eulogy in parliament who but edmund burke true enough but then whalemen themselves are poor devils they have no good blood in their veins no good blood in their veins they have something better than royal blood there the grandmother of benjamin franklin was mary morrel afterwards by marriage mary folger one of the old settlers of nantucket and the ancestress to a long line of folgers and harpooneers all kith and kin to noble benjamin this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other good again but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable whaling not respectable whaling is imperial by old english statutory law the whale is declared a royal fish oh that s only nominal the whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing way the whale never figured in any grand imposing way in one of the mighty triumphs given to a roman general upon his entering the world s capital the bones of a whale brought all the way from the syrian coast were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession grant it since you cite it but say what you will there is no real dignity in whaling no dignity in whaling the dignity of our calling the very heavens attest cetus is a constellation in the south no more drive down your hat in presence of the czar and take it off to queequeg no more i know a man that in his lifetime has taken three hundred and fifty whales i account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns and as for me if by any possibility there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me if i shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which i might not be unreasonably ambitious of if hereafter i shall do anything that upon the whole a man might rather have done than to have left undone if at my death my executors or more properly my creditors find any precious mss in my desk then here i prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling for a whale ship was my yale college and my harvard see subsequent chapters for something more on this head see subsequent chapters for something more on this head in behalf of the dignity of whaling i would fain advance naught but substantiated facts but after embattling his facts an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise which might tell eloquently upon his cause such an advocate would he not be blameworthy it is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens even modern ones a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through there is a saltcellar of state so called and there may be a caster of state how they use the salt precisely who knows certain i am however that a king s head is solemnly oiled at his coronation even as a head of salad can it be though that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well as they anoint machinery much might be ruminated here concerning the essential dignity of this regal process because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair and palpably smells of that anointing in truth a mature man who uses hair oil unless medicinally that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere as a general rule he can t amount to much in his totality but the only thing to be considered here is this what kind of oil is used at coronations certainly it cannot be olive oil nor macassar oil nor castor oil nor bear s oil nor train oil nor cod liver oil what then can it possibly be but sperm oil in its unmanufactured unpolluted state the sweetest of all oils think of that ye loyal britons we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff the chief mate of the pequod was starbuck a native of nantucket and a quaker by descent he was a long earnest man and though born on an icy coast seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes his flesh being hard as twice baked biscuit transported to the indies his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale he must have been born in some time of general drought and famine or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous only some thirty arid summers had he seen those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness but this his thinness so to speak seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight it was merely the condensation of the man he was by no means ill looking quite the contrary his pure tight skin was an excellent fit and closely wrapped up in it and embalmed with inner health and strength like a revivified egyptian this starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come and to endure always as now for be it polar snow or torrid sun like a patent chronometer his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates looking into his eyes you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand fold perils he had calmly confronted through life a staid steadfast man whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action and not a tame chapter of sounds yet for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude there were certain qualities in him which at times affected and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest uncommonly conscientious for a seaman and endued with a deep natural reverence the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition but to that sort of superstition which in some organizations seems rather to spring somehow from intelligence than from ignorance outward portents and inward presentiments were his and if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul much more did his far away domestic memories of his young cape wife and child tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature and open him still further to those latent influences which in some honest hearted men restrain the gush of dare devil daring so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery i will have no man in my boat said starbuck who is not afraid of a whale by this he seemed to mean not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward aye aye said stubb the second mate starbuck there is as careful a man as you ll find anywhere in this fishery but we shall ere long see what that word careful precisely means when used by a man like stubb or almost any other whale hunter starbuck was no crusader after perils in him courage was not a sentiment but a thing simply useful to him and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions besides he thought perhaps that in this business of whaling courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship like her beef and her bread and not to be foolishly wasted wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun down nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him for thought starbuck i am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living and not to be killed by them for theirs and that hundreds of men had been so killed starbuck well knew what doom was his own father s where in the bottomless deeps could he find the torn limbs of his brother with memories like these in him and moreover given to a certain superstitiousness as has been said the courage of this starbuck which could nevertheless still flourish must indeed have been extreme but it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him which under suitable circumstances would break out from its confinement and burn all his courage up and brave as he might be it was that sort of bravery chiefly visible in some intrepid men which while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas or winds or whales or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world yet cannot withstand those more terrific because more spiritual terrors which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man but were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance the complete abasement of poor starbuck s fortitude scarce might i have the heart to write it for it is a thing most sorrowful nay shocking to expose the fall of valor in the soul men may seem detestable as joint stock companies and nations knaves fools and murderers there may be men may have mean and meagre faces but man in the ideal is so noble and so sparkling such a grand and glowing creature that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes that immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves so far within us that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor ruined man nor can piety itself at such a shameful sight completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars but this august dignity i treat of is not the dignity of kings and robes but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike that democratic dignity which on all hands radiates without end from god himself the great god absolute the centre and circumference of all democracy his omnipresence our divine equality if then to meanest mariners and renegades and castaways i shall hereafter ascribe high qualities though dark weave round them tragic graces if even the most mournful perchance the most abased among them all shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts if i shall touch that workman s arm with some ethereal light if i shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun then against all mortal critics bear me out in it thou just spirit of equality which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind bear me out in it thou great democratic god who didst not refuse to the swart convict bunyan the pale poetic pearl thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold the stumped and paupered arm of old cervantes thou who didst pick up andrew jackson from the pebbles who didst hurl him upon a war horse who didst thunder him higher than a throne thou who in all thy mighty earthly marchings ever cullest thy selectest champions from the kingly commons bear me out in it o god stubb was the second mate he was a native of cape cod and hence according to local usage was called a cape cod man a happy go lucky neither craven nor valiant taking perils as they came with an indifferent air and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase toiling away calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year good humored easy and careless he presided over his whale boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner and his crew all invited guests he was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat as an old stage driver is about the snugness of his box when close to the whale in the very death lock of the fight he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off handedly as a whistling tinker his hammer he would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster long usage had for this stubb converted the jaws of death into an easy chair what he thought of death itself there is no telling whether he ever thought of it at all might be a question but if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner no doubt like a good sailor he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft and bestir themselves there about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order and not sooner what perhaps with other things made stubb such an easygoing unfearing man so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave peddlers all bowed to the ground with their packs what helped to bring about that almost impious good humor of his that thing must have been his pipe for like his nose his short black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face you would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe he kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded stuck in a rack within easy reach of his hand and whenever he turned in he smoked them all out in succession lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter then loading them again to be in readiness anew for when stubb dressed instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers he put his pipe into his mouth i say this continual smoking must have been one cause at least of his peculiar disposition for every one knows that this earthly air whether ashore or afloat is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it and as in time of the cholera some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths so likewise against all mortal tribulations stubb s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent the third mate was flask a native of tisbury in martha s vineyard a short stout ruddy young fellow very pugnacious concerning whales who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him to destroy them whenever encountered so utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them that in his poor opinion the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse or at least water rat requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil this ignorant unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the matter of whales he followed these fish for the fun of it and a three years voyage round cape horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time as a carpenter s nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails so mankind may be similarly divided little flask was one of the wrought ones made to clinch tight and last long they called him king post on board of the pequod because in form he could be well likened to the short square timber known by that name in arctic whalers and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted in it served to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those battering seas now these three mates starbuck stubb and flask were momentous men they it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the pequod s boats as headsmen in that grand order of battle in which captain ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales these three headsmen were as captains of companies or being armed with their long keen whaling spears they were as a picked trio of lancers even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins and since in this famous fishery each mate or headsman like a gothic knight of old is always accompanied by his boat steerer or harpooneer who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance when the former one has been badly twisted or elbowed in the assault and moreover as there generally subsists between the two a close intimacy and friendliness it is therefore but meet that in this place we set down who the pequod s harpooneers were and to what headsman each of them belonged first of all was queequeg whom starbuck the chief mate had selected for his squire but queequeg is already known next was tashtego an unmixed indian from gay head the most westerly promontory of martha s vineyard where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men which has long supplied the neighboring island of nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers in the fishery they usually go by the generic name of gay headers tashtego s long lean sable hair his high cheek bones and black rounding eyes for an indian oriental in their largeness but antarctic in their glittering expression all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters who in quest of the great new england moose had scoured bow in hand the aboriginal forests of the main but no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires to look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier puritans and half believed this wild indian to be a son of the prince of the powers of the air tashtego was stubb the second mate s squire third among the harpooneers was daggoo a gigantic coal black negro savage with a lion like tread an ahasuerus to behold suspended from his ears were two golden hoops so large that the sailors called them ring bolts and would talk of securing the top sail halyards to them in his youth daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler lying in a lonely bay on his native coast and never having been anywhere in the world but in africa nantucket and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues and erect as a giraffe moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks there was a corporeal humility in looking up at him and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress curious to tell this imperial negro ahasuerus daggoo was the squire of little flask who looked like a chess man beside him as for the residue of the pequod s company be it said that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the american whale fishery are americans born though pretty nearly all the officers are herein it is the same with the american whale fishery as with the american army and military and merchant navies and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the american canals and railroads the same i say because in all these cases the native american liberally provides the brains the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles no small number of these whaling seamen belong to the azores where the outward bound nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores in like manner the greenland whalers sailing out of hull or london put in at the shetland islands to receive the full complement of their crew upon the passage homewards they drop them there again how it is there is no telling but islanders seem to make the best whalemen they were nearly all islanders in the pequod isolatoes too i call such not acknowledging the common continent of men but each isolato living on a separate continent of his own yet now federated along one keel what a set these isolatoes were an anacharsis clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea and all the ends of the earth accompanying old ahab in the pequod to lay the world s grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back black little pip he never did oh no he went before poor alabama boy on the grim pequod s forecastle ye shall ere long see him beating his tambourine prelusive of the eternal time when sent for to the great quarter deck on high he was bid strike in with angels and beat his tambourine in glory called a coward here hailed a hero there for several days after leaving nantucket nothing above hatches was seen of captain ahab the mates regularly relieved each other at the watches and for aught that could be seen to the contrary they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously yes their supreme lord and dictator was there though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin every time i ascended to the deck from my watches below i instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain now in the seclusion of the sea became almost a perturbation this was strangely heightened at times by the ragged elijah s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me with a subtle energy i could not have before conceived of but poorly could i withstand them much as in other moods i was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves but whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness to call it so which i felt yet whenever i came to look about me in the ship it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such emotions for though the harpooneers with the great body of the crew were a far more barbaric heathenish and motley set than any of the tame merchant ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with still i ascribed this and rightly ascribed it to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild scandinavian vocation in which i had so abandonedly embarked but it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship the mates which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colorless misgivings and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage three better more likely sea officers and men each in his own different way could not readily be found and they were every one of them americans a nantucketer a vineyarder a cape man now it being christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor for a space we had biting polar weather though all the time running away from it to the southward and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed gradually leaving that merciless winter and all its intolerable weather behind us it was one of those less lowering but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity that as i mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch so soon as i levelled my glance towards the taffrail foreboding shivers ran over me reality outran apprehension captain ahab stood upon his quarter deck there seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him nor of the recovery from any he looked like a man cut away from the stake when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness his whole high broad form seemed made of solid bronze and shaped in an unalterable mould like cellini s cast perseus threading its way out from among his grey hairs and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck till it disappeared in his clothing you saw a slender rod like mark lividly whitish it resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight lofty trunk of a great tree when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it and without wrenching a single twig peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil leaving the tree still greenly alive but branded whether that mark was born with him or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound no one could certainly say by some tacit consent throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it especially by the mates but once tashtego s senior an old gay head indian among the crew superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did ahab become that way branded and then it came upon him not in the fury of any mortal fray but in an elemental strife at sea yet this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived by what a grey manxman insinuated an old sepulchral man who having never before sailed out of nantucket had never ere this laid eye upon wild ahab nevertheless the old sea traditions the immemorial credulities popularly invested this old manxman with preternatural powers of discernment so that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever captain ahab should be tranquilly laid out which might hardly come to pass so he muttered then whoever should do that last office for the dead would find a birth mark on him from crown to sole so powerfully did the whole grim aspect of ahab affect me and the livid brand which streaked it that for the first few moments i hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood it had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale s jaw aye he was dismasted off japan said the old gay head indian once but like his dismasted craft he shipped another mast without coming home for it he has a quiver of em i was struck with the singular posture he maintained upon each side of the pequod s quarter deck and pretty close to the mizen shrouds there was an auger hole bored about half an inch or so into the plank his bone leg steadied in that hole one arm elevated and holding by a shroud captain ahab stood erect looking straight out beyond the ship s ever pitching prow there was an infinity of firmest fortitude a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness in the fixed and fearless forward dedication of that glance not a word he spoke nor did his officers say aught to him though by all their minutest gestures and expressions they plainly showed the uneasy if not painful consciousness of being under a troubled master eye and not only that but moody stricken ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe ere long from his first visit in the air he withdrew into his cabin but after that morning he was every day visible to the crew either standing in his pivot hole or seated upon an ivory stool he had or heavily walking the deck as the sky grew less gloomy indeed began to grow a little genial he became still less and less a recluse as if when the ship had sailed from home nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded and by and by it came to pass that he was almost continually in the air but as yet for all that he said or perceptibly did on the at last sunny deck he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast but the pequod was only making a passage now not regularly cruising nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to so that there was little or nothing out of himself to employ or excite ahab now and thus chase away for that one interval the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon nevertheless ere long the warm warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant holiday weather we came to seemed gradually to charm him from his mood for as when the red cheeked dancing girls april and may trip home to the wintry misanthropic woods even the barest ruggedest most thunder cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts to welcome such glad hearted visitants so ahab did in the end a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air more than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look which in any other man would have soon flowered out in a smile some days elapsed and ice and icebergs all astern the pequod now went rolling through the bright quito spring which at sea almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal august of the tropic the warmly cool clear ringing perfumed overflowing redundant days were as crystal goblets of persian sherbet heaped up flaked up with rose water snow the starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets nursing at home in lonely pride the memory of their absent conquering earls the golden helmeted suns for sleeping man twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights but all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world inward they turned upon the soul especially when the still mild hours of eve came on then memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights and all these subtle agencies more and more they wrought on ahab s texture old age is always wakeful as if the longer linked with life the less man has to do with aught that looks like death among sea commanders the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night cloaked deck it was so with ahab only that now of late he seemed so much to live in the open air that truly speaking his visits were more to the cabin than from the cabin to the planks it feels like going down into one s tomb he would mutter to himself for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle to go to my grave dug berth so almost every twenty four hours when the watches of the night were set and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle the sailors flung it not rudely down as by day but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail habitually the silent steersman would watch the cabin scuttle and ere long the old man would emerge griping at the iron banister to help his crippled way some considerating touch of humanity was in him for at times like these he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter deck because to his wearied mates seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks but once the mood was on him too deep for common regardings and as with heavy lumber like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast stubb the odd second mate came up from below and with a certain unassured deprecating humorousness hinted that if captain ahab was pleased to walk the planks then no one could say nay but there might be some way of muffling the noise hinting something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow and the insertion into it of the ivory heel ah stubb thou did st not know ahab then am i a cannon ball stubb said ahab that thou wouldst wad me that fashion but go thy ways i had forgot below to thy nightly grave where such as ye sleep between shrouds to use ye to the filling one at last down dog and kennel starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man stubb was speechless a moment then said excitedly i am not used to be spoken to that way sir i do but less than half like it sir avast gritted ahab between his set teeth and violently moving away as if to avoid some passionate temptation no sir not yet said stubb emboldened i will not tamely be called a dog sir then be called ten times a donkey and a mule and an ass and begone or i ll clear the world of thee as he said this ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect that stubb involuntarily retreated i was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it muttered stubb as he found himself descending the cabin scuttle it s very queer stop stubb somehow now i don t well know whether to go back and strike him or what s that down here on my knees and pray for him yes that was the thought coming up in me but it would be the first time i ever did pray it s queer very queer and he s queer too aye take him fore and aft he s about the queerest old man stubb ever sailed with how he flashed at me his eyes like powder pans is he mad anyway there s something on his mind as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks he aint in his bed now either more than three hours out of the twenty four and he don t sleep then didn t that dough boy the steward tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man s hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled and the sheets down at the foot and the coverlid almost tied into knots and the pillow a sort of frightful hot as though a baked brick had been on it a hot old man i guess he s got what some folks ashore call a conscience it s a kind of tic dolly row they say worse nor a toothache well well i don t know what it is but the lord keep me from catching it he s full of riddles i wonder what he goes into the after hold for every night as dough boy tells me he suspects what s that for i should like to know who s made appointments with him in the hold ain t that queer now but there s no telling it s the old game here goes for a snooze damn me it s worth a fellow s while to be born into the world if only to fall right asleep and now that i think of it that s about the first thing babies do and that s a sort of queer too damn me but all things are queer come to think of em but that s against my principles think not is my eleventh commandment and sleep when you can is my twelfth so here goes again but how s that didn t he call me a dog blazes he called me ten times a donkey and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that he might as well have kicked me and done with it maybe he did kick me and i didn t observe it i was so taken all aback with his brow somehow it flashed like a bleached bone what the devil s the matter with me i don t stand right on my legs coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out by the lord i must have been dreaming though how how how but the only way s to stash it so here goes to hammock again and in the morning i ll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by day light when stubb had departed ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks and then as had been usual with him of late calling a sailor of the watch he sent him below for his ivory stool and also his pipe lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck he sat and smoked in old norse times the thrones of the sea loving danish kings were fabricated saith tradition of the tusks of the narwhale how could one look at ahab then seated on that tripod of bones without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized for a khan of the plank and a king of the sea and a great lord of leviathans was ahab some moments passed during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs which blew back again into his face how now he soliloquized at last withdrawing the tube this smoking no longer soothes oh my pipe hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone here have i been unconsciously toiling not pleasuring aye and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while to windward and with such nervous whiffs as if like the dying whale my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble what business have i with this pipe this thing that is meant for sereneness to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs not among torn iron grey locks like mine i ll smoke no more he tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea the fire hissed in the waves the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made with slouched hat ahab lurchingly paced the planks next morning stubb accosted flask such a queer dream king post i never had you know the old man s ivory leg well i dreamed he kicked me with it and when i tried to kick back upon my soul my little man i kicked my leg right off and then presto ahab seemed a pyramid and i like a blazing fool kept kicking at it but what was still more curious flask you know how curious all dreams are through all this rage that i was in i somehow seemed to be thinking to myself that after all it was not much of an insult that kick from ahab why thinks i what s the row it s not a real leg only a false leg and there s a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump that s what makes a blow from the hand flask fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane the living member that makes the living insult my little man and thinks i to myself all the while mind while i was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid so confoundedly contradictory was it all all the while i say i was thinking to myself what s his leg now but a cane a whalebone cane yes thinks i it was only a playful cudgelling in fact only a whaleboning that he gave me not a base kick besides thinks i look at it once why the end of it the foot part what a small sort of end it is whereas if a broad footed farmer kicked me there s a devilish broad insult but this insult is whittled down to a point only but now comes the greatest joke of the dream flask while i was battering away at the pyramid a sort of badger haired old merman with a hump on his back takes me by the shoulders and slews me round what are you bout says he slid man but i was frightened such a phiz but somehow next moment i was over the fright what am i about says i at last and what business is that of yours i should like to know mr humpback do you want a kick by the lord flask i had no sooner said that than he turned round his stern to me bent over and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout what do you think i saw why thunder alive man his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes with the points out says i on second thoughts i guess i won t kick you old fellow wise stubb said he wise stubb and kept muttering it all the time a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag seeing he wasn t going to stop saying over his wise stubb wise stubb i thought i might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again but i had only just lifted my foot for it when he roared out stop that kicking halloa says i what s the matter now old fellow look ye here says he let s argue the insult captain ahab kicked ye didn t he yes he did says i right here it was very good says he he used his ivory leg didn t he yes he did says i well then says he wise stubb what have you to complain of didn t he kick with right good will it wasn t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with was it no you were kicked by a great man and with a beautiful ivory leg stubb it s an honor i consider it an honor listen wise stubb in old england the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen and made garter knights of but be your boast stubb that ye were kicked by old ahab and made a wise man of remember what i say be kicked by him account his kicks honors and on no account kick back for you can t help yourself wise stubb don t you see that pyramid with that he all of a sudden seemed somehow in some queer fashion to swim off into the air i snored rolled over and there i was in my hammock now what do you think of that dream flask i don t know it seems a sort of foolish to me tho may be may be but it s made a wise man of me flask d ye see ahab standing there sideways looking over the stern well the best thing you can do flask is to let that old man alone never speak to him whatever he says halloa what s that he shouts hark mast head there look sharp all of ye there are whales hereabouts if ye see a white one split your lungs for him what d ye think of that now flask ain t there a small drop of something queer about that eh a white whale did ye mark that man look ye there s something special in the wind stand by for it flask ahab has that that s bloody on his mind but mum he comes this way already we are boldly launched upon the deep but soon we shall be lost in its unshored harborless immensities ere that come to pass ere the pequod s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow it is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera that i would now fain put before you yet is it no easy task the classification of the constituents of a chaos nothing less is here essayed listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down no branch of zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled cetology says captain scoresby a d it is not my intention were it in my power to enter into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal sperm whale says surgeon beale a d unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea a field strewn with thorns all these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists thus speak of the whale the great cuvier and john hunter and lesson those lights of zoology and anatomy nevertheless though of real knowledge there be little yet of books there are a plenty and so in some small degree with cetology or the science of whales many are the men small and great old and new landsmen and seamen who have at large or in little written of the whale run over a few the authors of the bible aristotle pliny aldrovandi sir thomas browne gesner ray linnaeus rondeletius willoughby green artedi sibbald brisson marten lacepede bonneterre desmarest baron cuvier frederick cuvier john hunter owen scoresby beale bennett j ross browne the author of miriam coffin olmstead and the rev t cheever but to what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written the above cited extracts will show of the names in this list of whale authors only those following owen ever saw living whales and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman i mean captain scoresby on the separate subject of the greenland or right whale he is the best existing authority but scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale compared with which the greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning and here be it said that the greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas he is not even by any means the largest of the whales yet owing to the long priority of his claims and the profound ignorance which till some seventy years back invested the then fabulous and utterly unknown sperm whale and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale ports this usurpation has been every way complete reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days will satisfy you that the greenland whale without one rival was to them the monarch of the seas but the time has at last come for a new proclamation this is charing cross hear ye good people all the greenland whale is deposed the great sperm whale now reigneth there are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale before you and at the same time in the remotest degree succeed in the attempt those books are beale s and bennett s both in their time surgeons to english south sea whale ships and both exact and reliable men the original matter touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small but so far as it goes it is of excellent quality though mostly confined to scientific description as yet however the sperm whale scientific or poetic lives not complete in any literature far above all other hunted whales his is an unwritten life now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification if only an easy outline one for the present hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers as no better man advances to take this matter in hand i hereupon offer my own poor endeavors i promise nothing complete because any human thing supposed to be complete must for that very reason infallibly be faulty i shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species or in this place at least to much of any description my object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology i am the architect not the builder but it is a ponderous task no ordinary letter sorter in the post office is equal to it to grope down into the bottom of the sea after them to have one s hands among the unspeakable foundations ribs and very pelvis of the world this is a fearful thing what am i that i should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan the awful tauntings in job might well appal me will he the leviathan make a covenant with thee behold the hope of him is vain but i have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans i have had to do with whales with these visible hands i am in earnest and i will try there are some preliminaries to settle first the uncertain unsettled condition of this science of cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish in his system of nature a d linnaeus declares i hereby separate the whales from the fish but of my own knowledge i know that down to the year sharks and shad alewives and herring against linnaeus s express edict were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the leviathan the grounds upon which linnaeus would fain have banished the whales from the waters he states as follows on account of their warm bilocular heart their lungs their movable eyelids their hollow ears penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem and finally ex lege naturae jure meritoque i submitted all this to my friends simeon macey and charley coffin of nantucket both messmates of mine in a certain voyage and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient charley profanely hinted they were humbug be it known that waiving all argument i take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish and call upon holy jonah to back me this fundamental thing settled the next point is in what internal respect does the whale differ from other fish above linnaeus has given you those items but in brief they are these lungs and warm blood whereas all other fish are lungless and cold blooded next how shall we define the whale by his obvious externals so as conspicuously to label him for all time to come to be short then a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail there you have him however contracted that definition is the result of expanded meditation a walrus spouts much like a whale but the walrus is not a fish because he is amphibious but the last term of the definition is still more cogent as coupled with the first almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat but a vertical or up and down tail whereas among spouting fish the tail though it may be similarly shaped invariably assumes a horizontal position by the above definition of what a whale is i do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed nantucketers nor on the other hand link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien hence all the smaller spouting and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this ground plan of cetology now then come the grand divisions of the entire whale host first according to magnitude i divide the whales into three primary books subdivisible into chapters and these shall comprehend them all both small and large i the folio whale ii the octavo whale iii the duodecimo whale as the type of the folio i present the sperm whale of the octavo the grampus of the duodecimo the porpoise folios among these i here include the following chapters i the sperm whale ii the right whale iii the fin back whale iv the hump backed whale v the razor back whale vi the sulphur bottom whale book i folio chapter i sperm whale this whale among the english of old vaguely known as the trumpa whale and the physeter whale and the anvil headed whale is the present cachalot of the french and the pottsfich of the germans and the macrocephalus of the long words he is without doubt the largest inhabitant of the globe the most formidable of all whales to encounter the most majestic in aspect and lastly by far the most valuable in commerce he being the only creature from which that valuable substance spermaceti is obtained all his peculiarities will in many other places be enlarged upon it is chiefly with his name that i now have to do philologically considered it is absurd some centuries ago when the sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish in those days spermaceti it would seem was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in england as the greenland or right whale it was the idea also that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the greenland whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses in those times also spermaceti was exceedingly scarce not being used for light but only as an ointment and medicament it was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb when as i opine in the course of time the true nature of spermaceti became known its original name was still retained by the dealers no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity and so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti was really derived book i folio chapter ii right whale in one respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans being the one first regularly hunted by man it yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen and the oil specially known as whale oil an inferior article in commerce among the fishermen he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles the whale the greenland whale the black whale the great whale the true whale the right whale there is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized what then is the whale which i include in the second species of my folios it is the great mysticetus of the english naturalists the greenland whale of the english whalemen the baliene ordinaire of the french whalemen the growlands walfish of the swedes it is the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the dutch and english in the arctic seas it is the whale which the american fishermen have long pursued in the indian ocean on the brazil banks on the nor west coast and various other parts of the world designated by them right whale cruising grounds some pretend to see a difference between the greenland whale of the english and the right whale of the americans but they precisely agree in all their grand features nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction it is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences that some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate the right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length with reference to elucidating the sperm whale book i folio chapter iii fin back under this head i reckon a monster which by the various names of fin back tall spout and long john has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the atlantic in the new york packet tracks in the length he attains and in his baleen the fin back resembles the right whale but is of a less portly girth and a lighter color approaching to olive his great lips present a cable like aspect formed by the intertwisting slanting folds of large wrinkles his grand distinguishing feature the fin from which he derives his name is often a conspicuous object this fin is some three or four feet long growing vertically from the hinder part of the back of an angular shape and with a very sharp pointed end even if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible this isolated fin will at times be seen plainly projecting from the surface when the sea is moderately calm and slightly marked with spherical ripples and this gnomon like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial with its style and wavy hour lines graved on it on that ahaz dial the shadow often goes back the fin back is not gregarious he seems a whale hater as some men are man haters very shy always going solitary unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming as to defy all present pursuit from man this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable cain of his race bearing for his mark that style upon his back from having the baleen in his mouth the fin back is sometimes included with the right whale among a theoretic species denominated whalebone whales that is whales with baleen of these so called whalebone whales there would seem to be several varieties most of which however are little known broad nosed whales and beaked whales pike headed whales bunched whales under jawed whales and rostrated whales are the fishermen s names for a few sorts in connexion with this appellative of whalebone whales it is of great importance to mention that however such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales yet it is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the leviathan founded upon either his baleen or hump or fin or teeth notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions which the whale in his kinds presents how then the baleen hump back fin and teeth these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other and more essential particulars thus the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale each has a hump but there the similitude ceases then this same humpbacked whale and the greenland whale each of these has baleen but there again the similitude ceases and it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned in various sorts of whales they form such irregular combinations or in the case of any one of them detached such an irregular isolation as utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis on this rock every one of the whale naturalists has split but it may possibly be conceived that in the internal parts of the whale in his anatomy there at least we shall be able to hit the right classification nay what thing for example is there in the greenland whale s anatomy more striking than his baleen yet we have seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the greenland whale and if you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated what then remains nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily in their entire liberal volume and boldly sort them that way and this is the bibliographical system here adopted and it is the only one that can possibly succeed for it alone is practicable to proceed book i folio chapter iv hump back this whale is often seen on the northern american coast he has been frequently captured there and towed into harbor he has a great pack on him like a peddler or you might call him the elephant and castle whale at any rate the popular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him since the sperm whale also has a hump though a smaller one his oil is not very valuable he has baleen he is the most gamesome and light hearted of all the whales making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them book i folio chapter v razor back of this whale little is known but his name i have seen him at a distance off cape horn of a retiring nature he eludes both hunters and philosophers though no coward he has never yet shown any part of him but his back which rises in a long sharp ridge let him go i know little more of him nor does anybody else book i folio chapter vi sulphur bottom another retiring gentleman with a brimstone belly doubtless got by scraping along the tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings he is seldom seen at least i have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance he is never chased he would run away with rope walks of line prodigies are told of him adieu sulphur bottom i can say nothing more that is true of ye nor can the oldest nantucketer thus ends book i folio and now begins book ii octavo octavoes these embrace the whales of middling magnitude among which at present may be numbered i the grampus ii the black fish iii the narwhale iv the thrasher v the killer book ii octavo chapter i grampus though this fish whose loud sonorous breathing or rather blowing has furnished a proverb to landsmen is so well known a denizen of the deep yet is he not popularly classed among whales but possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan most naturalists have recognised him for one he is of moderate octavo size varying from fifteen to twenty five feet in length and of corresponding dimensions round the waist he swims in herds he is never regularly hunted though his oil is considerable in quantity and pretty good for light by some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale book ii octavo chapter ii black fish i give the popular fishermen s names for all these fish for generally they are the best where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive i shall say so and suggest another i do so now touching the black fish so called because blackness is the rule among almost all whales so call him the hyena whale if you please his voracity is well known and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards he carries an everlasting mephistophelean grin on his face this whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length he is found in almost all latitudes he has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming which looks something like a roman nose when not more profitably employed the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the hyena whale to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment as some frugal housekeepers in the absence of company and quite alone by themselves burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax though their blubber is very thin some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil book ii octavo chapter iii narwhale that is nostril whale another instance of a curiously named whale so named i suppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose the creature is some sixteen feet in length while its horn averages five feet though some exceed ten and even attain to fifteen feet strictly speaking this horn is but a lengthened tusk growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the horizontal but it is only found on the sinister side which has an ill effect giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left handed man what precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers it would be hard to say it does not seemed to be used like the blade of the sword fish and bill fish though some sailors tell me that the narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food charley coffin said it was used for an ice piercer for the narwhale rising to the surface of the polar sea and finding it sheeted with ice thrusts his horn up and so breaks through but you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct my own opinion is that however this one sided horn may really be used by the narwhale however that may be it would certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets the narwhale i have heard called the tusked whale the horned whale and the unicorn whale he is certainly a curious example of the unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature from certain cloistered old authors i have gathered that this same sea unicorn s horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison and as such preparations of it brought immense prices it was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity black letter tells me that sir martin frobisher on his return from that voyage when queen bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of greenwich palace as his bold ship sailed down the thames when sir martin returned from that voyage saith black letter on bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the narwhale which for a long period after hung in the castle at windsor an irish author avers that the earl of leicester on bended knees did likewise present to her highness another horn pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature the narwhale has a very picturesque leopard like look being of a milk white ground color dotted with round and oblong spots of black his oil is very superior clear and fine but there is little of it and he is seldom hunted he is mostly found in the circumpolar seas book ii octavo chapter iv killer of this whale little is precisely known to the nantucketer and nothing at all to the professed naturalist from what i have seen of him at a distance i should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus he is very savage a sort of feegee fish he sometimes takes the great folio whales by the lip and hangs there like a leech till the mighty brute is worried to death the killer is never hunted i never heard what sort of oil he has exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale on the ground of its indistinctness for we are all killers on land and on sea bonapartes and sharks included book ii octavo chapter v thrasher this gentleman is famous for his tail which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes he mounts the folio whale s back and as he swims he works his passage by flogging him as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar process still less is known of the thrasher than of the killer both are outlaws even in the lawless seas thus ends book ii octavo and begins book iii duodecimo duodecimoes these include the smaller whales i the huzza porpoise ii the algerine porpoise iii the mealy mouthed porpoise to those who have not chanced specially to study the subject it may possibly seem strange that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet should be marshalled among whales a word which in the popular sense always conveys an idea of hugeness but the creatures set down above as duodecimoes are infallibly whales by the terms of my definition of what a whale is i e a spouting fish with a horizontal tail book iii duodecimo chapter i huzza porpoise this is the common porpoise found almost all over the globe the name is of my own bestowal for there are more than one sort of porpoises and something must be done to distinguish them i call them thus because he always swims in hilarious shoals which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a fourth of july crowd their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner full of fine spirits they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward they are the lads that always live before the wind they are accounted a lucky omen if you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish then heaven help ye the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye a well fed plump huzza porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil but the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable it is in request among jewellers and watchmakers sailors put it on their hones porpoise meat is good eating you know it may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts indeed his spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible but the next time you have a chance watch him and you will then see the great sperm whale himself in miniature book iii duodecimo chapter ii algerine porpoise a pirate very savage he is only found i think in the pacific he is somewhat larger than the huzza porpoise but much of the same general make provoke him and he will buckle to a shark i have lowered for him many times but never yet saw him captured book iii duodecimo chapter iii mealy mouthed porpoise the largest kind of porpoise and only found in the pacific so far as it is known the only english name by which he has hitherto been designated is that of the fishers right whale porpoise from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that folio in shape he differs in some degree from the huzza porpoise being of a less rotund and jolly girth indeed he is of quite a neat and gentleman like figure he has no fins on his back most other porpoises have he has a lovely tail and sentimental indian eyes of a hazel hue but his mealy mouth spoils all though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable yet a boundary line distinct as the mark in a ship s hull called the bright waist that line streaks him from stem to stern with two separate colors black above and white below the white comprises part of his head and the whole of his mouth which makes him look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal bag a most mean and mealy aspect his oil is much like that of the common porpoise beyond the duodecimo this system does not proceed inasmuch as the porpoise is the smallest of the whales above you have all the leviathans of note but there are a rabble of uncertain fugitive half fabulous whales which as an american whaleman i know by reputation but not personally i shall enumerate them by their forecastle appellations for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators who may complete what i have here but begun if any of the following whales shall hereafter be caught and marked then he can readily be incorporated into this system according to his folio octavo or duodecimo magnitude the bottle nose whale the junk whale the pudding headed whale the cape whale the leading whale the cannon whale the scragg whale the coppered whale the elephant whale the iceberg whale the quog whale the blue whale etc from icelandic dutch and old english authorities there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales blessed with all manner of uncouth names but i omit them as altogether obsolete and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds full of leviathanism but signifying nothing finally it was stated at the outset that this system would not be here and at once perfected you cannot but plainly see that i have kept my word but i now leave my cetological system standing thus unfinished even as the great cathedral of cologne was left with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower for small erections may be finished by their first architects grand ones true ones ever leave the copestone to posterity god keep me from ever completing anything this whole book is but a draught nay but the draught of a draught oh time strength cash and patience i am aware that down to the present time the fish styled lamatins and dugongs pig fish and sow fish of the coffins of nantucket are included by many naturalists among the whales but as these pig fish are a nosy contemptible set mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers and feeding on wet hay and especially as they do not spout i deny their credentials as whales and have presented them with their passports to quit the kingdom of cetology why this book of whales is not denominated the quarto is very plain because while the whales of this order though smaller than those of the former order nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure yet the bookbinder s quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the shape of the folio volume but the octavo volume does concerning the officers of the whale craft this seems as good a place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship board arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers a class unknown of course in any other marine than the whale fleet the large importance attached to the harpooneer s vocation is evinced by the fact that originally in the old dutch fishery two centuries and more ago the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain but was divided between him and an officer called the specksynder literally this word means fat cutter usage however in time made it equivalent to chief harpooneer in those days the captain s authority was restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel while over the whale hunting department and all its concerns the specksynder or chief harpooneer reigned supreme in the british greenland fishery under the corrupted title of specksioneer this old dutch official is still retained but his former dignity is sadly abridged at present he ranks simply as senior harpooneer and as such is but one of the captain s more inferior subalterns nevertheless as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends and since in the american fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat but under certain circumstances night watches on a whaling ground the command of the ship s deck is also his therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior though always by them familiarly regarded as their social equal now the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea is this the first lives aft the last forward hence in whale ships and merchantmen alike the mates have their quarters with the captain and so too in most of the american whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship that is to say they take their meals in the captain s cabin and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it though the long period of a southern whaling voyage by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man the peculiar perils of it and the community of interest prevailing among a company all of whom high or low depend for their profits not upon fixed wages but upon their common luck together with their common vigilance intrepidity and hard work though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally yet never mind how much like an old mesopotamian family these whalemen may in some primitive instances live together for all that the punctilious externals at least of the quarter deck are seldom materially relaxed and in no instance done away indeed many are the nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy nay extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple and not the shabbiest of pilot cloth and though of all men the moody captain of the pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption and though the only homage he ever exacted was implicit instantaneous obedience though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter deck and though there were times when owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed he addressed them in unusual terms whether of condescension or in terrorem or otherwise yet even captain ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea nor perhaps will it fail to be eventually perceived that behind those forms and usages as it were he sometimes masked himself incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve that certain sultanism of his brain which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship for be a man s intellectual superiority what it will it can never assume the practical available supremacy over other men without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments always in themselves more or less paltry and base this it is that for ever keeps god s true princes of the empire from the world s hustings and leaves the highest honors that this air can give to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the divine inert than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency but when as in the case of nicholas the czar the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain then the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization nor will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing ever forget a hint incidentally so important in his art as the one now alluded to but ahab my captain still moves before me in all his nantucket grimness and shagginess and in this episode touching emperors and kings i must not conceal that i have only to do with a poor old whale hunter like him and therefore all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me oh ahab what shall be grand in thee it must needs be plucked at from the skies and dived for in the deep and featured in the unbodied air it is noon and dough boy the steward thrusting his pale loaf of bread face from the cabin scuttle announces dinner to his lord and master who sitting in the lee quarter boat has just been taking an observation of the sun and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth medallion shaped tablet reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg from his complete inattention to the tidings you would think that moody ahab had not heard his menial but presently catching hold of the mizen shrouds he swings himself to the deck and in an even unexhilarated voice saying dinner mr starbuck disappears into the cabin when the last echo of his sultan s step has died away and starbuck the first emir has every reason to suppose that he is seated then starbuck rouses from his quietude takes a few turns along the planks and after a grave peep into the binnacle says with some touch of pleasantness dinner mr stubb and descends the scuttle the second emir lounges about the rigging awhile and then slightly shaking the main brace to see whether it be all right with that important rope he likewise takes up the old burden and with a rapid dinner mr flask follows after his predecessors but the third emir now seeing himself all alone on the quarter deck seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint for tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions and kicking off his shoes he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the grand turk s head and then by a dexterous sleight pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck reversing all other processions by bringing up the rear with music but ere stepping into the cabin doorway below he pauses ships a new face altogether and then independent hilarious little flask enters king ahab s presence in the character of abjectus or the slave it is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea usages that while in the open air of the deck some officers will upon provocation bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander yet ten to one let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander s cabin and straightway their inoffensive not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him as he sits at the head of the table this is marvellous sometimes most comical wherefore this difference a problem perhaps not to have been belshazzar king of babylon and to have been belshazzar not haughtily but courteously therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur but he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner table of invited guests that man s unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time that man s royalty of state transcends belshazzar s for belshazzar was not the greatest who has but once dined his friends has tasted what it is to be caesar it is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding now if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship master then by inference you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea life just mentioned over his ivory inlaid table ahab presided like a mute maned sea lion on the white coral beach surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs in his own proper turn each officer waited to be served they were as little children before ahab and yet in ahab there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance with one mind their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man s knife as he carved the chief dish before him i do not suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation even upon so neutral a topic as the weather no and when reaching out his knife and fork between which the slice of beef was locked ahab thereby motioned starbuck s plate towards him the mate received his meat as though receiving alms and cut it tenderly and a little started if perchance the knife grazed against the plate and chewed it noiselessly and swallowed it not without circumspection for like the coronation banquet at frankfort where the german emperor profoundly dines with the seven imperial electors so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals eaten in awful silence and yet at table old ahab forbade not conversation only he himself was dumb what a relief it was to choking stubb when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below and poor little flask he was the youngest son and little boy of this weary family party his were the shinbones of the saline beef his would have been the drumsticks for flask to have presumed to help himself this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree had he helped himself at that table doubtless never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world nevertheless strange to say ahab never forbade him and had flask helped himself the chances were ahab had never so much as noticed it least of all did flask presume to help himself to butter whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him on account of its clotting his clear sunny complexion or whether he deemed that on so long a voyage in such marketless waters butter was at a premium and therefore was not for him a subaltern however it was flask alas was a butterless man another thing flask was the last person down at the dinner and flask is the first man up consider for hereby flask s dinner was badly jammed in point of time starbuck and stubb both had the start of him and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear if stubb even who is but a peg higher than flask happens to have but a small appetite and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast then flask must bestir himself he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day for it is against holy usage for stubb to precede flask to the deck therefore it was that flask once admitted in private that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry more or less for what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger as keep it immortal in him peace and satisfaction thought flask have for ever departed from my stomach i am an officer but how i wish i could fist a bit of old fashioned beef in the forecastle as i used to when i was before the mast there s the fruits of promotion now there s the vanity of glory there s the insanity of life besides if it were so that any mere sailor of the pequod had a grudge against flask in flask s official capacity all that sailor had to do in order to obtain ample vengeance was to go aft at dinner time and get a peep at flask through the cabin sky light sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful ahab now ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in the pequod s cabin after their departure taking place in inverted order to their arrival the canvas cloth was cleared or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward and then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast they being its residuary legatees they made a sort of temporary servants hall of the high and mighty cabin in strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain s table was the entire care free license and ease the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers while their masters the mates seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report to it they dined like lords they filled their bellies like indian ships all day loading with spices such portentous appetites had queequeg and tashtego that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast often the pale dough boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt junk seemingly quarried out of the solid ox and if he were not lively about it if he did not go with a nimble hop skip and jump then tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back harpoonwise and once daggoo seized with a sudden humor assisted dough boy s memory by snatching him up bodily and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher while tashtego knife in hand began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him he was naturally a very nervous shuddering sort of little fellow this bread faced steward the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse and what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific ahab and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages dough boy s whole life was one continual lip quiver commonly after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door till all was over it was a sight to see queequeg seated over against tashtego opposing his filed teeth to the indian s crosswise to them daggoo seated on the floor for a bench would have brought his hearse plumed head to the low carlines at every motion of his colossal limbs making the low cabin framework to shake as when an african elephant goes passenger in a ship but for all this the great negro was wonderfully abstemious not to say dainty it seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad baronial and superb a person but doubtless this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds not by beef or by bread are giants made or nourished but queequeg he had a mortal barbaric smack of the lip in eating an ugly sound enough so much so that the trembling dough boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms and when he would hear tashtego singing out for him to produce himself that his bones might be picked the simple witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry by his sudden fits of the palsy nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets for their lances and other weapons and with which whetstones at dinner they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor dough boy how could he forget that in his island days queequeg for one must certainly have been guilty of some murderous convivial indiscretions alas dough boy hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals not a napkin should he carry on his arm but a buckler in good time though to his great delight the three salt sea warriors would rise and depart to his credulous fable mongering ears all their martial bones jingling in them at every step like moorish scimetars in scabbards but though these barbarians dined in the cabin and nominally lived there still being anything but sedentary in their habits they were scarcely ever in it except at meal times and just before sleeping time when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters in this one matter ahab seemed no exception to most american whale captains who as a set rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship s cabin belongs to them and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is at any time permitted there so that in real truth the mates and harpooneers of the pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it for when they did enter it it was something as a street door enters a house turning inwards for a moment only to be turned out the next and as a permanent thing residing in the open air nor did they lose much hereby in the cabin was no companionship socially ahab was inaccessible though nominally included in the census of christendom he was still an alien to it he lived in the world as the last of the grisly bears lived in settled missouri and as when spring and summer had departed that wild logan of the woods burying himself in the hollow of a tree lived out the winter there sucking his own paws so in his inclement howling old age ahab s soul shut up in the caved trunk of his body there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom it was during the more pleasant weather that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast head came round in most american whalemen the mast heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel s leaving her port even though she may have fifteen thousand miles and more to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground and if after a three four or five years voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her say an empty vial even then her mast heads are kept manned to the last and not till her skysail poles sail in among the spires of the port does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more now as the business of standing mast heads ashore or afloat is a very ancient and interesting one let us in some measure expatiate here i take it that the earliest standers of mast heads were the old egyptians because in all my researches i find none prior to them for though their progenitors the builders of babel must doubtless by their tower have intended to rear the loftiest mast head in all asia or africa either yet ere the final truck was put to it as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board in the dread gale of god s wrath therefore we cannot give these babel builders priority over the egyptians and that the egyptians were a nation of mast head standers is an assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair like formation of all four sides of those edifices whereby with prodigious long upliftings of their legs those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex and sing out for new stars even as the look outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail or a whale just bearing in sight in saint stylites the famous christian hermit of old times who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander of mast heads who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts rain hail or sleet but valiantly facing everything out to the last literally died at his post of modern standers of mast heads we have but a lifeless set mere stone iron and bronze men who though well capable of facing out a stiff gale are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange sight there is napoleon who upon the top of the column of vendome stands with arms folded some one hundred and fifty feet in the air careless now who rules the decks below whether louis philippe louis blanc or louis the devil great washington too stands high aloft on his towering main mast in baltimore and like one of hercules pillars his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go admiral nelson also on a capstan of gun metal stands his mast head in trafalgar square and ever when most obscured by that london smoke token is yet given that a hidden hero is there for where there is smoke must be fire but neither great washington nor napoleon nor nelson will answer a single hail from below however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze however it may be surmised that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned it may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast head standers of the land with those of the sea but that in truth it is not so is plainly evinced by an item for which obed macy the sole historian of nantucket stands accountable the worthy obed tells us that in the early times of the whale fishery ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the game the people of that island erected lofty spars along the sea coast to which the look outs ascended by means of nailed cleats something as fowls go upstairs in a hen house a few years ago this same plan was adopted by the bay whalemen of new zealand who upon descrying the game gave notice to the ready manned boats nigh the beach but this custom has now become obsolete turn we then to the one proper mast head that of a whale ship at sea the three mast heads are kept manned from sun rise to sun set the seamen taking their regular turns as at the helm and relieving each other every two hours in the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast head nay to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful there you stand a hundred feet above the silent decks striding along the deep as if the masts were gigantic stilts while beneath you and between your legs as it were swim the hugest monsters of the sea even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous colossus at old rhodes there you stand lost in the infinite series of the sea with nothing ruffled but the waves the tranced ship indolently rolls the drowsy trade winds blow everything resolves you into languor for the most part in this tropic whaling life a sublime uneventfulness invests you you hear no news read no gazettes extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements you hear of no domestic afflictions bankrupt securities fall of stocks are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks and your bill of fare is immutable in one of those southern whalemen on a long three or four years voyage as often happens the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast head would amount to several entire months and it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling such as pertains to a bed a hammock a hearse a sentry box a pulpit a coach or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves your most usual point of perch is the head of the t gallant mast where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks almost peculiar to whalemen called the t gallant cross trees here tossed about by the sea the beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull s horns to be sure in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you in the shape of a watch coat but properly speaking the thickest watch coat is no more of a house than the unclad body for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernacle and cannot freely move about in it nor even move out of it without running great risk of perishing like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy alps in winter so a watch coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope or additional skin encasing you you cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watch coat concerning all this it is much to be deplored that the mast heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or pulpits called crow s nests in which the lookouts of a greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas in the fire side narrative of captain sleet entitled a voyage among the icebergs in quest of the greenland whale and incidentally for the re discovery of the lost icelandic colonies of old greenland in this admirable volume all standers of mast heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow s nest of the glacier which was the name of captain sleet s good craft he called it the sleet s crow s nest in honor of himself he being the original inventor and patentee and free from all ridiculous false delicacy and holding that if we call our own children after our own names we fathers being the original inventors and patentees so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget in shape the sleet s crow s nest is something like a large tierce or pipe it is open above however where it is furnished with a movable side screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale being fixed on the summit of the mast you ascend into it through a little trap hatch in the bottom on the after side or side next the stern of the ship is a comfortable seat with a locker underneath for umbrellas comforters and coats in front is a leather rack in which to keep your speaking trumpet pipe telescope and other nautical conveniences when captain sleet in person stood his mast head in this crow s nest of his he tells us that he always had a rifle with him also fixed in the rack together with a powder flask and shot for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing now it was plainly a labor of love for captain sleet to describe as he does all the little detailed conveniences of his crow s nest but though he so enlarges upon many of these and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow s nest with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the local attraction of all binnacle magnets an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship s planks and in the glacier s case perhaps to there having been so many broken down blacksmiths among her crew i say that though the captain is very discreet and scientific here yet for all his learned binnacle deviations azimuth compass observations and approximate errors he knows very well captain sleet that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little case bottle so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow s nest within easy reach of his hand though upon the whole i greatly admire and even love the brave the honest and learned captain yet i take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case bottle seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird s nest within three or four perches of the pole but if we southern whale fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as captain sleet and his greenland men were yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we south fishers mostly float for one i used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely resting in the top to have a chat with queequeg or any one else off duty whom i might find there then ascending a little way further and throwing a lazy leg over the top sail yard take a preliminary view of the watery pastures and so at last mount to my ultimate destination let me make a clean breast of it here and frankly admit that i kept but sorry guard with the problem of the universe revolving in me how could i being left completely to myself at such a thought engendering altitude how could i but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale ships standing orders keep your weather eye open and sing out every time and let me in this place movingly admonish you ye ship owners of nantucket beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye given to unseasonable meditativeness and who offers to ship with the phaedon instead of bowditch in his head beware of such an one i say your whales must be seen before they can be killed and this sunken eyed young platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world and never make you one pint of sperm the richer nor are these monitions at all unneeded for nowadays the whale fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic melancholy and absent minded young men disgusted with the carking cares of earth and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber childe harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast head of some luckless disappointed whale ship and in moody phrase ejaculates roll on thou deep and dark blue ocean roll ten thousand blubber hunters sweep over thee in vain very often do the captains of such ships take those absent minded young philosophers to task upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient interest in the voyage half hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise but all in vain those young platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect they are short sighted what use then to strain the visual nerve they have left their opera glasses at home why thou monkey said a harpooneer to one of these lads we ve been cruising now hard upon three years and thou hast not raised a whale yet whales are scarce as hen s teeth whenever thou art up here perhaps they were or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon but lulled into such an opium like listlessness of vacant unconscious reverie is this absent minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts that at last he loses his identity takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep blue bottomless soul pervading mankind and nature and every strange half seen gliding beautiful thing that eludes him every dimly discovered uprising fin of some undiscernible form seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it in this enchanted mood thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came becomes diffused through time and space like cranmer s sprinkled pantheistic ashes forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over there is no life in thee now except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her borrowed from the sea by the sea from the inscrutable tides of god but while this sleep this dream is on ye move your foot or hand an inch slip your hold at all and your identity comes back in horror over descartian vortices you hover and perhaps at mid day in the fairest weather with one half throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea no more to rise for ever heed it well ye pantheists enter ahab then all it was not a great while after the affair of the pipe that one morning shortly after breakfast ahab as was his wont ascended the cabin gangway to the deck there most sea captains usually walk at that hour as country gentlemen after the same meal take a few turns in the garden soon his steady ivory stride was heard as to and fro he paced his old rounds upon planks so familiar to his tread that they were all over dented like geological stones with the peculiar mark of his walk did you fixedly gaze too upon that ribbed and dented brow there also you would see still stranger foot prints the foot prints of his one unsleeping ever pacing thought but on the occasion in question those dents looked deeper even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark and so full of his thought was ahab that at every uniform turn that he made now at the main mast and now at the binnacle you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned and pace in him as he paced so completely possessing him indeed that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement d ye mark him flask whispered stubb the chick that s in him pecks the shell t will soon be out the hours wore on ahab now shut up within his cabin anon pacing the deck with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect it drew near the close of day suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks and inserting his bone leg into the auger hole there and with one hand grasping a shroud he ordered starbuck to send everybody aft sir said the mate astonished at an order seldom or never given on ship board except in some extraordinary case send everybody aft repeated ahab mast heads there come down when the entire ship s company were assembled and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces were eyeing him for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up ahab after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks and then darting his eyes among the crew started from his standpoint and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck with bent head and half slouched hat he continued to pace unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men till stubb cautiously whispered to flask that ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat but this did not last long vehemently pausing he cried what do ye do when ye see a whale men sing out for him was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices good cried ahab with a wild approval in his tones observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them and what do ye next men lower away and after him and what tune is it ye pull to men a dead whale or a stove boat more and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving grew the countenance of the old man at every shout while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions but they were all eagerness again as ahab now half revolving in his pivot hole with one hand reaching high up a shroud and tightly almost convulsively grasping it addressed them thus all ye mast headers have before now heard me give orders about a white whale look ye d ye see this spanish ounce of gold holding up a broad bright coin to the sun it is a sixteen dollar piece men d ye see it mr starbuck hand me yon top maul while the mate was getting the hammer ahab without speaking was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket as if to heighten its lustre and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him receiving the top maul from starbuck he advanced towards the main mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand exhibiting the gold with the other and with a high raised voice exclaiming whosoever of ye raises me a white headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw whosoever of ye raises me that white headed whale with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke look ye whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale he shall have this gold ounce my boys huzza huzza cried the seamen as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast it s a white whale i say resumed ahab as he threw down the top maul a white whale skin your eyes for him men look sharp for white water if ye see but a bubble sing out all this while tashtego daggoo and queequeg had looked on with even more intense interest and surprise than the rest and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some specific recollection captain ahab said tashtego that white whale must be the same that some call moby dick moby dick shouted ahab do ye know the white whale then tash does he fan tail a little curious sir before he goes down said the gay header deliberately and has he a curious spout too said daggoo very bushy even for a parmacetty and mighty quick captain ahab and he have one two tree oh good many iron in him hide too captain cried queequeg disjointedly all twiske tee betwisk like him him faltering hard for a word and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a bottle like him him corkscrew cried ahab aye queequeg the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him aye daggoo his spout is a big one like a whole shock of wheat and white as a pile of our nantucket wool after the great annual sheep shearing aye tashtego and he fan tails like a split jib in a squall death and devils men it is moby dick ye have seen moby dick moby dick captain ahab said starbuck who with stubb and flask had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder captain ahab i have heard of moby dick but it was not moby dick that took off thy leg who told thee that cried ahab then pausing aye starbuck aye my hearties all round it was moby dick that dismasted me moby dick that brought me to this dead stump i stand on now aye aye he shouted with a terrific loud animal sob like that of a heart stricken moose aye aye it was that accursed white whale that razeed me made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day then tossing both arms with measureless imprecations he shouted out aye aye and i ll chase him round good hope and round the horn and round the norway maelstrom and round perdition s flames before i give him up and this is what ye have shipped for men to chase that white whale on both sides of land and over all sides of earth till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out what say ye men will ye splice hands on it now i think ye do look brave aye aye shouted the harpooneers and seamen running closer to the excited old man a sharp eye for the white whale a sharp lance for moby dick god bless ye he seemed to half sob and half shout god bless ye men steward go draw the great measure of grog but what s this long face about mr starbuck wilt thou not chase the white whale art not game for moby dick i am game for his crooked jaw and for the jaws of death too captain ahab if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow but i came here to hunt whales not my commander s vengeance how many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it captain ahab it will not fetch thee much in our nantucket market nantucket market hoot but come closer starbuck thou requirest a little lower layer if money s to be the measurer man and the accountants have computed their great counting house the globe by girdling it with guineas one to every three parts of an inch then let me tell thee that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here he smites his chest whispered stubb what s that for methinks it rings most vast but hollow vengeance on a dumb brute cried starbuck that simply smote thee from blindest instinct madness to be enraged with a dumb thing captain ahab seems blasphemous hark ye yet again the little lower layer all visible objects man are but as pasteboard masks but in each event in the living act the undoubted deed there some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask if man will strike strike through the mask how can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall to me the white whale is that wall shoved near to me sometimes i think there s naught beyond but tis enough he tasks me he heaps me i see in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinewing it that inscrutable thing is chiefly what i hate and be the white whale agent or be the white whale principal i will wreak that hate upon him talk not to me of blasphemy man i d strike the sun if it insulted me for could the sun do that then could i do the other since there is ever a sort of fair play herein jealousy presiding over all creations but not my master man is even that fair play who s over me truth hath no confines take off thine eye more intolerable than fiends glarings is a doltish stare so so thou reddenest and palest my heat has melted thee to anger glow but look ye starbuck what is said in heat that thing unsays itself there are men from whom warm words are small indignity i meant not to incense thee let it go look see yonder turkish cheeks of spotted tawn living breathing pictures painted by the sun the pagan leopards the unrecking and unworshipping things that live and seek and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel the crew man the crew are they not one and all with ahab in this matter of the whale see stubb he laughs see yonder chilian he snorts to think of it stand up amid the general hurricane thy one tost sapling cannot starbuck and what is it reckon it tis but to help strike a fin no wondrous feat for starbuck what is it more from this one poor hunt then the best lance out of all nantucket surely he will not hang back when every foremast hand has clutched a whetstone ah constrainings seize thee i see the billow lifts thee speak but speak aye aye thy silence then that voices thee aside something shot from my dilated nostrils he has inhaled it in his lungs starbuck now is mine cannot oppose me now without rebellion god keep me keep us all murmured starbuck lowly but in his joy at the enchanted tacit acquiescence of the mate ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation nor yet the low laugh from the hold nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts as for a moment their hearts sank in for again starbuck s downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life the subterranean laugh died away the winds blew on the sails filled out the ship heaved and rolled as before ah ye admonitions and warnings why stay ye not when ye come but rather are ye predictions than warnings ye shadows yet not so much predictions from without as verifications of the foregoing things within for with little external to constrain us the innermost necessities in our being these still drive us on the measure the measure cried ahab receiving the brimming pewter and turning to the harpooneers he ordered them to produce their weapons then ranging them before him near the capstan with their harpoons in their hands while his three mates stood at his side with their lances and the rest of the ship s company formed a circle round the group he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew but those wild eyes met his as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison but alas only to fall into the hidden snare of the indian drink and pass he cried handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman the crew alone now drink round with it round short draughts long swallows men tis hot as satan s hoof so so it goes round excellently it spiralizes in ye forks out at the serpent snapping eye well done almost drained that way it went this way it comes hand it me here s a hollow men ye seem the years so brimming life is gulped and gone steward refill attend now my braves i have mustered ye all round this capstan and ye mates flank me with your lances and ye harpooneers stand there with your irons and ye stout mariners ring me in that i may in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me o men you will yet see that ha boy come back bad pennies come not sooner hand it me why now this pewter had run brimming again wer t not thou st vitus imp away thou ague advance ye mates cross your lances full before me well done let me touch the axis so saying with extended arm he grasped the three level radiating lances at their crossed centre while so doing suddenly and nervously twitched them meanwhile glancing intently from starbuck to stubb from stubb to flask it seemed as though by some nameless interior volition he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the leyden jar of his own magnetic life the three mates quailed before his strong sustained and mystic aspect stubb and flask looked sideways from him the honest eye of starbuck fell downright in vain cried ahab but maybe tis well for did ye three but once take the full forced shock then mine own electric thing that had perhaps expired from out me perchance too it would have dropped ye dead perchance ye need it not down lances and now ye mates i do appoint ye three cup bearers to my three pagan kinsmen there yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen my valiant harpooneers disdain the task what when the great pope washes the feet of beggars using his tiara for ewer oh my sweet cardinals your own condescension that shall bend ye to it i do not order ye ye will it cut your seizings and draw the poles ye harpooneers silently obeying the order the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons some three feet long held barbs up before him stab me not with that keen steel cant them cant them over know ye not the goblet end turn up the socket so so now ye cup bearers advance the irons take them hold them while i fill forthwith slowly going from one officer to the other he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter now three to three ye stand commend the murderous chalices bestow them ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league ha starbuck but the deed is done yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it drink ye harpooneers drink and swear ye men that man the deathful whaleboat s bow death to moby dick god hunt us all if we do not hunt moby dick to his death the long barbed steel goblets were lifted and to cries and maledictions against the white whale the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss starbuck paled and turned and shivered once more and finally the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew when waving his free hand to them they all dispersed and ahab retired within his cabin the cabin by the stern windows ahab sitting alone and gazing out i leave a white and turbid wake pale waters paler cheeks where er i sail the envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track let them but first i pass yonder by the ever brimming goblet s rim the warm waves blush like wine the gold brow plumbs the blue the diver sun slow dived from noon goes down my soul mounts up she wearies with her endless hill is then the crown too heavy that i wear this iron crown of lombardy yet is it bright with many a gem i the wearer see not its far flashings but darkly feel that i wear that that dazzlingly confounds tis iron that i know not gold tis split too that i feel the jagged edge galls me so my brain seems to beat against the solid metal aye steel skull mine the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain battering fight dry heat upon my brow oh time was when as the sunrise nobly spurred me so the sunset soothed no more this lovely light it lights not me all loveliness is anguish to me since i can ne er enjoy gifted with the high perception i lack the low enjoying power damned most subtly and most malignantly damned in the midst of paradise good night good night waving his hand he moves from the window twas not so hard a task i thought to find one stubborn at the least but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels and they revolve or if you will like so many ant hills of powder they all stand before me and i their match oh hard that to fire others the match itself must needs be wasting what i ve dared i ve willed and what i ve willed i ll do they think me mad starbuck does but i m demoniac i am madness maddened that wild madness that s only calm to comprehend itself the prophecy was that i should be dismembered and aye i lost this leg i now prophesy that i will dismember my dismemberer now then be the prophet and the fulfiller one that s more than ye ye great gods ever were i laugh and hoot at ye ye cricket players ye pugilists ye deaf burkes and blinded bendigoes i will not say as school boys do to bullies take some one of your own size don t pommel me no ye ve knocked me down and i am up again but ye have run and hidden come forth from behind your cotton bags i have no long gun to reach ye come ahab s compliments to ye come and see if ye can swerve me swerve me ye cannot swerve me else ye swerve yourselves man has ye there swerve me the path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run over unsounded gorges through the rifled hearts of mountains under torrents beds unerringly i rush naught s an obstacle naught s an angle to the iron way by the mainmast starbuck leaning against it my soul is more than matched she s overmanned and by a madman insufferable sting that sanity should ground arms on such a field but he drilled deep down and blasted all my reason out of me i think i see his impious end but feel that i must help him to it will i nill i the ineffable thing has tied me to him tows me with a cable i have no knife to cut horrible old man who s over him he cries aye he would be a democrat to all above look how he lords it over all below oh i plainly see my miserable office to obey rebelling and worse yet to hate with touch of pity for in his eyes i read some lurid woe would shrivel me up had i it yet is there hope time and tide flow wide the hated whale has the round watery world to swim in as the small gold fish has its glassy globe his heaven insulting purpose god may wedge aside i would up heart were it not like lead but my whole clock s run down my heart the all controlling weight i have no key to lift again a burst of revelry from the forecastle oh god to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers in them whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea the white whale is their demigorgon hark the infernal orgies that revelry is forward mark the unfaltering silence aft methinks it pictures life foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay embattled bantering bow but only to drag dark ahab after it where he broods within his sternward cabin builded over the dead water of the wake and further on hunted by its wolfish gurglings the long howl thrills me through peace ye revellers and set the watch oh life tis in an hour like this with soul beat down and held to knowledge as wild untutored things are forced to feed oh life tis now that i do feel the latent horror in thee but tis not me that horror s out of me and with the soft feeling of the human in me yet will i try to fight ye ye grim phantom futures stand by me hold me bind me o ye blessed influences stubb solus and mending a brace ha ha ha ha hem clear my throat i ve been thinking over it ever since and that ha ha s the final consequence why so because a laugh s the wisest easiest answer to all that s queer and come what will one comfort s always left that unfailing comfort is it s all predestinated i heard not all his talk with starbuck but to my poor eye starbuck then looked something as i the other evening felt be sure the old mogul has fixed him too i twigged it knew it had had the gift might readily have prophesied it for when i clapped my eye upon his skull i saw it well stubb wise stubb that s my title well stubb what of it stubb here s a carcase i know not all that may be coming but be it what it will i ll go to it laughing such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles i feel funny fa la lirra skirra what s my juicy little pear at home doing now crying its eyes out giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers i dare say gay as a frigate s pennant and so am i fa la lirra skirra oh we ll drink to night with hearts as light to love as gay and fleeting as bubbles that swim on the beaker s brim and break on the lips while meeting a brave stave that who calls mr starbuck aye aye sir aside he s my superior he has his too if i m not mistaken aye aye sir just through with this job coming foresail rises and discovers the watch standing lounging leaning and lying in various attitudes all singing in chorus farewell and adieu to you spanish ladies farewell and adieu to you ladies of spain our captain s commanded st nantucket sailor oh boys don t be sentimental it s bad for the digestion take a tonic follow me sings and all follow our captain stood upon the deck a spy glass in his hand a viewing of those gallant whales that blew at every strand oh your tubs in your boats my boys and by your braces stand and we ll have one of those fine whales hand boys over hand so be cheery my lads may your hearts never fail while the bold harpooneer is striking the whale mate s voice from the quarter deck eight bells there forward nd nantucket sailor avast the chorus eight bells there d ye hear bell boy strike the bell eight thou pip thou blackling and let me call the watch i ve the sort of mouth for that the hogshead mouth so so thrusts his head down the scuttle star bo l e e n s a h o y eight bells there below tumble up dutch sailor grand snoozing to night maty fat night for that i mark this in our old mogul s wine it s quite as deadening to some as filliping to others we sing they sleep aye lie down there like ground tier butts at em again there take this copper pump and hail em through it tell em to avast dreaming of their lasses tell em it s the resurrection they must kiss their last and come to judgment that s the way that s it thy throat ain t spoiled with eating amsterdam butter french sailor hist boys let s have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in blanket bay what say ye there comes the other watch stand by all legs pip little pip hurrah with your tambourine pip sulky and sleepy don t know where it is french sailor beat thy belly then and wag thy ears jig it men i say merry s the word hurrah damn me won t you dance form now indian file and gallop into the double shuffle throw yourselves legs legs iceland sailor i don t like your floor maty it s too springy to my taste i m used to ice floors i m sorry to throw cold water on the subject but excuse me maltese sailor me too where s your girls who but a fool would take his left hand by his right and say to himself how d ye do partners i must have partners sicilian sailor aye girls and a green then i ll hop with ye yea turn grasshopper long island sailor well well ye sulkies there s plenty more of us hoe corn when you may i say all legs go to harvest soon ah here comes the music now for it azore sailor ascending and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle here you are pip and there s the windlass bitts up you mount now boys the half of them dance to the tambourine some go below some sleep or lie among the coils of rigging oaths a plenty azore sailor dancing go it pip bang it bell boy rig it dig it stig it quig it bell boy make fire flies break the jinglers pip jinglers you say there goes another dropped off i pound it so china sailor rattle thy teeth then and pound away make a pagoda of thyself french sailor merry mad hold up thy hoop pip till i jump through it split jibs tear yourselves tashtego quietly smoking that s a white man he calls that fun humph i save my sweat old manx sailor i wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing over i ll dance over your grave i will that s the bitterest threat of your night women that beat head winds round corners o christ to think of the green navies and the green skulled crews well well belike the whole world s a ball as you scholars have it and so tis right to make one ballroom of it dance on lads you re young i was once d nantucket sailor spell oh whew this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm give us a whiff tash they cease dancing and gather in clusters meantime the sky darkens the wind rises lascar sailor by brahma boys it ll be douse sail soon the sky born high tide ganges turned to wind thou showest thy black brow seeva maltese sailor reclining and shaking his cap it s the waves the snow s caps turn to jig it now they ll shake their tassels soon now would all the waves were women then i d go drown and chassee with them evermore there s naught so sweet on earth heaven may not match it as those swift glances of warm wild bosoms in the dance when the over arboring arms hide such ripe bursting grapes sicilian sailor reclining tell me not of it hark ye lad fleet interlacings of the limbs lithe swayings coyings flutterings lip heart hip all graze unceasing touch and go not taste observe ye else come satiety eh pagan nudging tahitan sailor reclining on a mat hail holy nakedness of our dancing girls the heeva heeva ah low veiled high palmed tahiti i still rest me on thy mat but the soft soil has slid i saw thee woven in the wood my mat green the first day i brought ye thence now worn and wilted quite ah me not thou nor i can bear the change how then if so be transplanted to yon sky hear i the roaring streams from pirohitee s peak of spears when they leap down the crags and drown the villages the blast the blast up spine and meet it leaps to his feet portuguese sailor how the sea rolls swashing gainst the side stand by for reefing hearties the winds are just crossing swords pell mell they ll go lunging presently danish sailor crack crack old ship so long as thou crackest thou holdest well done the mate there holds ye to it stiffly he s no more afraid than the isle fort at cattegat put there to fight the baltic with storm lashed guns on which the sea salt cakes th nantucket sailor he has his orders mind ye that i heard old ahab tell him he must always kill a squall something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol fire your ship right into it english sailor blood but that old man s a grand old cove we are the lads to hunt him up his whale all aye aye old manx sailor how the three pines shake pines are the hardest sort of tree to live when shifted to any other soil and here there s none but the crew s cursed clay steady helmsman steady this is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore and keeled hulls split at sea our captain has his birth mark look yonder boys there s another in the sky lurid like ye see all else pitch black daggoo what of that who s afraid of black s afraid of me i m quarried out of it spanish sailor aside he wants to bully ah the old grudge makes me touchy advancing aye harpooneer thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind devilish dark at that no offence daggoo grimly none st jago s sailor that spaniard s mad or drunk but that can t be or else in his one case our old mogul s fire waters are somewhat long in working th nantucket sailor what s that i saw lightning yes spanish sailor no daggoo showing his teeth daggoo springing swallow thine mannikin white skin white liver spanish sailor meeting him knife thee heartily big frame small spirit all a row a row a row tashtego with a whiff a row a low and a row aloft gods and men both brawlers humph belfast sailor a row arrah a row the virgin be blessed a row plunge in with ye english sailor fair play snatch the spaniard s knife a ring a ring old manx sailor ready formed there the ringed horizon in that ring cain struck abel sweet work right work no why then god mad st thou the ring mate s voice from the quarter deck hands by the halyards in top gallant sails stand by to reef topsails all the squall the squall jump my jollies they scatter pip shrinking under the windlass jollies lord help such jollies crish crash there goes the jib stay blang whang god duck lower pip here comes the royal yard it s worse than being in the whirled woods the last day of the year who d go climbing after chestnuts now but there they go all cursing and here i don t fine prospects to em they re on the road to heaven hold on hard jimmini what a squall but those chaps there are worse yet they are your white squalls they white squalls white whale shirr shirr here have i heard all their chat just now and the white whale shirr shirr but spoken of once and only this evening it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine that anaconda of an old man swore em in to hunt him oh thou big white god aloft there somewhere in yon darkness have mercy on this small black boy down here preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear i ishmael was one of that crew my shouts had gone up with the rest my oath had been welded with theirs and stronger i shouted and more did i hammer and clinch my oath because of the dread in my soul a wild mystical sympathetical feeling was in me ahab s quenchless feud seemed mine with greedy ears i learned the history of that murderous monster against whom i and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge for some time past though at intervals only the unaccompanied secluded white whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly frequented by the sperm whale fishermen but not all of them knew of his existence only a few of them comparatively had knowingly seen him while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle to him was small indeed for owing to the large number of whale cruisers the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery circumference many of them adventurously pushing their quest along solitary latitudes so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or more on a stretch to encounter a single news telling sail of any sort the inordinate length of each separate voyage the irregularity of the times of sailing from home all these with other circumstances direct and indirect long obstructed the spread through the whole world wide whaling fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning moby dick it was hardly to be doubted that several vessels reported to have encountered at such or such a time or on such or such a meridian a sperm whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity which whale after doing great mischief to his assailants had completely escaped them to some minds it was not an unfair presumption i say that the whale in question must have been no other than moby dick yet as of late the sperm whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity cunning and malice in the monster attacked therefore it was that those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to moby dick such hunters perhaps for the most part were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred more as it were to the perils of the sperm whale fishery at large than to the individual cause in that way mostly the disastrous encounter between ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded and as for those who previously hearing of the white whale by chance caught sight of him in the beginning of the thing they had every one of them almost as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him as for any other whale of that species but at length such calamities did ensue in these assaults not restricted to sprained wrists and ancles broken limbs or devouring amputations but fatal to the last degree of fatality those repeated disastrous repulses all accumulating and piling their terrors upon moby dick those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters to whom the story of the white whale had eventually come nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate and still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters for not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi but in maritime life far more than in that of terra firma wild rumors abound wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to and as the sea surpasses the land in this matter so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there for not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors but of all sailors they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels but hand to jaw give battle to them alone in such remotest waters that though you sailed a thousand miles and passed a thousand shores you would not come to any chiselled hearthstone or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun in such latitudes and longitudes pursuing too such a calling as he does the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth no wonder then that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the widest watery spaces the outblown rumors of the white whale did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints and half formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies which eventually invested moby dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly appears so that in many cases such a panic did he finally strike that few who by those rumors at least had heard of the white whale few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw but there were still other and more vital practical influences at work not even at the present day has the original prestige of the sperm whale as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the leviathan died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body there are those this day among them who though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the greenland or right whale would perhaps either from professional inexperience or incompetency or timidity decline a contest with the sperm whale at any rate there are plenty of whalemen especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the american flag who have never hostilely encountered the sperm whale but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the north seated on their hatches these men will hearken with a childish fire side interest and awe to the wild strange tales of southern whaling nor is the pre eminent tremendousness of the great sperm whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended than on board of those prows which stem him and as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times thrown its shadow before it we find some book naturalists olassen and povelson declaring the sperm whale not only to be a consternation to every other creature in the sea but also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood nor even down to so late a time as cuvier s were these or almost similar impressions effaced for in his natural history the baron himself affirms that at sight of the sperm whale all fish sharks included are struck with the most lively terrors and often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death and however the general experiences in the fishery may amend such reports as these yet in their full terribleness even to the bloodthirsty item of povelson the superstitious belief in them is in some vicissitudes of their vocation revived in the minds of the hunters so that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him not a few of the fishermen recalled in reference to moby dick the earlier days of the sperm whale fishery when it was oftentimes hard to induce long practised right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare such men protesting that although other leviathans might be hopefully pursued yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition as the sperm whale was not for mortal man that to attempt it would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity on this head there are some remarkable documents that may be consulted nevertheless some there were who even in the face of these things were ready to give chase to moby dick and a still greater number who chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely without the specific details of any certain calamity and without superstitious accompaniments were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if offered one of the wild suggestings referred to as at last coming to be linked with the white whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined was the unearthly conceit that moby dick was ubiquitous that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time nor credulous as such minds must have been was this conceit altogether without some faint show of superstitious probability for as the secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged even to the most erudite research so the hidden ways of the sperm whale when beneath the surface remain in great part unaccountable to his pursuers and from time to time have originated the most curious and contradictory speculations regarding them especially concerning the mystic modes whereby after sounding to a great depth he transports himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points it is a thing well known to both american and english whale ships and as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by scoresby that some whales have been captured far north in the pacific in whose bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the greenland seas nor is it to be gainsaid that in some of these instances it has been declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could not have exceeded very many days hence by inference it has been believed by some whalemen that the nor west passage so long a problem to man was never a problem to the whale so that here in the real living experience of living men the prodigies related in old times of the inland strello mountain in portugal near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface and that still more wonderful story of the arethusa fountain near syracuse whose waters were believed to have come from the holy land by an underground passage these fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman forced into familiarity then with such prodigies as these and knowing that after repeated intrepid assaults the white whale had escaped alive it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions declaring moby dick not only ubiquitous but immortal for immortality is but ubiquity in time that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks he would still swim away unharmed or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick blood such a sight would be but a ghastly deception for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away his unsullied jet would once more be seen but even stripped of these supernatural surmisings there was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the imagination with unwonted power for it was not so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales but as was elsewhere thrown out a peculiar snow white wrinkled forehead and a high pyramidical white hump these were his prominent features the tokens whereby even in the limitless uncharted seas he revealed his identity at a long distance to those who knew him the rest of his body was so streaked and spotted and marbled with the same shrouded hue that in the end he had gained his distinctive appellation of the white whale a name indeed literally justified by his vivid aspect when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea leaving a milky way wake of creamy foam all spangled with golden gleamings nor was it his unwonted magnitude nor his remarkable hue nor yet his deformed lower jaw that so much invested the whale with natural terror as that unexampled intelligent malignity which according to specific accounts he had over and over again evinced in his assaults more than all his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else for when swimming before his exulting pursuers with every apparent symptom of alarm he had several times been known to turn around suddenly and bearing down upon them either stave their boats to splinters or drive them back in consternation to their ship already several fatalities had attended his chase but though similar disasters however little bruited ashore were by no means unusual in the fishery yet in most instances such seemed the white whale s infernal aforethought of ferocity that every dismembering or death that he caused was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent judge then to what pitches of inflamed distracted fury the minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled when amid the chips of chewed boats and the sinking limbs of torn comrades they swam out of the white curds of the whale s direful wrath into the serene exasperating sunlight that smiled on as if at a birth or a bridal his three boats stove around him and oars and men both whirling in the eddies one captain seizing the line knife from his broken prow had dashed at the whale as an arkansas duellist at his foe blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom deep life of the whale that captain was ahab and then it was that suddenly sweeping his sickle shaped lower jaw beneath him moby dick had reaped away ahab s leg as a mower a blade of grass in the field no turbaned turk no hired venetian or malay could have smote him with more seeming malice small reason was there to doubt then that ever since that almost fatal encounter ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him not only all his bodily woes but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations the white whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung that intangible malignity which has been from the beginning to whose dominion even the modern christians ascribe one half of the worlds which the ancient ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil ahab did not fall down and worship it like them but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale he pitted himself all mutilated against it all that most maddens and torments all that stirs up the lees of things all truth with malice in it all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain all the subtle demonisms of life and thought all evil to crazy ahab were visibly personified and made practically assailable in moby dick he piled upon the whale s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from adam down and then as if his chest had been a mortar he burst his hot heart s shell upon it it is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment then in darting at the monster knife in hand he had but given loose to a sudden passionate corporal animosity and when he received the stroke that tore him he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration but nothing more yet when by this collision forced to turn towards home and for long months of days and weeks ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock rounding in mid winter that dreary howling patagonian cape then it was that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another and so interfusing made him mad that it was only then on the homeward voyage after the encounter that the final monomania seized him seems all but certain from the fact that at intervals during the passage he was a raving lunatic and though unlimbed of a leg yet such vital strength yet lurked in his egyptian chest and was moreover intensified by his delirium that his mates were forced to lace him fast even there as he sailed raving in his hammock in a strait jacket he swung to the mad rockings of the gales and when running into more sufferable latitudes the ship with mild stun sails spread floated across the tranquil tropics and to all appearances the old man s delirium seemed left behind him with the cape horn swells and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air even then when he bore that firm collected front however pale and issued his calm orders once again and his mates thanked god the direful madness was now gone even then ahab in his hidden self raved on human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing when you think it fled it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form ahab s full lunacy subsided not but deepeningly contracted like the unabated hudson when that noble northman flows narrowly but unfathomably through the highland gorge but as in his narrow flowing monomania not one jot of ahab s broad madness had been left behind so in that broad madness not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished that before living agent now became the living instrument if such a furious trope may stand his special lunacy stormed his general sanity and carried it and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark so that far from having lost his strength ahab to that one end did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object this is much yet ahab s larger darker deeper part remains unhinted but vain to popularize profundities and all truth is profound winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked hotel de cluny where we here stand however grand and wonderful now quit it and take your way ye nobler sadder souls to those vast roman halls of thermes where far beneath the fantastic towers of man s upper earth his root of grandeur his whole awful essence sits in bearded state an antique buried beneath antiquities and throned on torsoes so with a broken throne the great gods mock that captive king so like a caryatid he patient sits upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages wind ye down there ye prouder sadder souls question that proud sad king a family likeness aye he did beget ye ye young exiled royalties and from your grim sire only will the old state secret come now in his heart ahab had some glimpse of this namely all my means are sane my motive and my object mad yet without power to kill or change or shun the fact he likewise knew that to mankind he did now long dissemble in some sort did still but that thing of his dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility not to his will determinate nevertheless so well did he succeed in that dissembling that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last no nantucketer thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved and that to the quick with the terrible casualty which had overtaken him the report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly ascribed to a kindred cause and so too all the added moodiness which always afterwards to the very day of sailing in the pequod on the present voyage sat brooding on his brow nor is it so very unlikely that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage on account of such dark symptoms the calculating people of that prudent isle were inclined to harbor the conceit that for those very reasons he was all the better qualified and set on edge for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales gnawed within and scorched without with the infixed unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea such an one could he be found would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes or if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack but be all this as it may certain it is that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only and all engrossing object of hunting the white whale had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man they were bent on profitable cruises the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint he was intent on an audacious immitigable and supernatural revenge here then was this grey headed ungodly old man chasing with curses a job s whale round the world at the head of a crew too chiefly made up of mongrel renegades and castaways and cannibals morally enfeebled also by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right mindedness in starbuck the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in stubb and the pervading mediocrity in flask such a crew so officered seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge how it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man s ire by what evil magic their souls were possessed that at times his hate seemed almost theirs the white whale as much their insufferable foe as his how all this came to be what the white whale was to them or how to their unconscious understandings also in some dim unsuspected way he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life all this to explain would be to dive deeper than ishmael can go the subterranean miner that works in us all how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting muffled sound of his pick who does not feel the irresistible arm drag what skiff in tow of a seventy four can stand still for one i gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the place but while yet all a rush to encounter the whale could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill what the white whale was to ahab has been hinted what at times he was to me as yet remains unsaid aside from those more obvious considerations touching moby dick which could not but occasionally awaken in any man s soul some alarm there was another thought or rather vague nameless horror concerning him which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it that i almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form it was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me but how can i hope to explain myself here and yet in some dim random way explain myself i must else all these chapters might be naught though in many natural objects whiteness refiningly enhances beauty as if imparting some special virtue of its own as in marbles japonicas and pearls and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal pre eminence in this hue even the barbaric grand old kings of pegu placing the title lord of the white elephants above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion and the modern kings of siam unfurling the same snow white quadruped in the royal standard and the hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow white charger and the great austrian empire caesarian heir to overlording rome having for the imperial color the same imperial hue and though this pre eminence in it applies to the human race itself giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe and though besides all this whiteness has been even made significant of gladness for among the romans a white stone marked a joyful day and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings this same hue is made the emblem of many touching noble things the innocence of brides the benignity of age though among the red men of america the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor though in many climes whiteness typifies the majesty of justice in the ermine of the judge and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk white steeds though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power by the persian fire worshippers the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar and in the greek mythologies great jove himself made incarnate in a snow white bull and though to the noble iroquois the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred white dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology that spotless faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the great spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity and though directly from the latin word for white all christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture the alb or tunic worn beneath the cassock and though among the holy pomps of the romish faith white is specially employed in the celebration of the passion of our lord though in the vision of st john white robes are given to the redeemed and the four and twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great white throne and the holy one that sitteth there white like wool yet for all these accumulated associations with whatever is sweet and honorable and sublime there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood this elusive quality it is which causes the thought of whiteness when divorced from more kindly associations and coupled with any object terrible in itself to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds witness the white bear of the poles and the white shark of the tropics what but their smooth flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are that ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness even more loathsome than terrific to the dumb gloating of their aspect so that not the fierce fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white shrouded bear or shark bethink thee of the albatross whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations not coleridge first threw that spell but god s great unflattering laureate nature most famous in our western annals and indian traditions is that of the white steed of the prairies a magnificent milk white charger large eyed small headed bluff chested and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty overscorning carriage he was the elected xerxes of vast herds of wild horses whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the rocky mountains and the alleghanies at their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light the flashing cascade of his mane the curving comet of his tail invested him with housings more resplendent than gold and silver beaters could have furnished him a most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen western world which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the glories of those primeval times when adam walked majestic as a god bluff bowed and fearless as this mighty steed whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains like an ohio or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon the white steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness in whatever aspect he presented himself always to the bravest indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble horse that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly which so clothed him with divineness and that this divineness had that in it which though commanding worship at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror but there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in the white steed and albatross what is it that in the albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the eye as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin it is that whiteness which invests him a thing expressed by the name he bears the albino is as well made as other men has no substantive deformity and yet this mere aspect of all pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion why should this be so nor in quite other aspects does nature in her least palpable but not the less malicious agencies fail to enlist among her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible from its snowy aspect the gauntleted ghost of the southern seas has been denominated the white squall nor in some historic instances has the art of human malice omitted so potent an auxiliary how wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in froissart when masked in the snowy symbol of their faction the desperate white hoods of ghent murder their bailiff in the market place nor in some things does the common hereditary experience of all mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue it cannot well be doubted that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which most appals the gazer is the marble pallor lingering there as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world as of mortal trepidation here and from that pallor of the dead we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them nor even in our superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms all ghosts rising in a milk white fog yea while these terrors seize us let us add that even the king of terrors when personified by the evangelist rides on his pallid horse therefore in his other moods symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul but though without dissent this point be fixed how is mortal man to account for it to analyse it would seem impossible can we then by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of whiteness though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful but nevertheless is found to exert over us the same sorcery however modified can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek let us try but in a matter like this subtlety appeals to subtlety and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls and though doubtless some at least of the imaginative impressions about to be presented may have been shared by most men yet few perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time and therefore may not be able to recall them now why to the man of untutored ideality who happens to be but loosely acquainted with the peculiar character of the day does the bare mention of whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long dreary speechless processions of slow pacing pilgrims downcast and hooded with new fallen snow or to the unread unsophisticated protestant of the middle american states why does the passing mention of a white friar or a white nun evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings which will not wholly account for it that makes the white tower of london tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled american than those other storied structures its neighbors the byward tower or even the bloody and those sublimer towers the white mountains of new hampshire whence in peculiar moods comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of that name while the thought of virginia s blue ridge is full of a soft dewy distant dreaminess or why irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes does the name of the white sea exert such a spectralness over the fancy while that of the yellow sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets or to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance purely addressed to the fancy why in reading the old fairy tales of central europe does the tall pale man of the hartz forests whose changeless pallor unrestingly glides through the green of the groves why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the blocksburg nor is it altogether the remembrance of her cathedral toppling earthquakes nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires wrenched cope stones and crosses all adroop like canted yards of anchored fleets and her suburban avenues of house walls lying over upon each other as a tossed pack of cards it is not these things alone which make tearless lima the strangest saddest city thou can st see for lima has taken the white veil and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe old as pizarro this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions i know that to the common apprehension this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality what i mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the following examples first the mariner when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands if by night he hear the roar of breakers starts to vigilance and feels just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties but under precisely similar circumstances let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him then he feels a silent superstitious dread the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings heart and helm they both go down he never rests till blue water is under him again yet where is the mariner who will tell thee sir it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me second to the native indian of peru the continual sight of the snow howdahed andes conveys naught of dread except perhaps in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the west who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness not so the sailor beholding the scenery of the antarctic seas where at times by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air he shivering and half shipwrecked instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery views what seems a boundless church yard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and splintered crosses but thou sayest methinks this white lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul thou surrenderest to a hypo ishmael tell me why this strong young colt foaled in some peaceful valley of vermont far removed from all beasts of prey why is it that upon the sunniest day if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him so that he cannot even see it but only smells its wild animal muskiness why will he start snort and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright there is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creatures in his green northern home so that the strange muskiness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience of former perils for what knows he this new england colt of the black bisons of distant oregon no but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute the instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world though thousands of miles from oregon still when he smells that savage musk the rending goring bison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies which this instant they may be trampling into dust thus then the muffled rollings of a milky sea the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies all these to ishmael are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign gives forth such hints yet with me as with the colt somewhere those things must exist though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love the invisible spheres were formed in fright but not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul and more strange and far more portentous why as we have seen it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things nay the very veil of the christian s deity and yet should be as it is the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation when beholding the white depths of the milky way or is it that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color and at the same time the concrete of all colors is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness full of meaning in a wide landscape of snows a colorless all color of atheism from which we shrink and when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers that all other earthly hues every stately or lovely emblazoning the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods yea and the gilded velvets of butterflies and the butterfly cheeks of young girls all these are but subtile deceits not actually inherent in substances but only laid on from without so that all deified nature absolutely paints like the harlot whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel house within and when we proceed further and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues the great principle of light for ever remains white or colorless in itself and if operating without medium upon matter would touch all objects even tulips and roses with its own blank tinge pondering all this the palsied universe lies before us a leper and like wilful travellers in lapland who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him and of all these things the albino whale was the symbol wonder ye then at the fiery hunt with reference to the polar bear it may possibly be urged by him who would fain go still deeper into this matter that it is not the whiteness separately regarded which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that brute for analysed that heightened hideousness it might be said only arises from the circumstance that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love and hence by bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds the polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast but even assuming all this to be true yet were it not for the whiteness you would not have that intensified terror as for the white shark the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that creature when beheld in his ordinary moods strangely tallies with the same quality in the polar quadruped this peculiarity is most vividly hit by the french in the name they bestow upon that fish the romish mass for the dead begins with requiem eternam eternal rest whence requiem denominating the mass itself and any other funereal music now in allusion to the white silent stillness of death in this shark and the mild deadliness of his habits the french call him requin i remember the first albatross i ever saw it was during a prolonged gale in waters hard upon the antarctic seas from my forenoon watch below i ascended to the overclouded deck and there dashed upon the main hatches i saw a regal feathery thing of unspotted whiteness and with a hooked roman bill sublime at intervals it arched forth its vast archangel wings as if to embrace some holy ark wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it though bodily unharmed it uttered cries as some king s ghost in supernatural distress through its inexpressible strange eyes methought i peeped to secrets which took hold of god as abraham before the angels i bowed myself the white thing was so white its wings so wide and in those for ever exiled waters i had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns long i gazed at that prodigy of plumage i cannot tell can only hint the things that darted through me then but at last i awoke and turning asked a sailor what bird was this a goney he replied goney i never had heard that name before is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore never but some time after i learned that goney was some seaman s name for albatross so that by no possibility could coleridge s wild rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine when i saw that bird upon our deck for neither had i then read the rhyme nor knew the bird to be an albatross yet in saying this i do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet i assert then that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell a truth the more evinced in this that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses and these i have frequently seen but never with such emotions as when i beheld the antarctic fowl but how had the mystic thing been caught whisper it not and i will tell with a treacherous hook and line as the fowl floated on the sea at last the captain made a postman of it tying a lettered leathern tally round its neck with the ship s time and place and then letting it escape but i doubt not that leathern tally meant for man was taken off in heaven when the white fowl flew to join the wing folding the invoking and adoring cherubim hist did you hear that noise cabaco it was the middle watch a fair moonlight the seamen were standing in a cordon extending from one of the fresh water butts in the waist to the scuttle butt near the taffrail in this manner they passed the buckets to fill the scuttle butt standing for the most part on the hallowed precincts of the quarter deck they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet from hand to hand the buckets went in the deepest silence only broken by the occasional flap of a sail and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel it was in the midst of this repose that archy one of the cordon whose post was near the after hatches whispered to his neighbor a cholo the words above hist did you hear that noise cabaco take the bucket will ye archy what noise d ye mean there it is again under the hatches don t you hear it a cough it sounded like a cough cough be damned pass along that return bucket there again there it is it sounds like two or three sleepers turning over now caramba have done shipmate will ye it s the three soaked biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye nothing else look to the bucket say what ye will shipmate i ve sharp ears aye you are the chap ain t ye that heard the hum of the old quakeress s knitting needles fifty miles at sea from nantucket you re the chap grin away we ll see what turns up hark ye cabaco there is somebody down in the after hold that has not yet been seen on deck and i suspect our old mogul knows something of it too i heard stubb tell flask one morning watch that there was something of that sort in the wind tish the bucket had you followed captain ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with his crew you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts spread them before him on his screwed down table then seating himself before it you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank at intervals he would refer to piles of old log books beside him wherein were set down the seasons and places in which on various former voyages of various ships sperm whales had been captured or seen while thus employed the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head continually rocked with the motion of the ship and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead but it was not this night in particular that in the solitude of his cabin ahab thus pondered over his charts almost every night they were brought out almost every night some pencil marks were effaced and others were substituted for with the charts of all four oceans before him ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul now to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet but not so did it seem to ahab who knew the sets of all tides and currents and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale s food and also calling to mind the regular ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes could arrive at reasonable surmises almost approaching to certainties concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey so assured indeed is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm whale s resorting to given waters that many hunters believe that could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the herring shoals or the flights of swallows on this hint attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale besides when making a passage from one feeding ground to another the sperm whales guided by some infallible instinct say rather secret intelligence from the deity mostly swim in veins as they are called continuing their way along a given ocean line with such undeviating exactitude that no ship ever sailed her course by any chart with one tithe of such marvellous precision though in these cases the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor s parallel and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable straight wake yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to swim generally embraces some few miles in width more or less as the vein is presumed to expand or contract but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale ship s mast heads when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone the sum is that at particular seasons within that breadth and along that path migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for and hence not only at substantiated times upon well known separate feeding grounds could ahab hope to encounter his prey but in crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could by his art so place and time himself on his way as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a meeting there was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious but still methodical scheme but not so in the reality perhaps though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which hunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year say will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding season though there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true in general the same remark only within a less wide limit applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured aged sperm whales so that though moby dick had in a former year been seen for example on what is called the seychelle ground in the indian ocean or volcano bay on the japanese coast yet it did not follow that were the pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season she would infallibly encounter him there so too with some other feeding grounds where he had at times revealed himself but all these seemed only his casual stopping places and ocean inns so to speak not his places of prolonged abode and where ahab s chances of accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of allusion has only been made to whatever way side antecedent extra prospects were his ere a particular set time or place were attained when all possibilities would become probabilities and as ahab fondly thought every possibility the next thing to a certainty that particular set time and place were conjoined in the one technical phrase the season on the line for there and then for several consecutive years moby dick had been periodically descried lingering in those waters for awhile as the sun in its annual round loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the zodiac there it was too that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place there the waves were storied with his deeds there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance but in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned however flattering it might be to those hopes nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest now the pequod had sailed from nantucket at the very beginning of the season on the line no possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make the great passage southwards double cape horn and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial pacific in time to cruise there therefore he must wait for the next ensuing season yet the premature hour of the pequod s sailing had perhaps been correctly selected by ahab with a view to this very complexion of things because an interval of three hundred and sixty five days and nights was before him an interval which instead of impatiently enduring ashore he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt if by chance the white whale spending his vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding grounds should turn up his wrinkled brow off the persian gulf or in the bengal bay or china seas or in any other waters haunted by his race so that monsoons pampas nor westers harmattans trades any wind but the levanter and simoom might blow moby dick into the devious zig zag world circle of the pequod s circumnavigating wake but granting all this yet regarded discreetly and coolly seems it not but a mad idea this that in the broad boundless ocean one solitary whale even if encountered should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter even as a white bearded mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of constantinople yes for the peculiar snow white brow of moby dick and his snow white hump could not but be unmistakable and have i not tallied the whale ahab would mutter to himself as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries tallied him and shall he escape his broad fins are bored and scalloped out like a lost sheep s ear and here his mad mind would run on in a breathless race till a weariness and faintness of pondering came over him and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover his strength ah god what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire he sleeps with clenched hands and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms often when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night which resuming his own intense thoughts through the day carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies and whirled them round and round in his blazing brain till the very throbbing of his life spot became insufferable anguish and when as was sometimes the case these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base and a chasm seemed opening in him from which forked flames and lightnings shot up and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them when this hell in himself yawned beneath him a wild cry would be heard through the ship and with glaring eyes ahab would burst from his state room as though escaping from a bed that was on fire yet these perhaps instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness or fright at his own resolve were but the plainest tokens of its intensity for at such times crazy ahab the scheming unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale this ahab that had gone to his hammock was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again the latter was the eternal living principle or soul in him and in sleep being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing of which for the time it was no longer an integral but as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul therefore it must have been that in ahab s case yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose that purpose by its own sheer inveteracy of will forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self assumed independent being of its own nay could grimly live and burn while the common vitality to which it was conjoined fled horror stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth therefore the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes when what seemed ahab rushed from his room was for the time but a vacated thing a formless somnambulistic being a ray of living light to be sure but without an object to color and therefore a blankness in itself god help thee old man thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates since the above was written the statement is happily borne out by an official circular issued by lieutenant maury of the national observatory washington april th by that circular it appears that precisely such a chart is in course of completion and portions of it are presented in the circular this chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months and horizontally through each of which districts are three lines one to show the number of days that have been spent in each month in every district and the two others to show the number of days in which whales sperm or right have been seen so far as what there may be of a narrative in this book and indeed as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales the foregoing chapter in its earliest part is as important a one as will be found in this volume but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon in order to be adequately understood and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds as to the natural verity of the main points of this affair i care not to perform this part of my task methodically but shall be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman and from these citations i take it the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself first i have personally known three instances where a whale after receiving a harpoon has effected a complete escape and after an interval in one instance of three years has been again struck by the same hand and slain when the two irons both marked by the same private cypher have been taken from the body in the instance where three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons and i think it may have been something more than that the man who darted them happening in the interval to go in a trading ship on a voyage to africa went ashore there joined a discovery party and penetrated far into the interior where he travelled for a period of nearly two years often endangered by serpents savages tigers poisonous miasmas with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions meanwhile the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe brushing with its flanks all the coasts of africa but to no purpose this man and this whale again came together and the one vanquished the other i say i myself have known three instances similar to this that is in two of them i saw the whales struck and upon the second attack saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them afterwards taken from the dead fish in the three year instance it so fell out that i was in the boat both times first and last and the last time distinctly recognized a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale s eye which i had observed there three years previous i say three years but i am pretty sure it was more than that here are three instances then which i personally know the truth of but i have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no good ground to impeach secondly it is well known in the sperm whale fishery however ignorant the world ashore may be of it that there have been several memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable why such a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killing him and boiling him down into a peculiarly valuable oil no the reason was this that from the fatal experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as there did about rinaldo rinaldini insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street lest if they pursued the acquaintance further they might receive a summary thump for their presumption but not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual celebrity nay you may call it an ocean wide renown not only was he famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death but he was admitted into all the rights privileges and distinctions of a name had as much a name indeed as cambyses or caesar was it not so o timor tom thou famed leviathan scarred like an iceberg who so long did st lurk in the oriental straits of that name whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of ombay was it not so o new zealand jack thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the tattoo land was it not so o morquan king of japan whose lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow white cross against the sky was it not so o don miguel thou chilian whale marked like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back in plain prose here are four whales as well known to the students of cetacean history as marius or sylla to the classic scholar but this is not all new zealand tom and don miguel after at various times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels were finally gone in quest of systematically hunted out chased and killed by valiant whaling captains who heaved up their anchors with that express object as much in view as in setting out through the narragansett woods captain butler of old had it in his mind to capture that notorious murderous savage annawon the headmost warrior of the indian king philip i do not know where i can find a better place than just here to make mention of one or two other things which to me seem important as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the white whale more especially the catastrophe for this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error so ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world that without some hints touching the plain facts historical and otherwise of the fishery they might scout at moby dick as a monstrous fable or still worse and more detestable a hideous and intolerable allegory first though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general perils of the grand fishery yet they have nothing like a fixed vivid conception of those perils and the frequency with which they recur one reason perhaps is that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and deaths by casualties in the fishery ever finds a public record at home however transient and immediately forgotten that record do you suppose that that poor fellow there who this moment perhaps caught by the whale line off the coast of new guinea is being carried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan do you suppose that that poor fellow s name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read to morrow at your breakfast no because the mails are very irregular between here and new guinea in fact did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect from new guinea yet i tell you that upon one particular voyage which i made to the pacific among many others we spoke thirty different ships every one of which had had a death by a whale some of them more than one and three that had each lost a boat s crew for god s sake be economical with your lamps and candles not a gallon you burn but at least one drop of man s blood was spilled for it secondly people ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power but i have ever found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two fold enormousness they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness when i declare upon my soul i had no more idea of being facetious than moses when he wrote the history of the plagues of egypt but fortunately the special point i here seek can be established upon testimony entirely independent of my own that point is this the sperm whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful knowing and judiciously malicious as with direct aforethought to stave in utterly destroy and sink a large ship and what is more the sperm whale has done it first in the year the ship essex captain pollard of nantucket was cruising in the pacific ocean one day she saw spouts lowered her boats and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales ere long several of the whales were wounded when suddenly a very large whale escaping from the boats issued from the shoal and bore directly down upon the ship dashing his forehead against her hull he so stove her in that in less than ten minutes she settled down and fell over not a surviving plank of her has been seen since after the severest exposure part of the crew reached the land in their boats being returned home at last captain pollard once more sailed for the pacific in command of another ship but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers for the second time his ship was utterly lost and forthwith forswearing the sea he has never tempted it since at this day captain pollard is a resident of nantucket i have seen owen chace who was chief mate of the essex at the time of the tragedy i have read his plain and faithful narrative i have conversed with his son and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe secondly the ship union also of nantucket was in the year totally lost off the azores by a similar onset but the authentic particulars of this catastrophe i have never chanced to encounter though from the whale hunters i have now and then heard casual allusions to it thirdly some eighteen or twenty years ago commodore j then commanding an american sloop of war of the first class happened to be dining with a party of whaling captains on board a nantucket ship in the harbor of oahu sandwich islands conversation turning upon whales the commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present he peremptorily denied for example that any whale could so smite his stout sloop of war as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful very good but there is more coming some weeks after the commodore set sail in this impregnable craft for valparaiso but he was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale that begged a few moments confidential business with him that business consisted in fetching the commodore s craft such a thwack that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave down and repair i am not superstitious but i consider the commodore s interview with that whale as providential was not saul of tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright i tell you the sperm whale will stand no nonsense i will now refer you to langsdorff s voyages for a little circumstance in point peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof langsdorff you must know by the way was attached to the russian admiral krusenstern s famous discovery expedition in the beginning of the present century captain langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter by the thirteenth of may our ship was ready to sail and the next day we were out in the open sea on our way to ochotsh the weather was very clear and fine but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur clothing for some days we had very little wind it was not till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up an uncommon large whale the body of which was larger than the ship itself lay almost at the surface of the water but was not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the ship which was in full sail was almost upon him so that it was impossible to prevent its striking against him we were thus placed in the most imminent danger as this gigantic creature setting up its back raised the ship three feet at least out of the water the masts reeled and the sails fell altogether while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck concluding that we had struck upon some rock instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity captain d wolf applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had received any damage from the shock but we found that very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured now the captain d wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in question is a new englander who after a long life of unusual adventures as a sea captain this day resides in the village of dorchester near boston i have the honor of being a nephew of his i have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in langsdorff he substantiates every word the ship however was by no means a large one a russian craft built on the siberian coast and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home in that up and down manly book of old fashioned adventure so full too of honest wonders the voyage of lionel wafer one of ancient dampier s old chums i found a little matter set down so like that just quoted from langsdorff that i cannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative example if such be needed lionel it seems was on his way to john ferdinando as he calls the modern juan fernandes in our way thither he says about four o clock in the morning when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues from the main of america our ship felt a terrible shock which put our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where they were or what to think but every one began to prepare for death and indeed the shock was so sudden and violent that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock but when the amazement was a little over we cast the lead and sounded but found no ground the suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks captain davis who lay with his head on a gun was thrown out of his cabin lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great earthquake somewhere about that time did actually do great mischief along the spanish land but i should not much wonder if in the darkness of that early hour of the morning the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath i might proceed with several more examples one way or another known to me of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale in more than one instance he has been known not only to chase the assailing boats back to their ships but to pursue the ship itself and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks the english ship pusie hall can tell a story on that head and as for his strength let me say that there have been examples where the lines attached to a running sperm whale have in a calm been transferred to the ship and secured there the whale towing her great hull through the water as a horse walks off with a cart again it is very often observed that if the sperm whale once struck is allowed time to rally he then acts not so often with blind rage as with wilful deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his character that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes but i must be content with only one more and a concluding illustration a remarkable and most significant one by which you will not fail to see that not only is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day but that these marvels like all marvels are mere repetitions of the ages so that for the millionth time we say amen with solomon verily there is nothing new under the sun in the sixth christian century lived procopius a christian magistrate of constantinople in the days when justinian was emperor and belisarius general as many know he wrote the history of his own times a work every way of uncommon value by the best authorities he has always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian except in some one or two particulars not at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned now in this history of his procopius mentions that during the term of his prefecture at constantinople a great sea monster was captured in the neighboring propontis or sea of marmora after having destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years a fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid nor is there any reason it should be of what precise species this sea monster was is not mentioned but as he destroyed ships as well as for other reasons he must have been a whale and i am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale and i will tell you why for a long time i fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it even now i am certain that those seas are not and perhaps never can be in the present constitution of things a place for his habitual gregarious resort but further investigations have recently proved to me that in modern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the mediterranean i am told on good authority that on the barbary coast a commodore davis of the british navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale now as a vessel of war readily passes through the dardanelles hence a sperm whale could by the same route pass out of the mediterranean into the propontis in the propontis as far as i can learn none of that peculiar substance called brit is to be found the aliment of the right whale but i have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale squid or cuttle fish lurks at the bottom of that sea because large creatures but by no means the largest of that sort have been found at its surface if then you properly put these statements together and reason upon them a bit you will clearly perceive that according to all human reasoning procopius s sea monster that for half a century stove the ships of a roman emperor must in all probability have been a sperm whale the following are extracts from chace s narrative every fact seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed his operations he made two several attacks upon the ship at a short interval between them both of which according to their direction were calculated to do us the most injury by being made ahead and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the shock to effect which the exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary his aspect was most horrible and such as indicated resentment and fury he came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered and in which we had struck three of his companions as if fired with revenge for their sufferings again at all events the whole circumstances taken together all happening before my own eyes and producing at the time impressions in my mind of decided calculating mischief on the part of the whale many of which impressions i cannot now recall induce me to be satisfied that i am correct in my opinion here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship during a black night in an open boat when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable shore the dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing the fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest or dashed upon hidden rocks with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation seemed scarcely entitled to a moment s thought the dismal looking wreck and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale wholly engrossed my reflections until day again made its appearance in another place p he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack of the animal though consumed with the hot fire of his purpose ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of moby dick though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman s ways altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage or at least if this were otherwise there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him it would be refining too much perhaps even considering his monomania to hint that his vindictiveness towards the white whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted but if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable there were still additional considerations which though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion yet were by no means incapable of swaying him to accomplish his object ahab must use tools and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon men are most apt to get out of order he knew for example that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over starbuck yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership for to the purely spiritual the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation starbuck s body and starbuck s coerced will were ahab s so long as ahab kept his magnet at starbuck s brain still he knew that for all this the chief mate in his soul abhorred his captain s quest and could he would joyfully disintegrate himself from it or even frustrate it it might be that a long interval would elapse ere the white whale was seen during that long interval starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his captain s leadership unless some ordinary prudential circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him not only that but the subtle insanity of ahab respecting moby dick was noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that for the present the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background for few men s courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action that when they stood their long night watches his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than moby dick for however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable they live in the varying outer weather and they inhale its fickleness and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit however promissory of life and passion in the end it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employment should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash nor was ahab unmindful of another thing in times of strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations but such times are evanescent the permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man thought ahab is sordidness granting that the white whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight errantism in them still while for the love of it they give chase to moby dick they must also have food for their more common daily appetites for even the high lifted and chivalric crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre without committing burglaries picking pockets and gaining other pious perquisites by the way had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object that final and romantic object too many would have turned from in disgust i will not strip these men thought ahab of all hopes of cash aye cash they may scorn cash now but let some months go by and no perspective promise of it to them and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them this same cash would soon cashier ahab nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to ahab personally having impulsively it is probable and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the pequod s voyage ahab was now entirely conscious that in so doing he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation and with perfect impunity both moral and legal his crew if so disposed and to that end competent could refuse all further obedience to him and even violently wrest from him the command from even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself that protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand backed by a heedful closely calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected to for all these reasons then and others perhaps too analytic to be verbally developed here ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree continue true to the natural nominal purpose of the pequod s voyage observe all customary usages and not only that but force himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his profession be all this as it may his voice was now often heard hailing the three mast heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look out and not omit reporting even a porpoise this vigilance was not long without reward it was a cloudy sultry afternoon the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks or vacantly gazing over into the lead colored waters queequeg and i were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword mat for an additional lashing to our boat so still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene and such an incantation of revery lurked in the air that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self i was the attendant or page of queequeg while busy at the mat as i kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp using my own hand for the shuttle and as queequeg standing sideways ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads and idly looking off upon the water carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn i say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword that it seemed as if this were the loom of time and i myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the fates there lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single ever returning unchanging vibration and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own this warp seemed necessity and here thought i with my own hand i ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads meantime queequeg s impulsive indifferent sword sometimes hitting the woof slantingly or crookedly or strongly or weakly as the case might be and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric this savage s sword thought i which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof this easy indifferent sword must be chance aye chance free will and necessity no wise incompatible all interweavingly working together the straight warp of necessity not to be swerved from its ultimate course its every alternating vibration indeed only tending to that free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads and chance though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity and sideways in its motions directed by free will though thus prescribed to by both chance by turns rules either and has the last featuring blow at events thus we were weaving and weaving away when i started at a sound so strange long drawn and musically wild and unearthly that the ball of free will dropped from my hand and i stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing high aloft in the cross trees was that mad gay header tashtego his body was reaching eagerly forward his hand stretched out like a wand and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries to be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas from hundreds of whalemen s look outs perched as high in the air but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from tashtego the indian s as he stood hovering over you half suspended in air so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of fate and by those wild cries announcing their coming there she blows there there there she blows she blows where away on the lee beam about two miles off a school of them instantly all was commotion the sperm whale blows as a clock ticks with the same undeviating and reliable uniformity and thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of his genus there go flukes was now the cry from tashtego and the whales disappeared quick steward cried ahab time time dough boy hurried below glanced at the watch and reported the exact minute to ahab the ship was now kept away from the wind and she went gently rolling before it tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to leeward we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows for that singular craft at times evinced by the sperm whale when sounding with his head in one direction he nevertheless while concealed beneath the surface mills round and swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by tashtego had been in any way alarmed or indeed knew at all of our vicinity one of the men selected for shipkeepers that is those not appointed to the boats by this time relieved the indian at the main mast head the sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down the line tubs were fixed in their places the cranes were thrust out the mainyard was backed and the three boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale so look the long line of man of war s men about to throw themselves on board an enemy s ship but at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every eye from the whale with a start all glared at dark ahab who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air the phantoms for so they then seemed were flitting on the other side of the deck and with a noiseless celerity were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there this boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats though technically called the captain s on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter the figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel like lips a rumpled chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff but strangely crowning his ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head less swart in aspect the companions of this figure were of that vivid tiger yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the manillas a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the water of the devil their lord whose counting room they suppose to be elsewhere while yet the wondering ship s company were gazing upon these strangers ahab cried out to the white turbaned old man at their head all ready there fedallah ready was the half hissed reply lower away then d ye hear shouting across the deck lower away there i say such was the thunder of his voice that spite of their amazement the men sprang over the rail the sheaves whirled round in the blocks with a wallow the three boats dropped into the sea while with a dexterous off handed daring unknown in any other vocation the sailors goat like leaped down the rolling ship s side into the tossed boats below hardly had they pulled out from under the ship s lee when a fourth keel coming from the windward side pulled round under the stern and showed the five strangers rowing ahab who standing erect in the stern loudly hailed starbuck stubb and flask to spread themselves widely so as to cover a large expanse of water but with all their eyes again riveted upon the swart fedallah and his crew the inmates of the other boats obeyed not the command captain ahab said starbuck spread yourselves cried ahab give way all four boats thou flask pull out more to leeward aye aye sir cheerily cried little king post sweeping round his great steering oar lay back addressing his crew there there there again there she blows right ahead boys lay back never heed yonder yellow boys archy oh i don t mind em sir said archy i knew it all before now didn t i hear em in the hold and didn t i tell cabaco here of it what say ye cabaco they are stowaways mr flask pull pull my fine hearts alive pull my children pull my little ones drawingly and soothingly sighed stubb to his crew some of whom still showed signs of uneasiness why don t you break your backbones my boys what is it you stare at those chaps in yonder boat tut they are only five more hands come to help us never mind from where the more the merrier pull then do pull never mind the brimstone devils are good fellows enough so so there you are now that s the stroke for a thousand pounds that s the stroke to sweep the stakes hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil my heroes three cheers men all hearts alive easy easy don t be in a hurry don t be in a hurry why don t you snap your oars you rascals bite something you dogs so so so then softly softly that s it that s it long and strong give way there give way the devil fetch ye ye ragamuffin rapscallions ye are all asleep stop snoring ye sleepers and pull pull will ye pull can t ye pull won t ye why in the name of gudgeons and ginger cakes don t ye pull pull and break something pull and start your eyes out here whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle every mother s son of ye draw his knife and pull with the blade between his teeth that s it that s it now ye do something that looks like it my steel bits start her start her my silver spoons start her marling spikes stubb s exordium to his crew is given here at large because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing but you must not suppose from this specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions with his congregation not at all and therein consisted his chief peculiarity he would say the most terrific things to his crew in a tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice to the fun that no oarsman could hear such queer invocations without pulling for dear life and yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing besides he all the time looked so easy and indolent himself so loungingly managed his steering oar and so broadly gaped open mouthed at times that the mere sight of such a yawning commander by sheer force of contrast acted like a charm upon the crew then again stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous as to put all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them in obedience to a sign from ahab starbuck was now pulling obliquely across stubb s bow and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to each other stubb hailed the mate mr starbuck larboard boat there ahoy a word with ye sir if ye please halloa returned starbuck turning round not a single inch as he spoke still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew his face set like a flint from stubb s what think ye of those yellow boys sir smuggled on board somehow before the ship sailed strong strong boys in a whisper to his crew then speaking out loud again a sad business mr stubb seethe her seethe her my lads but never mind mr stubb all for the best let all your crew pull strong come what will spring my men spring there s hogsheads of sperm ahead mr stubb and that s what ye came for pull my boys sperm sperm s the play this at least is duty duty and profit hand in hand aye aye i thought as much soliloquized stubb when the boats diverged as soon as i clapt eye on em i thought so aye and that s what he went into the after hold for so often as dough boy long suspected they were hidden down there the white whale s at the bottom of it well well so be it can t be helped all right give way men it ain t the white whale to day give way now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as the lowering of the boats from the deck this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship s company but archy s fancied discovery having some time previous got abroad among them though indeed not credited then this had in some small measure prepared them for the event it took off the extreme edge of their wonder and so what with all this and stubb s confident way of accounting for their appearance they were for the time freed from superstitious surmisings though the affair still left abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark ahab s precise agency in the matter from the beginning for me i silently recalled the mysterious shadows i had seen creeping on board the pequod during the dim nantucket dawn as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable elijah meantime ahab out of hearing of his officers having sided the furthest to windward was still ranging ahead of the other boats a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whale bone like five trip hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength which periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a mississippi steamer as for fedallah who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar he had thrown aside his black jacket and displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon while at the other end of the boat ahab with one arm like a fencer s thrown half backward into the air as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the white whale had torn him all at once the out stretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed while the boat s five oars were seen simultaneously peaked boat and crew sat motionless on the sea instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way the whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement though from his closer vicinity ahab had observed it every man look out along his oars cried starbuck thou queequeg stand up nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow the savage stood erect there and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea not very far distant flask s boat was also lying breathlessly still its commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead a stout sort of post rooted in the keel and rising some two feet above the level of the stern platform it is used for catching turns with the whale line its top is not more spacious than the palm of a man s hand and standing upon such a base as that flask seemed perched at the mast head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks but little king post was small and short and at the same time little king post was full of a large and tall ambition so that this loggerhead stand point of his did by no means satisfy king post i can t see three seas off tip us up an oar there and let me on to that upon this daggoo with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way swiftly slid aft and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal good a mast head as any sir will you mount that i will and thank ye very much my fine fellow only i wish you fifty feet taller whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat the gigantic negro stooping a little presented his flat palm to flask s foot and then putting flask s hand on his hearse plumed head and bidding him spring as he himself should toss with one dexterous fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders and here was flask now standing daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a breast band to lean against and steady himself by at any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect posture in his boat even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse and cross running seas still more strange to see him giddily perched upon the loggerhead itself under such circumstances but the sight of little flask mounted upon gigantic daggoo was yet more curious for sustaining himself with a cool indifferent easy unthought of barbaric majesty the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form on his broad back flaxen haired flask seemed a snow flake the bearer looked nobler than the rider though truly vivacious tumultuous ostentatious little flask would now and then stamp with impatience but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro s lordly chest so have i seen passion and vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that meanwhile stubb the third mate betrayed no such far gazing solicitudes the whales might have made one of their regular soundings not a temporary dive from mere fright and if that were the case stubb as his wont in such cases it seems was resolved to solace the languishing interval with his pipe he withdrew it from his hatband where he always wore it aslant like a feather he loaded it and rammed home the loading with his thumb end but hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sand paper of his hand when tashtego his harpooneer whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry down down all and give way there they are to a landsman no whale nor any sign of a herring would have been visible at that moment nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it and suffusingly blowing off to leeward like the confused scud from white rolling billows the air around suddenly vibrated and tingled as it were like the air over intensely heated plates of iron beneath this atmospheric waving and curling and partially beneath a thin layer of water also the whales were swimming seen in advance of all the other indications the puffs of vapor they spouted seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders all four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water and air but it bade far to outstrip them it flew on and on as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the hills pull pull my good boys said starbuck in the lowest possible but intensest concentrated whisper to his men while the sharp fixed glance from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow almost seemed as two visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses he did not say much to his crew though nor did his crew say anything to him only the silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers now harsh with command now soft with entreaty how different the loud little king post sing out and say something my hearties roar and pull my thunderbolts beach me beach me on their black backs boys only do that for me and i ll sign over to you my martha s vineyard plantation boys including wife and children boys lay me on lay me on o lord lord but i shall go stark staring mad see see that white water and so shouting he pulled his hat from his head and stamped up and down on it then picking it up flirted it far off upon the sea and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat s stern like a crazed colt from the prairie look at that chap now philosophically drawled stubb who with his unlighted short pipe mechanically retained between his teeth at a short distance followed after he s got fits that flask has fits yes give him fits that s the very word pitch fits into em merrily merrily hearts alive pudding for supper you know merry s the word pull babes pull sucklings pull all but what the devil are you hurrying about softly softly and steadily my men only pull and keep pulling nothing more crack all your backbones and bite your knives in two that s all take it easy why don t ye take it easy i say and burst all your livers and lungs but what it was that inscrutable ahab said to that tiger yellow crew of his these were words best omitted here for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words when with tornado brow and eyes of red murder and foam glued lips ahab leaped after his prey meanwhile all the boats tore on the repeated specific allusions of flask to that whale as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat s bow with its tail these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life like that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder but this was against all rule for the oarsmen must put out their eyes and ram a skewer through their necks usage pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears and no limbs but arms in these critical moments it was a sight full of quick wonder and awe the vast swells of the omnipotent sea the surging hollow roar they made as they rolled along the eight gunwales like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling green the brief suspended agony of the boat as it would tip for an instant on the knife like edge of the sharper waves that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill the headlong sled like slide down its other side all these with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen with the wondrous sight of the ivory pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails like a wild hen after her screaming brood all this was thrilling not the raw recruit marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle not the dead man s ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed churned circle of the hunted sperm whale the dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more visible owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud shadows flung upon the sea the jets of vapor no longer blended but tilted everywhere to right and left the whales seemed separating their wakes the boats were pulled more apart starbuck giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward our sail was now set and with the still rising wind we rushed along the boat going with such madness through the water that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the row locks soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist neither ship nor boat to be seen give way men whispered starbuck drawing still further aft the sheet of his sail there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes there s white water again close to spring soon after two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that the other boats had got fast but hardly were they overheard when with a lightning like hurtling whisper starbuck said stand up and queequeg harpoon in hand sprang to his feet though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat they knew that the imminent instant had come they heard too an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents that s his hump there there give it to him whispered starbuck a short rushing sound leaped out of the boat it was the darted iron of queequeg then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from astern while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge the sail collapsed and exploded a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us the whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall squall whale and harpoon had all blended together and the whale merely grazed by the iron escaped though completely swamped the boat was nearly unharmed swimming round it we picked up the floating oars and lashing them across the gunwale tumbled back to our places there we sat up to our knees in the sea the water covering every rib and plank so that to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean the wind increased to a howl the waves dashed their bucklers together the whole squall roared forked and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie in which unconsumed we were burning immortal in these jaws of death in vain we hailed the other boats as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm meanwhile the driving scud rack and mist grew darker with the shadows of night no sign of the ship could be seen the rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat the oars were useless as propellers performing now the office of life preservers so cutting the lashing of the water proof match keg after many failures starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern then stretching it on a waif pole handed it to queequeg as the standard bearer of this forlorn hope there then he sat holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness there then he sat the sign and symbol of a man without faith hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair wet drenched through and shivering cold despairing of ship or boat we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on the mist still spread over the sea the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat suddenly queequeg started to his feet hollowing his hand to his ear we all heard a faint creaking as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm the sound came nearer and nearer the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge vague form affrighted we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its length floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat as for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship s bows like a chip at the base of a cataract and then the vast hull rolled over it and it was seen no more till it came up weltering astern again we swam for it were dashed against it by the seas and were at last taken up and safely landed on board ere the squall came close to the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time the ship had given us up but was still cruising if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing an oar or a lance pole there are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody s expense but his own however nothing dispirits and nothing seems worth while disputing he bolts down all events all creeds and beliefs and persuasions all hard things visible and invisible never mind how knobby as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints and as for small difficulties and worryings prospects of sudden disaster peril of life and limb all these and death itself seem to him only sly good natured hits and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker that odd sort of wayward mood i am speaking of comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation it comes in the very midst of his earnestness so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous now seems but a part of the general joke there is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial desperado philosophy and with it i now regarded this whole voyage of the pequod and the great white whale its object queequeg said i when they had dragged me the last man to the deck and i was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water queequeg my fine friend does this sort of thing often happen without much emotion though soaked through just like me he gave me to understand that such things did often happen mr stubb said i turning to that worthy who buttoned up in his oil jacket was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain mr stubb i think i have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met our chief mate mr starbuck is by far the most careful and prudent i suppose then that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman s discretion certain i ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off cape horn mr flask said i turning to little king post who was standing close by you are experienced in these things and i am not will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery mr flask for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back foremost into death s jaws can t you twist that smaller said flask yes that s the law i should like to see a boat s crew backing water up to a whale face foremost ha ha the whale would give them squint for squint mind that here then from three impartial witnesses i had a deliberate statement of the entire case considering therefore that squalls and capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep were matters of common occurrence in this kind of life considering that at the superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale i must resign my life into the hands of him who steered the boat oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings considering that the particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to starbuck s driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall and considering that starbuck notwithstanding was famous for his great heedfulness in the fishery considering that i belonged to this uncommonly prudent starbuck s boat and finally considering in what a devil s chase i was implicated touching the white whale taking all things together i say i thought i might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will queequeg said i come along you shall be my lawyer executor and legatee it may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion this was the fourth time in my nautical life that i had done the same thing after the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion i felt all the easier a stone was rolled away from my heart besides all the days i should now live would be as good as the days that lazarus lived after his resurrection a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be i survived myself my death and burial were locked up in my chest i looked round me tranquilly and contentedly like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault now then thought i unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock here goes a cool collected dive at death and destruction and the devil fetch the hindmost who would have thought it flask cried stubb if i had but one leg you would not catch me in a boat unless maybe to stop the plug hole with my timber toe oh he s a wonderful old man i don t think it so strange after all on that account said flask if his leg were off at the hip now it would be a different thing that would disable him but he has one knee and good part of the other left you know i don t know that my little man i never yet saw him kneel among whale wise people it has often been argued whether considering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase so tamerlane s soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight but with ahab the question assumed a modified aspect considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties that every individual moment indeed then comprises a peril under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale boat in the hunt as a general thing the joint owners of the pequod must have plainly thought not ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person yet for captain ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt above all for captain ahab to be supplied with five extra men as that same boat s crew he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the pequod therefore he had not solicited a boat s crew from them nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that matter until cabaco s published discovery the sailors had little foreseen it though to be sure when after being a little while out of port all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service when some time after this ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers which when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow when all this was observed in him and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat as if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board or clumsy cleat as it is sometimes called the horizontal piece in the boat s bow for bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi circular depression in the cleat and with the carpenter s chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there all these things i say had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time but almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of moby dick for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person but such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat s crew being assigned to that boat now with the subordinate phantoms what wonder remained soon waned away for in a whaler wonders soon wane besides now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks bits of wreck oars whale boats canoes blown off japanese junks and what not that beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle but be all this as it may certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew though still as it were somehow distinct from them yet that hair turbaned fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last whence he came in a mannerly world like this by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with ahab s peculiar fortunes nay so far as to have some sort of a half hinted influence heaven knows but it might have been even authority over him all this none knew but one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning fedallah he was such a creature as civilized domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams and that but dimly but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging asiatic communities especially the oriental isles to the east of the continent those insulated immemorial unalterable countries which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth s primal generations when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection and all men his descendants unknowing whence he came eyed each other as real phantoms and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end when though according to genesis the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men the devils also add the uncanonical rabbins indulged in mundane amours days weeks passed and under easy sail the ivory pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising grounds that off the azores off the cape de verdes on the plate so called being off the mouth of the rio de la plata and the carrol ground an unstaked watery locality southerly from st helena it was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver and by their soft suffusing seethings made what seemed a silvery silence not a solitude on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow lit up by the moon it looked celestial seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea fedallah first descried this jet for of these moonlight nights it was his wont to mount to the main mast head and stand a look out there with the same precision as if it had been day and yet though herds of whales were seen by night not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them you may think with what emotions then the seamen beheld this old oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours his turban and the moon companions in one sky but when after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights without uttering a single sound when after all this silence his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery moon lit jet every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging and hailed the mortal crew there she blows had the trump of judgment blown they could not have quivered more yet still they felt no terror rather pleasure for though it was a most unwonted hour yet so impressive was the cry and so deliriously exciting that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering walking the deck with quick side lunging strides ahab commanded the t gallant sails and royals to be set and every stunsail spread the best man in the ship must take the helm then with every mast head manned the piled up craft rolled down before the wind the strange upheaving lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails made the buoyant hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet while still she rushed along as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her one to mount direct to heaven the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal and had you watched ahab s face that night you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring while his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin tap on life and death this old man walked but though the ship so swiftly sped and though from every eye like arrows the eager glances shot yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night every sailor swore he saw it once but not a second time this midnight spout had almost grown a forgotten thing when some days after lo at the same silent hour it was again announced again it was descried by all but upon making sail to overtake it once more it disappeared as if it had never been and so it served us night after night till no one heeded it but to wonder at it mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight or starlight as the case might be disappearing again for one whole day or two days or three and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and further in our van this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on nor with the immemorial superstition of their race and in accordance with the preternaturalness as it seemed which in many things invested the pequod were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and wherever descried at however remote times or in however far apart latitudes and longitudes that unnearable spout was cast by one self same whale and that whale moby dick for a time there reigned too a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on in order that the monster might turn round upon us and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas these temporary apprehensions so vague but so awful derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather in which beneath all its blue blandness some thought there lurked a devilish charm as for days and days we voyaged along through seas so wearily lonesomely mild that all space in repugnance to our vengeful errand seemed vacating itself of life before our urn like prow but at last when turning to the eastward the cape winds began howling around us and we rose and fell upon the long troubled seas that are there when the ivory tusked pequod sharply bowed to the blast and gored the dark waves in her madness till like showers of silver chips the foam flakes flew over her bulwarks then all this desolate vacuity of life went away but gave place to sights more dismal than before close to our bows strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before us while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea ravens and every morning perched on our stays rows of these birds were seen and spite of our hootings for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp as though they deemed our ship some drifting uninhabited craft a thing appointed to desolation and therefore fit roosting place for their homeless selves and heaved and heaved still unrestingly heaved the black sea as if its vast tides were a conscience and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred cape of good hope do they call ye rather cape tormentoto as called of yore for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended us we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store or beat that black air without any horizon but calm snow white and unvarying still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky still beckoning us on from before the solitary jet would at times be descried during all this blackness of the elements ahab though assuming for the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck manifested the gloomiest reserve and more seldom than ever addressed his mates in tempestuous times like these after everything above and aloft has been secured nothing more can be done but passively to await the issue of the gale then captain and crew become practical fatalists so with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together meantime the crew driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist and the better to guard against the leaping waves each man had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail in which he swung as in a loosened belt few or no words were spoken and the silent ship as if manned by painted sailors in wax day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves by night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed still in silence the men swung in the bowlines still wordless ahab stood up to the blast even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock never could starbuck forget the old man s aspect when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor screwed chair the rain and half melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before emerged still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat on the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents which have previously been spoken of his lantern swung from his tightly clenched hand though the body was erect the head was thrown back so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling terrible old man thought starbuck with a shudder sleeping in this gale still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose south eastward from the cape off the distant crozetts a good cruising ground for right whalemen a sail loomed ahead the goney albatross by name as she slowly drew nigh from my lofty perch at the fore mast head i had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean fisheries a whaler at sea and long absent from home as if the waves had been fullers this craft was bleached like the skeleton of a stranded walrus all down her sides this spectral appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust while all her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar frost only her lower sails were set a wild sight it was to see her long bearded look outs at those three mast heads they seemed clad in the skins of beasts so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea and though when the ship slowly glided close under our stern we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the mast heads of one ship to those of the other yet those forlorn looking fishermen mildly eyeing us as they passed said not one word to our own look outs while the quarter deck hail was being heard from below ship ahoy have ye seen the white whale but as the strange captain leaning over the pallid bulwarks was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth it somehow fell from his hand into the sea and the wind now rising amain he in vain strove to make himself heard without it meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between while in various silent ways the seamen of the pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first mere mention of the white whale s name to another ship ahab for a moment paused it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board the stranger had not the threatening wind forbade but taking advantage of his windward position he again seized his trumpet and knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a nantucketer and shortly bound home he loudly hailed ahoy there this is the pequod bound round the world tell them to address all future letters to the pacific ocean and this time three years if i am not at home tell them to address them to at that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed and instantly then in accordance with their singular ways shoals of small harmless fish that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side darted away with what seemed shuddering fins and ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger s flanks though in the course of his continual voyagings ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight yet to any monomaniac man the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings swim away from me do ye murmured ahab gazing over into the water there seemed but little in the words but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced but turning to the steersman who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her headway he cried out in his old lion voice up helm keep her off round the world round the world there is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started where those that we left behind secure were all the time before us were this world an endless plain and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances and discover sights more sweet and strange than any cyclades or islands of king solomon then there were promise in the voyage but in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that some time or other swims before all human hearts while chasing such over this round globe they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed the cabin compass is called the tell tale because without going to the compass at the helm the captain while below can inform himself of the course of the ship the ostensible reason why ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had spoken was this the wind and sea betokened storms but even had this not been the case he would not after all perhaps have boarded her judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions if so it had been that by the process of hailing he had obtained a negative answer to the question he put for as it eventually turned out he cared not to consort even for five minutes with any stranger captain except he could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought but all this might remain inadequately estimated were not something said here of the peculiar usages of whaling vessels when meeting each other in foreign seas and especially on a common cruising ground if two strangers crossing the pine barrens in new york state or the equally desolate salisbury plain in england if casually encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds these twain for the life of them cannot well avoid a mutual salutation and stopping for a moment to interchange the news and perhaps sitting down for a while and resting in concert then how much more natural that upon the illimitable pine barrens and salisbury plains of the sea two whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth off lone fanning s island or the far away king s mills how much more natural i say that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails but come into still closer more friendly and sociable contact and especially would this seem to be a matter of course in the case of vessels owned in one seaport and whose captains officers and not a few of the men are personally known to each other and consequently have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about for the long absent ship the outward bounder perhaps has letters on board at any rate she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb worn files and in return for that courtesy the outward bound ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising ground to which she may be destined a thing of the utmost importance to her and in degree all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other s track on the cruising ground itself even though they are equally long absent from home for one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third and now far remote vessel and some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets besides they would exchange the whaling news and have an agreeable chat for not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils nor would difference of country make any very essential difference that is so long as both parties speak one language as is the case with americans and english though to be sure from the small number of english whalers such meetings do not very often occur and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them for your englishman is rather reserved and your yankee he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself besides the english whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the american whalers regarding the long lean nantucketer with his nondescript provincialisms as a sort of sea peasant but where this superiority in the english whalemen does really consist it would be hard to say seeing that the yankees in one day collectively kill more whales than all the english collectively in ten years but this is a harmless little foible in the english whale hunters which the nantucketer does not take much to heart probably because he knows that he has a few foibles himself so then we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea the whalers have most reason to be sociable and they are so whereas some merchant ships crossing each other s wake in the mid atlantic will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition mutually cutting each other on the high seas like a brace of dandies in broadway and all the time indulging perhaps in finical criticism upon each other s rig as for men of war when they chance to meet at sea they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings such a ducking of ensigns that there does not seem to be much right down hearty good will and brotherly love about it at all as touching slave ships meeting why they are in such a prodigious hurry they run away from each other as soon as possible and as for pirates when they chance to cross each other s cross bones the first hail is how many skulls the same way that whalers hail how many barrels and that question once answered pirates straightway steer apart for they are infernal villains on both sides and don t like to see overmuch of each other s villanous likenesses but look at the godly honest unostentatious hospitable sociable free and easy whaler what does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather she has a gam a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even and if by chance they should hear of it they only grin at it and repeat gamesome stuff about spouters and blubber boilers and such like pretty exclamations why it is that all merchant seamen and also all pirates and man of war s men and slave ship sailors cherish such a scornful feeling towards whale ships this is a question it would be hard to answer because in the case of pirates say i should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it it sometimes ends in uncommon elevation indeed but only at the gallows and besides when a man is elevated in that odd fashion he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude hence i conclude that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on but what is a gam you might wear out your index finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries and never find the word dr johnson never attained to that erudition noah webster s ark does not hold it nevertheless this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born yankees certainly it needs a definition and should be incorporated into the lexicon with that view let me learnedly define it gam noun a social meeting of two or more whale ships generally on a cruising ground when after exchanging hails they exchange visits by boats crews the two captains remaining for the time on board of one ship and the two chief mates on the other there is another little item about gamming which must not be forgotten here all professions have their own little peculiarities of detail so has the whale fishery in a pirate man of war or slave ship when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable sometimes cushioned seat there and often steers himself with a pretty little milliner s tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons but the whale boat has no seat astern no sofa of that sort whatever and no tiller at all high times indeed if whaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs and as for a tiller the whale boat never admits of any such effeminacy and therefore as in gamming a complete boat s crew must leave the ship and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion and the captain having no place to sit in is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree and often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from the sides of the two ships this standing captain is all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs nor is this any very easy matter for in his rear is the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back the after oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front he is thus completely wedged before and behind and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched legs but a sudden violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth merely make a spread angle of two poles and you cannot stand them up then again it would never do in plain sight of the world s riveted eyes it would never do i say for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands indeed as token of his entire buoyant self command he generally carries his hands in his trowsers pockets but perhaps being generally very large heavy hands he carries them there for ballast nevertheless there have occurred instances well authenticated ones too where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment or two in a sudden squall say to seize hold of the nearest oarsman s hair and hold on there like grim death as told at the golden inn the cape of good hope and all the watery region round about there is much like some noted four corners of a great highway where you meet more travellers than in any other part it was not very long after speaking the goney that another homeward bound whaleman the town ho was encountered she was manned almost wholly by polynesians in the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of moby dick to some the general interest in the white whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the town ho s story which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of god which at times are said to overtake some men this latter circumstance with its own particular accompaniments forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated never reached the ears of captain ahab or his mates for that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the town ho himself it was the private property of three confederate white seamen of that ship one of whom it seems communicated it to tashtego with romish injunctions of secresy but the following night tashtego rambled in his sleep and revealed so much of it in that way that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest nevertheless so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the pequod who came to the full knowledge of it and by such a strange delicacy to call it so were they governed in this matter that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the pequod s main mast interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship the whole of this strange affair i now proceed to put on lasting record for my humor s sake i shall preserve the style in which i once narrated it at lima to a lounging circle of my spanish friends one saint s eve smoking upon the thick gilt tiled piazza of the golden inn of those fine cavaliers the young dons pedro and sebastian were on the closer terms with me and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put and which are duly answered at the time some two years prior to my first learning the events which i am about rehearsing to you gentlemen the town ho sperm whaler of nantucket was cruising in your pacific here not very many days sail westward from the eaves of this good golden inn she was somewhere to the northward of the line one morning upon handling the pumps according to daily usage it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common they supposed a sword fish had stabbed her gentlemen but the captain having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes and therefore being very averse to quit them and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous though indeed they could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy weather the ship still continued her cruisings the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals but no good luck came more days went by and not only was the leak yet undiscovered but it sensibly increased so much so that now taking some alarm the captain making all sail stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands there to have his hull hove out and repaired though no small passage was before her yet if the commonest chance favored he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way because his pumps were of the best and being periodically relieved at them those six and thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free never mind if the leak should double on her in truth well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes the town ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality had it not been for the brutal overbearing of radney the mate a vineyarder and the bitterly provoked vengeance of steelkilt a lakeman and desperado from buffalo lakeman buffalo pray what is a lakeman and where is buffalo said don sebastian rising in his swinging mat of grass on the eastern shore of our lake erie don but i crave your courtesy may be you shall soon hear further of all that now gentlemen in square sail brigs and three masted ships well nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old callao to far manilla this lakeman in the land locked heart of our america had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean for in their interflowing aggregate those grand fresh water seas of ours erie and ontario and huron and superior and michigan possess an ocean like expansiveness with many of the ocean s noblest traits with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes they contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles even as the polynesian waters do in large part are shored by two great contrasting nations as the atlantic is they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the east dotted all round their banks here and there are frowned upon by batteries and by the goat like craggy guns of lofty mackinaw they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories at intervals they yield their beaches to wild barbarians whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in gothic genealogies those same woods harboring wild afric beasts of prey and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to tartar emperors they mirror the paved capitals of buffalo and cleveland as well as winnebago villages they float alike the full rigged merchant ship the armed cruiser of the state the steamer and the beech canoe they are swept by borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave they know what shipwrecks are for out of sight of land however inland they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew thus gentlemen though an inlander steelkilt was wild ocean born and wild ocean nurtured as much of an audacious mariner as any and for radney though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone nantucket beach to nurse at his maternal sea though in after life he had long followed our austere atlantic and your contemplative pacific yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman fresh from the latitudes of buck horn handled bowie knives yet was this nantucketer a man with some good hearted traits and this lakeman a mariner who though a sort of devil indeed might yet by inflexible firmness only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave s right thus treated this steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile at all events he had proved so thus far but radney was doomed and made mad and steelkilt but gentlemen you shall hear it was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven that the town ho s leak seemed again increasing but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day you must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our atlantic for example some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across it though of a still sleepy night should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward gentlemen is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length that is if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them it is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters some really landless latitude that her captain begins to feel a little anxious much this way had it been with the town ho so when her leak was found gaining once more there was in truth some small concern manifested by several of her company especially by radney the mate he commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted sheeted home anew and every way expanded to the breeze now this radney i suppose was as little of a coward and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine gentlemen therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in her so when they were working that evening at the pumps there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water clear as any mountain spring gentlemen that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper holes now as you well know it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of ours watery or otherwise that when a person placed in command over his fellow men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern s tower and make a little heap of dust of it be this conceit of mine as it may gentlemen at all events steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a roman and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy s snorting charger and a brain and a heart and a soul in him gentlemen which had made steelkilt charlemagne had he been born son to charlemagne s father but radney the mate was ugly as a mule yet as hardy as stubborn as malicious he did not love steelkilt and steelkilt knew it espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest the lakeman affected not to notice him but unawed went on with his gay banterings aye aye my merry lads it s a lively leak this hold a cannikin one of ye and let s have a taste by the lord it s worth bottling i tell ye what men old rad s investment must go for it he had best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home the fact is boys that sword fish only began the job he s come back again with a gang of ship carpenters saw fish and file fish and what not and the whole posse of em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom making improvements i suppose if old rad were here now i d tell him to jump overboard and scatter em they re playing the devil with his estate i can tell him but he s a simple old soul rad and a beauty too boys they say the rest of his property is invested in looking glasses i wonder if he d give a poor devil like me the model of his nose damn your eyes what s that pump stopping for roared radney pretending not to have heard the sailors talk thunder away at it aye aye sir said steelkilt merry as a cricket lively boys lively now and with that the pump clanged like fifty fire engines the men tossed their hats off to it and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life s utmost energies quitting the pump at last with the rest of his band the lakeman went forward all panting and sat himself down on the windlass his face fiery red his eyes bloodshot and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow now what cozening fiend it was gentlemen that possessed radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state i know not but so it happened intolerably striding along the deck the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks and also a shovel and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large now gentlemen sweeping a ship s deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time such gentlemen is the inflexibility of sea usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces but in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys if boys there be aboard besides it was the stronger men in the town ho that had been divided into gangs taking turns at the pumps and being the most athletic seaman of them all steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs consequently he should have been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties such being the case with his comrades i mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men but there was more than this the order about the shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and insult steelkilt as though radney had spat in his face any man who has gone sailor in a whale ship will understand this and all this and doubtless much more the lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command but as he sat still for a moment and as he steadfastly looked into the mate s malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder casks heaped up in him and the slow match silently burning along towards them as he instinctively saw all this that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being a repugnance most felt when felt at all by really valiant men even when aggrieved this nameless phantom feeling gentlemen stole over steelkilt therefore in his ordinary tone only a little broken by the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in he answered him saying that sweeping the deck was not his business and he would not do it and then without at all alluding to the shovel he pointed to three lads as the customary sweepers who not being billeted at the pumps had done little or nothing all day to this radney replied with an oath in a most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command meanwhile advancing upon the still seated lakeman with an uplifted cooper s club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat till at last the incensed radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face furiously commanding him to do his bidding steelkilt rose and slowly retreating round the windlass steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer deliberately repeated his intention not to obey seeing however that his forbearance had not the slightest effect by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man but it was to no purpose and in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass when resolved at last no longer to retreat bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor the lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer mr radney i will not obey you take that hammer away or look to yourself but the predestinated mate coming still closer to him where the lakeman stood fixed now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions retreating not the thousandth part of an inch stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance steelkilt clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he steelkilt would murder him but gentlemen the fool had been branded for the slaughter by the gods immediately the hammer touched the cheek the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale ere the cry could go aft steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mast heads they were both canallers canallers cried don pedro we have seen many whale ships in our harbors but never heard of your canallers pardon who and what are they canallers don are the boatmen belonging to our grand erie canal you must have heard of it nay senor hereabouts in this dull warm most lazy and hereditary land we know but little of your vigorous north aye well then don refill my cup your chicha s very fine and ere proceeding further i will tell ye what our canallers are for such information may throw side light upon my story for three hundred and sixty miles gentlemen through the entire breadth of the state of new york through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages through long dismal uninhabited swamps and affluent cultivated fields unrivalled for fertility by billiard room and bar room through the holy of holies of great forests on roman arches over indian rivers through sun and shade by happy hearts or broken through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble mohawk counties and especially by rows of snow white chapels whose spires stand almost like milestones flows one continual stream of venetianly corrupt and often lawless life there s your true ashantee gentlemen there howl your pagans where you ever find them next door to you under the long flung shadow and the snug patronizing lee of churches for by some curious fatality as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice so sinners gentlemen most abound in holiest vicinities is that a friar passing said don pedro looking downwards into the crowded plazza with humorous concern well for our northern friend dame isabella s inquisition wanes in lima laughed don sebastian proceed senor a moment pardon cried another of the company in the name of all us limeese i but desire to express to you sir sailor that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present lima for distant venice in your corrupt comparison oh do not bow and look surprised you know the proverb all along this coast corrupt as lima it but bears out your saying too churches more plentiful than billiard tables and for ever open and corrupt as lima so too venice i have been there the holy city of the blessed evangelist st mark st dominic purge it your cup thanks here i refill now you pour out again freely depicted in his own vocation gentlemen the canaller would make a fine dramatic hero so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he like mark antony for days and days along his green turfed flowery nile he indolently floats openly toying with his red cheeked cleopatra ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck but ashore all this effeminacy is dashed the brigandish guise which the canaller so proudly sports his slouched and gaily ribboned hat betoken his grand features a terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities once a vagabond on his own canal i have received good turns from one of these canallers i thank him heartily would fain be not ungrateful but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait as to plunder a wealthy one in sum gentlemen what the wildness of this canal life is is emphatically evinced by this that our wild whale fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates and that scarce any race of mankind except sydney men are so much distrusted by our whaling captains nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter that to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line the probationary life of the grand canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a christian corn field and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas i see i see impetuously exclaimed don pedro spilling his chicha upon his silvery ruffles no need to travel the world s one lima i had thought now that at your temperate north the generations were cold and holy as the hills but the story i left off gentlemen where the lakeman shook the back stay hardly had he done so when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooneers who all crowded him to the deck but sliding down the ropes like baleful comets the two canallers rushed into the uproar and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt and a twisted turmoil ensued while standing out of harm s way the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale pike calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel and smoke him along to the quarter deck at intervals he ran close up to the revolving border of the confusion and prying into the heart of it with his pike sought to prick out the object of his resentment but steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck where hastily slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass these sea parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade come out of that ye pirates roared the captain now menacing them with a pistol in each hand just brought to him by the steward come out of that ye cut throats steelkilt leaped on the barricade and striding up and down there defied the worst the pistols could do but gave the captain to understand distinctly that his steelkilt s death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true the captain a little desisted but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty will you promise not to touch us if we do demanded their ringleader turn to turn to i make no promise to your duty do you want to sink the ship by knocking off at a time like this turn to and he once more raised a pistol sink the ship cried steelkilt aye let her sink not a man of us turns to unless you swear not to raise a rope yarn against us what say ye men turning to his comrades a fierce cheer was their response the lakeman now patrolled the barricade all the while keeping his eye on the captain and jerking out such sentences as these it s not our fault we didn t want it i told him to take his hammer away it was boy s business he might have known me before this i told him not to prick the buffalo i believe i have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw ain t those mincing knives down in the forecastle there men look to those handspikes my hearties captain by god look to yourself say the word don t be a fool forget it all we are ready to turn to treat us decently and we re your men but we won t be flogged turn to i make no promises turn to i say look ye now cried the lakeman flinging out his arm towards him there are a few of us here and i am one of them who have shipped for the cruise d ye see now as you well know sir we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down so we don t want a row it s not our interest we want to be peaceable we are ready to work but we won t be flogged turn to roared the captain steelkilt glanced round him a moment and then said i tell you what it is now captain rather than kill ye and be hung for such a shabby rascal we won t lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us but till you say the word about not flogging us we won t do a hand s turn down into the forecastle then down with ye i ll keep ye there till ye re sick of it down ye go shall we cried the ringleader to his men most of them were against it but at length in obedience to steelkilt they preceded him down into their dark den growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave as the lakeman s bare head was just level with the planks the captain and his posse leaped the barricade and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle planted their group of hands upon it and loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the companion way then opening the slide a little the captain whispered something down the crack closed it and turned the key upon them ten in number leaving on deck some twenty or more who thus far had remained neutral all night a wide awake watch was kept by all the officers forward and aft especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge after breaking through the bulkhead below but the hours of darkness passed in peace the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship at sunrise the captain went forward and knocking on the deck summoned the prisoners to work but with a yell they refused water was then lowered down to them and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it the captain returned to the quarter deck twice every day for three days this was repeated but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling and then a scuffling was heard as the customary summons was delivered and suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle saying they were ready to turn to the fetid closeness of the air and a famishing diet united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution had constrained them to surrender at discretion emboldened by this the captain reiterated his demand to the rest but steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged on the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them only three were left better turn to now said the captain with a heartless jeer shut us up again will ye cried steelkilt oh certainly said the captain and the key clicked it was at this point gentlemen that enraged by the defection of seven of his former associates and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair it was then that steelkilt proposed to the two canallers thus far apparently of one mind with him to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison and armed with their keen mincing knives long crescentic heavy implements with a handle at each end run a muck from the bowsprit to the taffrail and if by any devilishness of desperation possible seize the ship for himself he would do this he said whether they joined him or not that was the last night he should spend in that den but the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two they swore they were ready for that or for any other mad thing for anything in short but a surrender and what was more they each insisted upon being the first man on deck when the time to make the rush should come but to this their leader as fiercely objected reserving that priority for himself particularly as his two comrades would not yield the one to the other in the matter and both of them could not be first for the ladder would but admit one man at a time and here gentlemen the foul play of these miscreants must come out upon hearing the frantic project of their leader each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted it would seem upon the same piece of treachery namely to be foremost in breaking out in order to be the first of the three though the last of the ten to surrender and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit but when steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last they in some way by some subtle chemistry of villany mixed their before secret treacheries together and when their leader fell into a doze verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences and bound the sleeper with cords and gagged him with cords and shrieked out for the captain at midnight thinking murder at hand and smelling in the dark for the blood he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle in a few minutes the scuttle was opened and bound hand and foot the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder but all these were collared and dragged along the deck like dead cattle and side by side were seized up into the mizen rigging like three quarters of meat and there they hung till morning damn ye cried the captain pacing to and fro before them the vultures would not touch ye ye villains at sunrise he summoned all hands and separating those who had rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny he told the former that he had a good mind to flog them all round thought upon the whole he would do so he ought to justice demanded it but for the present considering their timely surrender he would let them go with a reprimand which he accordingly administered in the vernacular but as for you ye carrion rogues turning to the three men in the rigging for you i mean to mince ye up for the try pots and seizing a rope he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two traitors till they yelled no more but lifelessly hung their heads sideways as the two crucified thieves are drawn my wrist is sprained with ye he cried at last but there is still rope enough left for you my fine bantam that wouldn t give up take that gag from his mouth and let us hear what he can say for himself for a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws and then painfully twisting round his head said in a sort of hiss what i say is this and mind it well if you flog me i murder you say ye so then see how ye frighten me and the captain drew off with the rope to strike best not hissed the lakeman but i must and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke steelkilt here hissed out something inaudible to all but the captain who to the amazement of all hands started back paced the deck rapidly two or three times and then suddenly throwing down his rope said i won t do it let him go cut him down d ye hear but as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order a pale man with a bandaged head arrested them radney the chief mate ever since the blow he had lain in his berth but that morning hearing the tumult on the deck he had crept out and thus far had watched the whole scene such was the state of his mouth that he could hardly speak but mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the captain dared not attempt he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe you are a coward hissed the lakeman so i am but take that the mate was in the very act of striking when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm he paused and then pausing no more made good his word spite of steelkilt s threat whatever that might have been the three men were then cut down all hands were turned to and sullenly worked by the moody seamen the iron pumps clanged as before just after dark that day when one watch had retired below a clamor was heard in the forecastle and the two trembling traitors running up besieged the cabin door saying they durst not consort with the crew entreaties cuffs and kicks could not drive them back so at their own instance they were put down in the ship s run for salvation still no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest on the contrary it seemed that mainly at steelkilt s instigation they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness obey all orders to the last and when the ship reached port desert her in a body but in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage they all agreed to another thing namely not to sing out for whales in case any should be discovered for spite of her leak and spite of all her other perils the town ho still maintained her mast heads and her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment as on the day his craft first struck the cruising ground and radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale but though the lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct he kept his own counsel at least till all was over concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart he was in radney the chief mate s watch and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom after the scene at the rigging he insisted against the express counsel of the captain upon resuming the head of his watch at night upon this and one or two other circumstances steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge during the night radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the bulwarks of the quarter deck and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was hoisted up there a little above the ship s side in this attitude it was well known he sometimes dozed there was a considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship and down between this was the sea steelkilt calculated his time and found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o clock in the morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed at his leisure he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his watches below what are you making there said a shipmate what do you think what does it look like like a lanyard for your bag but it s an odd one seems to me yes rather oddish said the lakeman holding it at arm s length before him but i think it will answer shipmate i haven t enough twine have you any but there was none in the forecastle then i must get some from old rad and he rose to go aft you don t mean to go a begging to him said a sailor why not do you think he won t do me a turn when it s to help himself in the end shipmate and going to the mate he looked at him quietly and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock it was given him neither twine nor lanyard were seen again but the next night an iron ball closely netted partly rolled from the pocket of the lakeman s monkey jacket as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow twenty four hours after his trick at the silent helm nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to the seaman s hand that fatal hour was then to come and in the fore ordaining soul of steelkilt the mate was already stark and stretched as a corpse with his forehead crushed in but gentlemen a fool saved the would be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned yet complete revenge he had and without being the avenger for by a mysterious fatality heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have done it was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day when they were washing down the decks that a stupid teneriffe man drawing water in the main chains all at once shouted out there she rolls there she rolls jesu what a whale it was moby dick moby dick cried don sebastian st dominic sir sailor but do whales have christenings whom call you moby dick a very white and famous and most deadly immortal monster don but that would be too long a story how how cried all the young spaniards crowding nay dons dons nay nay i cannot rehearse that now let me get more into the air sirs the chicha the chicha cried don pedro our vigorous friend looks faint fill up his empty glass no need gentlemen one moment and i proceed now gentlemen so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship forgetful of the compact among the crew in the excitement of the moment the teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster though for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast heads all was now a phrensy the white whale the white whale was the cry from captain mates and harpooneers who undeterred by fearful rumors were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish while the dogged crew eyed askance and with curses the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea gentlemen a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted the mutineer was the bowsman of the mate and when fast to a fish it was his duty to sit next him while radney stood up with his lance in the prow and haul in or slacken the line at the word of command moreover when the four boats were