-chapter 10.a bosom friend. returning to the spouter-inn from thechapel, i found queequeg there quite alone; he having left the chapel before thebenediction 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 facethat little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhilehumming to himself in his heathenish way. but being now interrupted, he put up theimage; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing iton 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 whistleof astonishment. he would then begin again at the nextfifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not countmore than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at themultitude of pages was excited. with much interest i sat watching him. savage though he was, and hideously marredabout the face--at least to my taste--his
countenance yet had a something in it whichwas by no means disagreeable. you cannot hide the soul. through all his unearthly tattooings, ithought i saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fieryblack and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. and besides all this, there was a certainlofty 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 beingshaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer
and brighter relief, and looked moreexpansive than it otherwise would, this i will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically anexcellent one. it may seem ridiculous, but it reminded meof general washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. it had the same long regularly gradedretreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, liketwo long promontories thickly wooded on top. queequeg was george washingtoncannibalistically developed.
whilst i was thus closely scanning him,half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he neverheeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting thepages of the marvellous book. considering how sociably we had beensleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate armi had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, i thought this indifference ofhis very strange. but savages are strange beings; at timesyou do not know exactly how to take them. at first they are overawing; their calmself-collectedness of simplicity seems a
socratic wisdom. i had noticed also that queequeg neverconsorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. he made no advances whatever; appeared tohave 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 milesfrom home, by the way of cape horn, that is--which was the only way he could getthere--thrown among people as strange to
him as though he were in the planet jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at hisease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; alwaysequal 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, wemortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. so soon as i hear that such or such a mangives himself out for a philosopher, i conclude that, like the dyspeptic oldwoman, he must have "broken his digester."
as i sat there in that now lonely room; thefire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed theair, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in upon ussilent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; i began to besensible of strange feelings. i felt a melting in me. no more my splintered heart and maddenedhand were turned against the wolfish world. this soothing savage had redeemed it. there he sat, his very indifferencespeaking 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 haverepelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. i'll try a pagan friend, thought i, sincechristian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. i drew my bench near him, and made somefriendly 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 toask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. i told him yes; whereat i thought he lookedpleased, perhaps a little complimented. we then turned over the book together, andi endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the fewpictures that were in it. thus i soon engaged his interest; and fromthat we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seenin 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 thatwild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. if there yet lurked any ice of indifferencetowards me in the pagan's breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawedit out, and left us cronies. he seemed to take to me quite as naturallyand unbiddenly as i to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his foreheadagainst mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that wewere bosom friends; he would gladly die for
me, if need should be. in a countryman, this sudden flame offriendship 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 andsmoke, 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 somethirty 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 silencedme 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 heseemed anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, i deliberated amoment whether, in case he invited me, i would comply or otherwise. i was a good christian; born and bred inthe 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--pagansand 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 myfellow 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 woulddo to me? why, unite with me in my particularpresbyterian form of worship. consequently, i must then unite with him inhis; ergo, i must turn idolator. so i kindled the shavings; helped prop upthe innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with queequeg; salamed before himtwice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all theworld. but we did not go to sleep without somelittle chat. how it is i know not; but there is no placelike a bed for confidential disclosures
between friends. man and wife, they say, there open the verybottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat overold times till nearly morning. thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay iand queequeg--a cosy, loving pair. chapter 11.nightgown. we had lain thus in bed, chatting andnapping at short intervals, and queequeg now and then affectionately throwing hisbrown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, byreason of our confabulations, what little
nappishness remained in us altogetherdeparted, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some waydown the future. yes, we became very wakeful; so much sothat our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little wefound ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the head-board with our four knees drawn upclose together, and our two noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. we felt very nice and snug, the more sosince it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that therewas no fire in the room.
the more so, i say, because truly to enjoybodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in thisworld 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 longtime, 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 shouldnever be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of therich. for the height of this sort ofdeliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness andthe cold of the outer air. then there you lie like the one warm sparkin the heart of an arctic crystal. we had been sitting in this crouchingmanner for some time, when all at once i thought i would open my eyes; for whenbetween sheets, whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, i have a way of always keeping my eyes shut, in orderthe more to concentrate the snugness of
being in bed. because no man can ever feel his ownidentity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the properelement of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. upon opening my eyes then, and coming outof my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outergloom of the unilluminated twelve-o'clock- at-night, i experienced a disagreeablerevulsion. nor did i at all object to the hint fromqueequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wideawake; and besides he felt a strong desire
to have a few quiet puffs from histomahawk. be it said, that though i had felt such astrong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic ourstiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them. for now i liked nothing better than to havequeequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serenehousehold joy then. i no more felt unduly concerned for thelandlord's policy of insurance. i was only alive to the condensedconfidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.
with our shaggy jackets drawn about ourshoulders, we now passed the tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grewover us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-litlamp. whether it was that this undulating testerrolled the savage away to far distant scenes, i know not, but he now spoke of hisnative 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 comprehendednot a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when i had become morefamiliar with his broken phraseology, now
enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton igive. chapter 12.biographical. queequeg was a native of rokovoko, anisland far away to the west and south. it is not down in any map; true placesnever are. when a new-hatched savage running wildabout his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, asif he were a green sapling; even then, in queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of christendomthan a specimen whaler or two.
his father was a high chief, a king; hisuncle a high priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives ofunconquerable warriors. there was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, i fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished inhis 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 ofseamen, 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 adistant strait, which he knew the ship must
pass through when she quitted the island. on one side was a coral reef; on the othera low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. hiding his canoe, still afloat, among thesethickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; andwhen the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sankhis canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon thedeck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
in vain the captain threatened to throw himoverboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; queequeg was the son of aking, and queequeg budged not. struck by his desperate dauntlessness, andhis wild desire to visit christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him hemight make himself at home. but this fine young savage--this sea princeof wales, never saw the captain's cabin. they put him down among the sailors, andmade a whaleman of him. but like czar peter content to toil in theshipyards of foreign cities, queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if therebyhe might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen.
for at bottom--so he told me--he wasactuated by a profound desire to learn among the christians, the arts whereby tomake his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better thanthey were. but, alas! the practices of whalemen soonconvinced him that even christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely moreso, than all his father's heathens. arrived at last in old sag harbor; andseeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to nantucket, and seeing how theyspent their wages in that place also, poor queequeg gave it up for lost. thought he, it's a wicked world in allmeridians; i'll die a pagan.
and thus an old idolator at heart, he yetlived among these christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. hence the queer ways about him, though nowsome time from home. by hints, i asked him whether he did notpropose going back, and having a coronation; since he might now consider hisfather dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. he answered no, not yet; and added that hewas fearful christianity, or rather christians, had unfitted him for ascendingthe 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 sailabout, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. they had made a harpooneer of him, and thatbarbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now. i asked him what might be his immediatepurpose, touching his future movements. he answered, to go to sea again, in his oldvocation. upon this, i told him that whaling was myown design, and informed him of my intention to sail out of nantucket, asbeing the most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.
he at once resolved to accompany me to thatisland, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, thesame 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; forbesides 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 lastdying puff, queequeg embraced me, pressed
his forehead against mine, and blowing outthe light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon weresleeping. > -chapter 13.wheelbarrow. next morning, monday, after disposing ofthe 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 theboarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung upbetween me and queequeg--especially as peter coffin's cock and bull stories about
him had previously so much alarmed meconcerning the very person whom i now companied with. we borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarkingour things, including my own poor carpet- bag, and queequeg's canvas sack andhammock, away we went down to "the moss," the little nantucket packet schooner mooredat 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 theirstreets,--but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. but we heeded them not, going alongwheeling the barrow by turns, and queequeg
now and then stopping to adjust the sheathon his harpoon barbs. i asked him why he carried such atroublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not findtheir own harpoons. to this, in substance, he replied, thatthough what i hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his ownharpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, anddeeply intimate with the hearts of whales. in short, like many inland reapers andmowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with their own scythes--though in nowise obliged to furnish them--even so, queequeg, for his own private reasons,preferred his own harpoon.
shifting the barrow from my hand to his, hetold 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 chestto his boarding house. not to seem ignorant about the thing--though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which tomanage the barrow--queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shouldersthe barrow and marches up the wharf. "why," said i, "queequeg, you might haveknown 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, itseems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into alarge stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat wherethe feast is held. now a certain grand merchant ship oncetouched at rokovoko, and its commander-- from all accounts, a very statelypunctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain--this commander was invited to the wedding feast of queequeg's sister, apretty young princess just turned of ten.
well; when all the wedding guests wereassembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this captain marches in, and being assignedthe post of honour, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the high priest and his majesty the king, queequeg'sfather. grace being said,--for those people havetheir grace as well as we--though queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such timeslook 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 immemorialceremony of the island; that is, dipping
his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beveragecirculates. seeing himself placed next the priest, andnoting the ceremony, and thinking himself-- being captain of a ship--as having plainprecedence over a mere island king, especially in the king's own house--the captain coolly proceeds to wash his handsin the punchbowl;--taking it i suppose for a huge finger-glass."now," said queequeg, "what you tink now?-- didn't our people laugh?" at last, passage paid, and luggage safe, westood on board the schooner.
hoisting sail, it glided down the acushnetriver. on one side, new bedford rose in terracesof streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. huge hills and mountains of casks on caskswere piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships laysilent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires andforges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; thatone most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended,
only begins a third, and so on, for everand for aye. such is the endlessness, yea, theintolerableness of all earthly effort. gaining the more open water, the bracingbreeze waxed fresh; the little moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a youngcolt his snortings. how i snuffed that tartar air!--how ispurned that turnpike earth!--that common highway all over dented with the marks ofslavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea whichwill permit no records. at the same foam-fountain, queequeg seemedto drink and reel with me. his dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showedhis filed and pointed teeth.
on, on we flew; and our offing gained, themoss did homage to the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before thesultan. sideways leaning, we sideways darted; everyropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like indian canes in landtornadoes. so full of this reeling scene were we, aswe stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeeringglances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; asthough a white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro.
but there were some boobies and bumpkinsthere, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre ofall verdure. queequeg caught one of these young saplingsmimicking him behind his back. i thought the bumpkin's hour of doom wascome. dropping his harpoon, the brawny savagecaught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength, sent himhigh up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon hisfeet, while queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passedit to me for a puff.
"capting! capting!" yelled the bumpkin, runningtowards that officer; "capting, capting, here's the devil." "hallo, you sir," cried the captain, agaunt rib of the sea, stalking up to queequeg, "what in thunder do you mean bythat? don't you know you might have killed thatchap?" "what him say?" said queequeg, as he mildlyturned 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 histattooed 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 washigh time for the captain to mind his own eye. the prodigious strain upon the main-sailhad parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side toside, completely sweeping the entire after
part of the deck. the poor fellow whom queequeg had handledso roughly, was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatchingat 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 snappinginto splinters. nothing was done, and nothing seemedcapable of being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boomas 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 asit swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, andall was safe. the schooner was run into the wind, andwhile the hands were clearing away the stern boat, queequeg, stripped to thewaist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. for three minutes or more he was seenswimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by turnsrevealing 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 thewater, queequeg, now took an instant's glance around him, and seeming to see justhow matters were, dived down and disappeared. a few minutes more, and he rose again, onearm 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; thecaptain begged his pardon. from that hour i clove to queequeg like abarnacle; 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 andmagnanimous societies. he only asked for water--fresh water--something to wipe the brine off; that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe,and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to himself--"it's a mutual,joint-stock world, in all meridians.
we cannibals must help these christians." chapter 14.nantucket. nothing more happened on the passage worthythe 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 itoccupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the eddystonelighthouse. look at it--a mere hillock, and elbow ofsand; all beach, without a background. there is more sand there than you would usein twenty years as a substitute for
blotting paper. some gamesome wights will tell you thatthey have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import canadathistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in nantucket arecarried about like bits of the true cross in rome; that people there plant toadstoolsbefore their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day'swalk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like laplander snow-shoes;that they are so shut up, belted about,
every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to theirvery chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to thebacks of sea turtles. but these extravaganzas only show thatnantucket is no illinois. look now at the wondrous traditional storyof 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 aninfant indian in his talons. with loud lament the parents saw theirchild borne out of sight over the wide
waters.they resolved to follow in the same direction. setting out in their canoes, after aperilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivorycasket,--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 thesand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, theypushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on
the sea, explored this watery world; put anincessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at behring's straits; and inall seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; mostmonstrous and most mountainous! that himmalehan, salt-sea mastodon, clothedwith such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to bedreaded 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 thewatery world like so many alexanders;
parcelling out among them the atlantic, pacific, and indian oceans, as the threepirate powers did poland. let america add mexico to texas, and pilecuba upon canada; let the english overswarm all india, and hang out their blazingbanner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the nantucketer's. for the sea is his; he owns it, as emperorsown 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 ashighwaymen the road, they but plunder other
ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw theirliving from the bottomless deep itself. the nantucketer, he alone resides and riotson the sea; he alone, in bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and froploughing 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 inchina. he lives on the sea, as prairie cocks inthe prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb thealps. for years he knows not the land; so thatwhen he comes to it at last, it smells like
another world, more strangely than the moonwould to an earthsman. with the landless gull, that at sunsetfolds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, thenantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds ofwalruses and whales. chapter 15.chowder. it was quite late in the evening when thelittle moss came snugly to anchor, and queequeg and i went ashore; so we couldattend to no business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed.
the landlord of the spouter-inn hadrecommended us to his cousin hosea hussey of the try pots, whom he asserted to be theproprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that cousin hosea, as he calledhim, was famous for his chowders. in short, he plainly hinted that we couldnot possibly do better than try pot-luck at the try pots. but the directions he had given us aboutkeeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to thelarboard, 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 hisvery much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse--our first point ofdeparture--must be left on the larboard hand, whereas i had understood peter coffinto say it was on the starboard. however, by dint of beating about a littlein the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way, weat last came to something which there was no mistaking. two enormous wooden pots painted black, andsuspended by asses' ears, swung from the
cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted infront of an old doorway. the horns of the cross-trees were sawed offon the other side, so that this old top- mast looked not a little like a gallows. perhaps i was over sensitive to suchimpressions at the time, but i could not help staring at this gallows with a vaguemisgiving. a sort of crick was in my neck as i gazedup 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 myfirst whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here agallows! and a pair of prodigious black
pots too! are these last throwing out oblique hintstouching tophet? i was called from these reflections by thesight of a freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch ofthe inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding witha 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. husseyentirely competent to attend to all his affairs. upon making known our desires for a supperand a bed, mrs. hussey, postponing further scolding for the present, ushered us into alittle room, and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded repast, turned round to us andsaid--"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 thatwhat you mean, mrs. hussey?" says i, "but
that's a rather cold and clammy receptionin the winter time, ain't it, mrs. hussey?" but being in a great hurry to resumescolding the man in the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, andseeming to hear nothing but the word "clam," mrs. hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawlingout "clam for two," disappeared. "queequeg," said i, "do you think that wecan make out a supper for us both on one clam?" however, a warm savory steam from thekitchen 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, scarcelybigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up intolittle flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned withpepper and salt. our appetites being sharpened by the frostyvoyage, and in particular, queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, andthe chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinkingme of mrs. hussey's clam and cod
announcement, i thought i would try alittle experiment. stepping to the kitchen door, i uttered theword "cod" with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. in a few moments the savoury steam cameforth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder wasplaced before us. we resumed business; and while plying ourspoons in the bowl, thinks i to myself, i wonder now if this here has any effect onthe head? what's that stultifying saying aboutchowder-headed people? "but look, queequeg, ain't that a live eelin your bowl?
where's your harpoon?" fishiest of all fishy places was the trypots, which well deserved its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. chowder for breakfast, and chowder fordinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming throughyour clothes. the area before the house was paved withclam-shells. mrs. hussey wore a polished necklace ofcodfish 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 strollalong the beach among some fishermen's boats, i saw hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along thesand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, i assure ye. supper concluded, we received a lamp, anddirections from mrs. hussey concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as queequeg wasabout to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in herchambers. "why not?" said i; "every true whalemansleeps with his harpoon--but why not?"
"because it's dangerous," says she. "ever since young stiggs coming from thatunfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with only threebarrels of ile, was found dead in my first floor back, with his harpoon in his side; ever since then i allow no boardersto take sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. so, mr. queequeg" (for she had learned hisname), "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 ofsmoked herring by way of variety." -chapter 16.the ship. in bed we concocted our plans for themorrow. but to my surprise and no small concern,queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been diligently consulting yojo--thename of his black little god--and yojo had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it everyway, thatinstead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in harbor, and in concertselecting our craft; instead of this, i say, yojo earnestly enjoined that the
selection of the ship should rest whollywith me, inasmuch as yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order to do so, hadalready pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, i, ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world asthough 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 manythings, queequeg placed great confidence in the excellence of yojo's judgment andsurprising forecast of things; and cherished yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort of god, who perhapsmeant well enough upon the whole, but in
all cases did not succeed in his benevolentdesigns. now, this plan of queequeg's, or ratheryojo's, touching the selection of our craft; i did not like that plan at all. i had not a little relied upon queequeg'ssagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our fortunessecurely. but as all my remonstrances produced noeffect upon queequeg, i was obliged to acquiesce; and accordingly prepared to setabout this business with a determined rushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that trifling littleaffair.
next morning early, leaving queequeg shutup with yojo in our little bedroom--for it seemed that it was some sort of lent orramadan, 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 liturgiesand xxxix articles--leaving queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and yojo warming himself at his sacrificial fire ofshavings, i sallied out among the shipping. after much prolonged sauntering and manyrandom 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 acelebrated 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, lookedaround her for a moment, and then decided that this was the very ship for us. you may have seen many a quaint craft inyour day, for aught i know;--square-toed luggers; mountainous japanese junks;butter-box galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a rareold craft as this same rare old pequod.
she was a ship of the old school, rathersmall if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed look about her. long seasoned and weather-stained in thetyphoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion was darkened like afrench grenadier's, who has alike fought in egypt and siberia. her venerable bows looked bearded. her masts--cut somewhere on the coast ofjapan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale--her masts stoodstiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of cologne.
her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled,like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in canterbury cathedral where becket bled. but to all these her old antiquities, wereadded new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild business that formore 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 oneof the principal owners of the pequod,-- this old peleg, during the term of his chief-mateship, had built upon her originalgrotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material anddevice, unmatched by anything except it be
thorkill-hake's carved buckler or bedstead. she was apparelled like any barbaricethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory.she was a thing of trophies. a cannibal of a craft, tricking herselfforth in the chased bones of her enemies. all round, her unpanelled, open bulwarkswere garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the spermwhale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. those thews ran not through base blocks ofland wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory.
scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverendhelm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carvedfrom the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. the helmsman who steered by that tiller ina tempest, felt like the tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching itsjaw. a noble craft, but somehow a mostmelancholy! 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 thevoyage, at first i saw nobody; but i could
not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behindthe main-mast. it seemed only a temporary erection used inport. it was of a conical shape, some ten feethigh; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black bone taken from the middle andhighest 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 atthe apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro
like the top-knot on some old pottowottamiesachem's head. a triangular opening faced towards the bowsof 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 beingnoon, and the ship's work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden ofcommand. he was seated on an old-fashioned oakenchair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formedof 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 almostmicroscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, whichmust have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;--for this causes themuscles about the eyes to become pursed together.such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.
"is this the captain of the pequod?" saidi, advancing to the door of the tent. "supposing it be the captain of the pequod,what dost thou want of him?" he demanded. "i was thinking of shipping." "thou wast, wast thou?i see thou art no nantucketer--ever been in a stove boat?""no, sir, i never have." "dost know nothing at all about whaling, idare say--eh? "nothing, sir; but i have no doubt i shallsoon learn. i've been several voyages in the merchantservice, and i think that--" "merchant service be damned.talk not that lingo to me.
dost see that leg?--i'll take that leg awayfrom thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again.marchant service indeed! i suppose now ye feel considerable proud ofhaving served in those marchant ships. but flukes! man, what makes thee want to goa whaling, eh?--it looks a little suspicious, don't it, eh?--hast not been apirate, hast thou?--didst not rob thy last captain, didst thou?--dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest tosea?" i protested my innocence of these things. i saw that under the mask of these halfhumorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an
insulated quakerish nantucketer, was fullof his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless theyhailed 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'swho ye are speaking to, young man. it belongs to me and captain bildad to seethe pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, includingcrew. we are part owners and agents. but as i was going to say, if thou wantestto know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, i can put ye in a way of finding it outbefore ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. clap eye on captain ahab, young man, andthou 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 wasdevoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped aboat!--ah, ah!" i was a little alarmed by his energy,perhaps also a little touched at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, butsaid as calmly as i could, "what you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could i know there was any peculiar ferocity inthat particular whale, though indeed i might have inferred as much from the simplefact of the accident."
"look ye now, young man, thy lungs are asort 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 ihad been four voyages in the merchant--" "hard down out of that! mind what i said about the marchantservice--don't aggravate me--i won't have it.but let us understand each other. i have given thee a hint about what whalingis; do ye yet feel inclined for it?" "i do, sir.""very good.
now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoondown a live whale's throat, and then jump after it?answer, quick!" "i am, sir, if it should be positivelyindispensable to do so; not to be got rid of, that is; which i don't take to be thefact." "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 orderto 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 thenback to me and tell me what ye see there." for a moment i stood a little puzzled bythis curious request, not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or inearnest. but concentrating all his crow's feet intoone scowl, captain peleg started me on the errand. going forward and glancing over the weatherbow, i perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was nowobliquely pointing towards the open ocean. the prospect was unlimited, but exceedinglymonotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that i could see."well, what's the report?" said peleg when
i came back; "what did ye see?" "not much," i replied--"nothing but water;considerable horizon though, and there's a squall coming up, i think.""well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? do ye wish to go round cape horn to see anymore of it, eh? can't ye see the world where you stand?" i was a little staggered, but go a-whalingi must, and i would; and the pequod was as good a ship as any--i thought the best--andall this i now repeated to peleg. seeing me so determined, he expressed hiswillingness to ship me.
"and thou mayest as well sign the papersright off," he added--"come along with ye." and so saying, he led the way below deckinto the cabin. seated on the transom was what seemed to mea most uncommon and surprising figure. it turned out to be captain bildad, whoalong with captain peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the othershares, 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 inwhaling vessels, the same way that you do
yours in approved state stocks bringing ingood interest. now, bildad, like peleg, and indeed manyother nantucketers, was a quaker, the island having been originally settled bythat sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the quaker, onlyvariously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. for some of these same quakers are the mostsanguinary of all sailors and whale- hunters.they are fighting quakers; they are quakers with a vengeance.
so that there are instances among them ofmen, 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 withthese unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy a scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical paganroman. and when these things unite in a man ofgreatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; whohas also by the stillness and seclusion of
many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations neverseen 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 therebychiefly, but with some help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervouslofty language--that man makes one in a whole nation's census--a mighty pageantcreature, formed for noble tragedies. nor will it at all detract from him,dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seemsa half wilful overruling morbidness at the
bottom of his nature. for all men tragically great are made sothrough a certain morbidness. be sure of this, o young ambition, allmortal greatness is but disease. but, as yet we have not to do with such anone, but with quite another; and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it onlyresults again from another phase of the quaker, modified by individualcircumstances. like captain peleg, captain bildad was awell-to-do, retired whaleman. but unlike captain peleg--who cared not arush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same seriousthings the veriest of all trifles--captain
bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect ofnantucket 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 asaltered one angle of his vest. still, for all this immutableness, wasthere some lack of common consistency about worthy captain peleg. though refusing, from conscientiousscruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitablyinvaded the atlantic and pacific; and
though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilledtuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. how now in the contemplative evening of hisdays, 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 aman's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.this world pays dividends. rising from a little cabin-boy in shortclothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-belliedwaistcoat; from that becoming boat-header,
chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner; bildad, as i hinted before, hadconcluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly ageof sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earnedincome. now, bildad, i am sorry to say, had thereputation of being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter,hard task-master. they told me in nantucket, though itcertainly seems a curious story, that when he sailed the old categut whaleman, hiscrew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, soreexhausted 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 workout of them. when bildad was a chief-mate, to have hisdrab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till youcould clutch something--a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, atsomething or other, never mind what. indolence and idleness perished before him.his own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character.
on his long, gaunt body, he carried nospare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, likethe worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat. such, then, was the person that i sawseated on the transom when i followed captain peleg down into the cabin. the space between the decks was small; andthere, bolt-upright, sat old bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, and thisto save his coat tails. his broad-brim was placed beside him; hislegs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacleson nose, he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.
"bildad," cried captain peleg, "at itagain, 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 talkfrom his old shipmate, bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietlylooked 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 sointense a quaker. "what do ye think of him, bildad?" saidpeleg. "he'll do," said bildad, eyeing me, andthen went on spelling away at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible. i thought him the queerest old quaker iever 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 drawingforth the ship's articles, placed pen and ink before him, and seated himself at alittle table.
i began to think it was high time to settlewith myself at what terms i would be willing to engage for the voyage. i was already aware that in the whalingbusiness they paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certainshares of the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respectiveduties of the ship's company. i was also aware that being a green hand atwhaling, my own lay would not be very large; but considering that i was used tothe 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 leastthe 275th lay--that is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage,whatever that might eventually amount to. and though the 275th lay was what they calla 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 iwould not have to pay one stiver. it might be thought that this was a poorway to accumulate a princely fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed. but i am one of those that never take onabout princely fortunes, and am quite
content if the world is ready to board andlodge me, while i am putting up at this grim sign of the thunder cloud. upon the whole, i thought that the 275thlay would be about the fair thing, but would not have been surprised had i beenoffered the 200th, considering i was of a broad-shouldered make. but one thing, nevertheless, that made me alittle 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 theprincipal proprietors of the pequod,
therefore the other and more inconsiderableand scattered owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to thesetwo. and i did not know but what the stingy oldbildad might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands, especially as i nowfound him on board the pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading hisbible as if at his own fireside. now while peleg was vainly trying to mend apen with his jack-knife, old bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he wassuch an interested party in these proceedings; bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of hisbook, "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 sepulchralreply, "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! theseven hundred and seventy-seventh! well, old bildad, you are determined thati, 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 alandsman, 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 sevenhundred 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," criedpeleg, "thou dost not want to swindle this young man! he must have more than that."
"seven hundred and seventy-seventh," againsaid bildad, without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--"for where yourtreasure is, there will your heart be also." "i am going to put him down for the threehundredth," said peleg, "do ye hear that, bildad!the three hundredth lay, i say." bildad laid down his book, and turningsolemnly towards him said, "captain peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou mustconsider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and orphans, many of them--and that if we too abundantlyreward the labors of this young man, we may
be taking the bread from those widows andthose orphans. the seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay,captain peleg." "thou bildad!" roared peleg, starting upand clattering about the cabin. "blast ye, captain bildad, if i hadfollowed thy advice in these matters, i would afore now had a conscience to lugabout that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed roundcape horn." "captain peleg," said bildad steadily, "thyconscience may be drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, i can't tell; but asthou art still an impenitent man, captain peleg, i greatly fear lest thy conscience
be but a leaky one; and will in the endsink 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 humancreature that he's bound to hell. flukes and flames! bildad, say that again to me, and start mysoul-bolts, but i'll--i'll--yes, i'll swallow a live goat with all his hair andhorns on. out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-colouredson of a wooden gun--a straight wake with ye!"
as he thundered out this he made a rush atbildad, but with a marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, bildad for that timeeluded him. alarmed at this terrible outburst betweenthe two principal and responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to giveup all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded, i stepped aside from the door togive egress to bildad, who, i made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish frombefore the awakened wrath of peleg. but to my astonishment, he sat down againon the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest intention ofwithdrawing.
he seemed quite used to impenitent pelegand his ways. as for peleg, after letting off his rage ashe had, there seemed no more left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, thoughhe twitched a little as if still nervously agitated. "whew!" he whistled at last--"the squall'sgone off to leeward, i think. bildad, thou used to be good at sharpeninga 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 friendwith 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 theidentical ship that yojo had provided to carry queequeg and me round the cape. but i had not proceeded far, when i beganto 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 captainmakes himself visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are soprolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain
have a family, or any absorbing concernmentof that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves herto the owners till all is ready for sea. however, it is always as well to have alook 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 withhim; 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 somethink--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 thecommon; ahab's been in colleges, as well as
'mong the cannibals; been used to deeperwonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes thanwhales. his lance! aye, the keenest and the surestthat out of all our isle! oh! he ain't captain bildad; no, and heain't captain peleg; he's ahab, boy; and ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crownedking!" "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," saidpeleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me.
"look ye, lad; never say that on board thepequod. never say it anywhere.captain ahab did not name himself. 'twas a foolish, ignorant whim of hiscrazy, 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 withhim as mate years ago; i know what he is--a
good man--not a pious, good man, likebildad, but a swearing good man--something like me--only there's a good deal more ofhim. aye, aye, i know that he was never veryjolly; and i know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for aspell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought thatabout, as any one might see. i know, too, that ever since he lost hisleg 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 andassure thee, young man, it's better to sail
with a moody good captain than a laughingbad one. so good-bye to thee--and wrong not captainahab, 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 oldman 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 ofthoughtfulness; what had been incidentally revealed to me of captain ahab, filled mewith a certain wild vagueness of
painfulness concerning him. and somehow, at the time, i felt a sympathyand a sorrow for him, but for i don't know what, unless it was the cruel loss of hisleg. 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 notknow what it was. but i felt it; and it did not disincline metowards him; though i felt impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, soimperfectly as he was known to me then. however, my thoughts were at length carriedin other directions, so that for the present dark ahab slipped my mind.
-chapter 17.the ramadan. as queequeg's ramadan, or fasting andhumiliation, was to continue all day, i did not choose to disturb him till towardsnight-fall; for i cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, andcould not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping atoad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented inother planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely onaccount of the inordinate possessions yet
owned and rented in his name. i say, we good presbyterian christiansshould be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior toother mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on thesesubjects. there was queequeg, now, certainlyentertaining 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--forwe are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending. towards evening, when i felt assured thatall his performances and rituals must be over, i went up to his room and knocked atthe door; but no answer. i tried to open it, but it was fastenedinside. "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; ithought he might have had an apoplectic fit. i looked through the key-hole; but the dooropening into an odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect was but a crooked andsinister one. i could only see part of the foot-board ofthe bed and a line of the wall, but nothing more. i was surprised to behold resting againstthe wall the wooden shaft of queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the eveningprevious 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 mysuspicions to the first person i met--the chamber-maid."la! la!" she cried, "i thought something must be the matter.
i went to make the bed after breakfast, andthe door was locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it's been just so silent eversince. but i thought, may be, you had both goneoff and locked your baggage in for safe keeping.la! la, ma'am!--mistress! murder! mrs. hussey! apoplexy!"--and with thesecries, 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 theoccupation 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 topry open the door--the axe!--the axe! he's had a stroke; depend upon it!"--and sosaying 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, someone, while i pry it open!" "look here," said the landlady, quicklyputting down the vinegar-cruet, so as to
have one hand free; "look here; are youtalking 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 toone side of her nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed--"no! i haven'tseen it since i put it there." running to a little closet under thelanding of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that queequeg's harpoonwas missing. "he's killed himself," she cried.
"it's unfort'nate stiggs done over againthere goes another counterpane--god pity his poor mother!--it will be the ruin of myhouse. has the poor lad a sister? where's that girl?--there, betty, go tosnarles the painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with--"no suicides permittedhere, 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 iwas again trying to force open the door.
"i don't allow it; i won't have my premisesspoiled. go for the locksmith, there's one about amile 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 remainedunwithdrawn within. "have to burst it open," said i, and wasrunning 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 fullagainst 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 hishams, and holding yojo on top of his head. he looked neither one way nor the otherway, 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, hashe?" said the landlady.
but all we said, not a word could we dragout of him; i almost felt like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for itwas almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained; especially, as in all probability he hadbeen sitting so for upwards of eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals. "mrs. hussey," said i, "he's alive at allevents; so leave us, if you please, and i will see to this strange affair myself." closing the door upon the landlady, iendeavored to prevail upon queequeg to take a chair; but in vain.
there he sat; and all he could do--for allmy polite arts and blandishments--he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, noreven look at me, nor notice my presence in the slightest way. i wonder, thought i, if this can possiblybe 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 hisramadan 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 thelong stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage, as theycalled it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig, confined to the north of the line, in the atlantic oceanonly); after listening to these plum- puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, iwent up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time queequeg must certainlyhave brought his ramadan to a termination. but no; there he was just where i had lefthim; he had not stirred an inch. i began to grow vexed with him; it seemedso downright senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and half the night onhis hams in a cold room, holding a piece of
wood on his head. "for heaven's sake, queequeg, get up andshake 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 heavybearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it promised to be a very cold night; and hehad nothing but his ordinary round jacket on.
for some time, do all i would, i could notget into the faintest doze. i had blown out the candle; and the merethought 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 sameroom with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable ramadan! but somehow i dropped off at last, and knewnothing more till break of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squattedqueequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor.
but as soon as the first glimpse of sunentered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerfullook; 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 noobjection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person doesnot kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe italso. but when a man's religion becomes reallyfrantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of oursan uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then i think it high time to take that individualaside 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 andprogress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of thepresent time, during which time i labored to show queequeg that all these lents, ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings incold, 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 otherthings such an extremely sensible and
sagacious savage, it pained me, very badlypained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous ramadan ofhis. besides, argued i, fasting makes the bodycave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily behalf-starved. this is the reason why most dyspepticreligionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. in one word, queequeg, said i, ratherdigressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and sincethen perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by ramadans.
i then asked queequeg whether he himselfwas ever troubled with dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so thathe could take it in. he said no; only upon one memorableoccasion. it was after a great feast given by hisfather the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had beenkilled by about two o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten thatvery 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 thatvery island, and he told me that it was the
custom, when a great battle had been gainedthere, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great woodentrenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; andwith some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as though thesepresents were so many christmas turkeys. after all, i do not think that my remarksabout religion made much impression upon queequeg. because, in the first place, he somehowseemed dull of hearing on that important
subject, unless considered from his ownpoint 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 idid. he looked at me with a sort ofcondescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that sucha 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 landladyshould not make much profit by reason of
his ramadan, we sallied out to board the pequod, sauntering along, and picking ourteeth with halibut bones. chapter 18.his mark. as we were walking down the end of thewharf towards the ship, queequeg carrying his harpoon, captain peleg in his gruffvoice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing thathe let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced theirpapers. "what do you mean by that, captain peleg?"said i, now jumping on the bulwarks, and
leaving my comrade standing on the wharf."i mean," he replied, "he must show his papers." "yes," said captain bildad in his hollowvoice, sticking his head from behind peleg's, out of the wigwam."he must show that he's converted. son of darkness," he added, turning toqueequeg, "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 savagessailing in nantucket ships at last come to be converted into the churches.
"first congregational church," criedbildad, "what! that worships in deacon deuteronomy coleman's meeting-house?" andso saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and putting them on verycarefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took agood long look at queequeg. "how long hath he been a member?" he thensaid, turning to me; "not very long, i rather guess, young man." "no," said peleg, "and he hasn't beenbaptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue off hisface."
"do tell, now," cried bildad, "is thisphilistine 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 deacondeuteronomy or his meeting," said i; "all i know is, that queequeg here is a bornmember of the first congregational church. he is a deacon himself, queequeg is." "young man," said bildad sternly, "thou artskylarking 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 catholicchurch to which you and i, and captain peleg there, and queequeg here, and all ofus, and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting first congregation of this whole worshippingworld; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no waystouching the grand belief; in that we all join hands." "splice, thou mean'st splice hands," criedpeleg, drawing nearer. "young man, you'd better ship for amissionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; i never heard a better sermon.
deacon deuteronomy--why father mapplehimself 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 youcall him? tell quohog to step along. by the great anchor, what a harpoon he'sgot 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 hiswild sort of way, jumped upon the bulwarks,
from thence into the bows of one of thewhale-boats hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in some such way asthis:-- "cap'ain, you see him small drop tar onwater 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'sbroad brim, clean across the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out ofsight. "now," said queequeg, quietly hauling inthe 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 thecabin gangway. "quick, i say, you bildad, and get theship's papers. we must have hedgehog there, i mean quohog,in one of our boats. look ye, quohog, we'll give ye theninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out ofnantucket." so down we went into the cabin, and to mygreat joy queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship's company to which i myselfbelonged. when all preliminaries were over and peleghad got everything ready for signing, he
turned to me and said, "i guess, quohogthere don't know how to write, does he? i say, quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thyname or make thy mark?" but at this question, queequeg, who hadtwice 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 whichwas tattooed upon his arm; so that through captain peleg's obstinate mistake touchinghis appellative, it stood something like this:-- quohog. his x mark.
meanwhile captain bildad sat earnestly andsteadfastly eyeing queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the hugepockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled "the latter day coming; or notime to lose," placed it in queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the bookwith both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "son of darkness, i must do my duty by thee; i am part owner of thisship, and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thypagan ways, which i sadly fear, i beseech thee, remain not for aye a belial bondsman.
spurn the idol bell, and the hideousdragon; 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 inold bildad's language, heterogeneously mixed with scriptural and domestic phrases."avast there, avast there, bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer," peleg. "pious harpooneers never make goodvoyagers--it takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint prettysharkish. there was young nat swaine, once thebravest 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 hegot stove and went to davy jones." "peleg! peleg!" said bildad, lifting his eyes andhands, "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 thisungodly guise. thou beliest thine own heart, peleg. tell me, when this same pequod here had herthree masts overboard in that typhoon on japan, that same voyage when thou went matewith 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,--"hearhim, all of ye. think of that! when every moment we thought the ship wouldsink! death and the judgment then?what? with all three masts making such aneverlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore andaft. think of death and the judgment then?
no! no time to think about death then. life was what captain ahab and i wasthinking of; and how to save all hands--how to rig jury-masts--how to get into thenearest port; that was what i was thinking of." bildad said no more, but buttoning up hiscoat, stalked on deck, where we followed him. there he stood, very quietly overlookingsome sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. now and then he stooped to pick up a patch,or save an end of tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted. chapter 19.the prophet. "shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?" queequeg and i had just left the pequod,and were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his ownthoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at thevessel in question. he was but shabbily apparelled in fadedjacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck.
a confluent small-pox had in all directionsflowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, whenthe rushing waters have been dried up. "have ye shipped in her?" he repeated. "you mean the ship pequod, i suppose," saidi, trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him. "aye, the pequod--that ship there," hesaid, 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 thearticles."
"anything down there about your souls?""about what?" "oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he saidquickly. "no matter though, i know many chaps thathav'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 awagon." "what are you jabbering about, shipmate?"said i. "he's got enough, though, to make up forall deficiencies of that sort in other chaps," abruptly said the stranger, placinga nervous emphasis upon the word he. "queequeg," said i, "let's go; this fellowhas broken loose from somewhere; he's
talking about something and somebody wedon't know." "stop!" cried the stranger. "ye said true--ye hav'n't seen old thunderyet, have ye?" "who's old thunder?" said i, again rivetedwith the insane earnestness of his manner. "captain ahab." "what! the captain of our ship, thepequod?" "aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, hegoes 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 thestranger, 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 goodwhale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."
"that's true, that's true--yes, both trueenough. 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 happenedto 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 spatinto? and nothing about his losing his leg lastvoyage, according to the prophecy. didn't ye hear a word about them mattersand 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 tellabout 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 meanthey know he's only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off." "my friend," said i, "what all thisgibberish of yours is about, i don't know, and i don't much care; for it seems to methat you must be a little damaged in the head.
but if you are speaking of captain ahab, ofthat ship there, the pequod, then let me tell you, that i know all about the loss ofhis leg." "all about it, eh--sure you do?--all?" "pretty sure." with finger pointed and eye levelled at thepequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; thenstarting a little, turned and said:--"ye've shipped, have ye? names down on the papers?well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again,perhaps it won't be, after all.
anyhow, it's all fixed and arrangeda'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, i suppose; as well these as anyother men, god pity 'em! morning to ye, shipmates, morning; theineffable heavens bless ye; i'm sorry i stopped ye." "look here, friend," said i, "if you haveanything 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 tohear 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'veconcluded not to make one of 'em." "ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us thatway--you can't fool us. it is the easiest thing in the world for aman 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 thiscrazy man. but stop, tell me your name, will you?""elijah." elijah! thought i, and we walked away, bothcommenting, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreedthat he was nothing but a humbug, trying to
be a bugbear. but we had not gone perhaps above a hundredyards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as i did so, who should beseen 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 mycomrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that wedid. he did; and then it seemed to me that hewas dogging us, but with what intent i could not for the life of me imagine.
this circumstance, coupled with hisambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me allkinds of vague wonderments and half- apprehensions, and all connected with the pequod; and captain ahab; and the leg hehad lost; and the cape horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what captain peleg hadsaid of him, when i left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw tistig; and the voyage we had boundourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things. i was resolved to satisfy myself whetherthis ragged elijah was really dogging us or
not, and with that intent crossed the waywith queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. but elijah passed on, without seeming tonotice us. this relieved me; and once more, andfinally as it seemed to me, i pronounced him in my heart, a humbug. chapter 20.all astir. a day or two passed, and there was greatactivity 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; inshort, 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 thepurchasing 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 thearticles, 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 soonthe 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 longnotice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. but no wonder; there was a good deal to bedone, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the pequodwas 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 athree-years' housekeeping upon the wide
ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers,doctors, bakers, and bankers. and though this also holds true of merchantvessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. for besides the great length of the whalingvoyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and theimpossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whalingvessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to thedestruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage mostdepends.
hence, the spare boats, spare spars, andspare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare captainand 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 therewas 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 andcarrying was captain bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined andindefatigable spirit, but withal very
kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be foundwanting in the pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. at one time she would come on board with ajar of pickles for the steward's pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for thechief mate's desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for thesmall of some one's rheumatic back. never did any woman better deserve hername, which was charity--aunt charity, as everybody called her. and like a sister of charity did thischaritable aunt charity bustle about hither
and thither, ready to turn her hand andheart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brotherbildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of well-saveddollars. but it was startling to see this excellenthearted quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle inone hand, and a still longer whaling lance in the other. nor was bildad himself nor captain peleg atall backward. as for bildad, he carried about with him along list of the articles needed, and at
every fresh arrival, down went his markopposite that article upon the paper. every once in a while peleg came hobblingout of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to theriggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. during these days of preparation, queequegand 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, thathe was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every day; meantime, thetwo captains, peleg and bildad, could
attend to everything necessary to fit thevessel 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 committedthis 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 theship sailed out upon the open sea. but when a man suspects any wrong, itsometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensiblystrives 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 timenext day the ship would certainly sail. so next morning, queequeg and i took a veryearly start. chapter 21.going aboard. it was nearly six o'clock, but only greyimperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. "there are some sailors running aheadthere, 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 thesame time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and theninsinuating himself between us, stood
stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from queequegto me. it was elijah."going aboard?" "hands off, will you," said i. "lookee here," said queequeg, shakinghimself, "go 'way!" "ain't going aboard, then?""yes, we are," said i, "but what business is that of yours? do you know, mr. elijah, that i consideryou a little impertinent?" "no, no, no; i wasn't aware of that," saidelijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from
me to queequeg, with the most unaccountableglances. "elijah," said i, "you will oblige myfriend and me by withdrawing. we are going to the indian and pacificoceans, and would prefer not to be detained." "ye be, be ye?coming back afore breakfast?" "he's cracked, queequeg," said i, "comeon." "holloa!" cried stationary elijah, hailingus when we had removed a few paces. "never mind him," said i, "queequeg, comeon." but he stole up to us again, and suddenlyclapping his hand on my shoulder, said--
"did ye see anything looking like men goingtowards that ship a while ago?" struck by this plain matter-of-factquestion, i answered, saying, "yes, i thought i did see four or five men; but itwas 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 myshoulder 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--butnever mind, never mind--it's all one, all in the family too;--sharp frost thismorning, 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 finallydeparted, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence. at last, stepping on board the pequod, wefound everything in profound quiet, not a soul moving. the cabin entrance was locked within; thehatches 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 foundonly an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. he was thrown at whole length upon twochests, his face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms.the profoundest slumber slept upon him. "those sailors we saw, queequeg, where canthey 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 thoughtmyself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were it not for elijah'sotherwise inexplicable question. but i beat the thing down; and againmarking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to queequeg that perhaps we had best sit upwith the body; telling him to establish himself accordingly. he put his hand upon the sleeper's rear, asthough feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado, sat quietly downthere. "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? verybenevolent 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 thehead 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 hisbroken fashion, queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to theabsence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fatteningsome of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in thatrespect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in thepiers and alcoves. besides, it was very convenient on anexcursion; 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 timequeequeg received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over thesleeper's head. "what's that for, queequeg?" "perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!" he was going on with some wildreminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses bothbrained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleepingrigger. the strong vapour now completely fillingthe contracted hole, it began to tell upon
he breathed with a sort of muffledness;then seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat upand rubbed his eyes. "holloa!" he breathed at last, "who be yesmokers?" "shipped men," answered i, "when does shesail?" "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 furtherquestions concerning ahab, when we heard a noise on deck."holloa!
starbuck's astir," said the rigger. "he's a lively chief mate, that; good man,and a pious; but all alive now, i must turn to."and so saying he went on deck, and we followed. it was now clear sunrise. soon the crew came on board in twos andthrees; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; andseveral of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. meanwhile captain ahab remained invisiblyenshrined within his cabin.
-chapter 22.merry christmas. at length, towards noon, upon the finaldismissal of the ship's riggers, and after the pequod had been hauled out from thewharf, and after the ever-thoughtful charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift--a night-cap for stubb, thesecond mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare bible for the steward--after allthis, the two captains, peleg and bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to thechief mate, peleg said: "now, mr. starbuck, are you sure everythingis right? captain ahab is all ready--just spoke tohim--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 greatthe hurry, peleg," said bildad, "but away with thee, friend starbuck, and do ourbidding." how now! here upon the very point of starting forthe voyage, captain peleg and captain bildad were going it with a high hand onthe quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as toall appearances in port. and, as for captain ahab, no sign of himwas yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin.
but then, the idea was, that his presencewas by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well outto sea. indeed, as that was not at all his properbusiness, 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 fora considerable time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with theirshore friends, before they quit the ship for good with the pilot.
but there was not much chance to think overthe 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 marqueewas never pitched except in port; and on board the pequod, for thirty years, theorder 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 thehandspikes. now in getting under weigh, the stationgenerally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. and here bildad, who, with peleg, be itknown, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots of the port--he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concernedin, for he never piloted any other craft-- bildad, i say, might now be seen activelyengaged in looking over the bows for the
approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave ofpsalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of achorus 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'sberth. meantime, overseeing the other part of theship, captain peleg ripped and swore astern
in the most frightful manner. i almost thought he would sink the shipbefore the anchor could be got up; involuntarily i paused on my handspike, andtold queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting on thevoyage with such a devil for a pilot. i was comforting myself, however, with thethought that in pious bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundredand seventy-seventh lay; when i felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition ofcaptain 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 marchantservice?" he roared. "spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and breakthy backbone! why don't ye spring, i say, all of ye--spring! quohog! spring, thou chap with the redwhiskers; spring there, scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. spring, i say, all of ye, and spring youreyes out!" and so saying, he moved along the windlass,here and there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable bildad kept leading offwith his psalmody. thinks i, captain peleg must have beendrinking something to-day.
at last the anchor was up, the sails wereset, and off we glided. it was a short, cold christmas; and as theshort northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon thewintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. the long rows of teeth on the bulwarksglistened 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 firstwatch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sentthe shivering frost all over her, and the
winds howled, and the cordage rang, hissteady notes were heard,-- "sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,stand dressed in living green. so to the jews old canaan stood, whilejordan rolled between." never did those sweet words sound moresweetly to me than then. they were full of hope and fruition. spite of this frigid winter night in theboisterous atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it thenseemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by thespring, 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 usbegan ranging alongside. it was curious and not unpleasing, howpeleg and bildad were affected at this juncture, especially captain bildad. for loath to depart, yet; very loath toleave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage--beyond both stormycapes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed ascaptain; a man almost as old as he, once
more starting to encounter all the terrorsof the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,--poor old bildad lingeredlong; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin to speak anotherfarewell word there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded bythe 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, convulsivelygrasped stout peleg by the hand, and
holding up a lantern, for a moment stoodgazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, "nevertheless, friend peleg, i canstand it; yes, i can." as for peleg himself, he took it more likea philosopher; but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, whenthe lantern came too near. and he, too, did not a little run fromcabin 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, wemust go. back the main-yard there!
boat ahoy!stand by to come close alongside, now! careful, careful!--come, bildad, boy--sayyour 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 threeyears 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, almostincoherently. "i hope ye'll have fine weather now, sothat captain ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all he needs, andye'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 israised 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 centsthe pound it was, and mind ye, if--" "come, come, captain bildad; stoppalavering,--away!" and with that, peleg hurried him over the side, and both droptinto the boat. ship and boat diverged; the cold, dampnight 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 loneatlantic. chapter 23.the lee shore. some chapters back, one bulkington wasspoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in new bedford at the inn. when on that shivering winter's night, thepequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should i seestanding at her helm but bulkington! i looked with sympathetic awe andfearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerousvoyage, 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 noepitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of bulkington. let me only say that it fared with him aswith the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. the port would fain give succor; the portis 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, isthat ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly
all hospitality; one touch of land, thoughit but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. with all her might she crowds all sail offshore; 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 bitterestfoe! know ye now, bulkington? glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortallyintolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of thesoul to keep the open independence of her
sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on thetreacherous, slavish shore? but as in landlessness alone resideshighest truth, shoreless, indefinite as god--so, better is it to perish in thathowling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that weresafety! for worm-like, then, oh! who would cravencrawl to land! terrors of the terrible! is all this agonyso vain? take heart, take heart, o bulkington!bear thee grimly, demigod! up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
chapter 24.the advocate. as queequeg and i are now fairly embarkedin this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to beregarded 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 almostsuperfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business ofwhaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions.
if a stranger were introduced into anymiscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the generalopinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval officers he shouldappend the initials s.w.f (sperm whale fishery) to his visiting card, such aprocedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous. doubtless one leading reason why the worlddeclines honouring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocationamounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we
are surrounded by all manner ofdefilements. butchers we are, that is true. but butchers, also, and butchers of thebloodiest badge have been all martial commanders whom the world invariablydelights to honour. and as for the matter of the allegeduncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain factshitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least amongthe cleanliest things of this tidy earth. but even granting the charge in question tobe true; what disordered slippery decks of
a whale-ship are comparable to theunspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drinkin all ladies' plaudits? and if the idea of peril so much enhancesthe popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many aveteran 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 ofman compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of god! but, though the world scouts at us whalehunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the
profoundest homage; yea, an all-aboundingadoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, toour glory! but look at this matter in other lights;weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been. why did the dutch in de witt's time haveadmirals of their whaling fleets? why did louis xvi. of france, at his ownpersonal expense, fit out whaling ships from dunkirk, and politely invite to thattown some score or two of families from our own island of nantucket?
why did britain between the years 1750 and1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of l1,000,000? and lastly, how comes it that we whalemenof america now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail anavy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the shipsworth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors awell reaped harvest of $7,000,000. how comes all this, if there be notsomething puissant in whaling? but this is not the half; look again.
i freely assert, that the cosmopolitephilosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which withinthe last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than the high andmighty business of whaling. one way and another, it has begotten eventsso remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequentialissues, that whaling may well be regarded as that egyptian mother, who bore offspringthemselves pregnant from her womb. it would be a hopeless, endless task tocatalogue all these things. let a handful suffice.
for many years past the whale-ship has beenthe pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. she has explored seas and archipelagoeswhich had no chart, where no cook or vancouver had ever sailed. if american and european men-of-war nowpeacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honour and gloryof the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted betweenthem and the savages. they may celebrate as they will the heroesof exploring expeditions, your cooks, your krusensterns; but i say that scores ofanonymous captains have sailed out of
nantucket, that were as great, and greaterthan your cook and your krusenstern. for in their succourless empty-handedness,they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelinislands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that cook with all his marines andmuskets would not willingly have dared. all that is made such a flourish of in theold south sea voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces of ourheroic nantucketers. often, adventures which vancouver dedicatesthree chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship'scommon 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 onbetween europe and the long line of the opulent spanish provinces on the pacificcoast. it was the whaleman who first broke throughthe jealous policy of the spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if spacepermitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of peru, chili, and bolivia fromthe yoke of old spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy inthose parts.
that great america on the other side of thesphere, australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. after its first blunder-born discovery by adutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous;but the whale-ship touched there. the whale-ship is the true mother of thatnow mighty colony. moreover, in the infancy of the firstaustralian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by thebenevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. the uncounted isles of all polynesiaconfess the same truth, and do commercial
homage to the whale-ship, that cleared theway for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitivemissionaries to their first destinations. if that double-bolted land, japan, is everto become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; foralready she is on the threshold. but if, in the face of all this, you stilldeclare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, thenam i ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmetevery time. the whale has no famous author, and whalingno famous chronicler, you will say. the whale no famous author, and whaling nofamous chronicler?
who wrote the first account of ourleviathan? who but mighty job! and who composed the first narrative of awhaling-voyage? who, but no less a prince than alfred thegreat, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from other, the norwegianwhale-hunter of those times! and who pronounced our glowing eulogy inparliament? who, but edmund burke! true enough, but then whalemen themselvesare poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins.no good blood in their veins?
they have something better than royal bloodthere. the grandmother of benjamin franklin wasmary morrel; afterwards, by marriage, mary folger, one of the old settlers ofnantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of folgers and harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble benjamin--this day dartingthe 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 isdeclared "a royal fish."*
oh, that's only nominal! the whale himself has never figured in anygrand imposing way. the whale never figured in any grandimposing way? in one of the mighty triumphs given to aroman general upon his entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought allthe way from the syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballedprocession.* *see subsequent chapters for something moreon this head. grant it, since you cite it; but, say whatyou will, there is no real dignity in whaling.no dignity in whaling?
the dignity of our calling the very heavensattest. cetus is a constellation in the south!no more! drive down your hat in presence of theczar, and take it off to queequeg! no more!i know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. i account that man more honourable thanthat 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 anyreal repute in that small but high hushed
world which i might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter i shall doanything 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 prospectivelyascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my yalecollege and my harvard. chapter 25.postscript. in behalf of the dignity of whaling, iwould fain advance naught but substantiated facts.
but after embattling his facts, an advocatewho should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might telleloquently upon his cause--such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy? it is well known that at the coronation ofkings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning themfor their functions is gone through. there is a saltcellar of state, so called,and there may be a castor of state. how they use the salt, precisely--whoknows? certain i am, however, that a king's headis solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad.
can it be, though, that they anoint it witha view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? much might be ruminated here, concerningthe essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteembut meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells ofthat 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 muchin 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, normacassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. what then can it possibly be, but sperm oilin its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? think of that, ye loyal britons! wewhalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!
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