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-chapter 89.fast-fish and loose-fish. the allusion to the waif and waif-poles inthe last chapter but one, necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of thewhale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge. it frequently happens that when severalships are cruising in company, a whale may
Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Scanner, be struck by one vessel, then escape, andbe finally killed and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised many minor contingencies, all partaking ofthis one grand feature. for example,--after a weary and perilouschase and capture of a whale, the body may
get loose from the ship by reason of aviolent storm; and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it alongside,without risk of life or line. thus the most vexatious and violentdisputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written orunwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases. perhaps the only formal whaling codeauthorized by legislative enactment, was that of holland.it was decreed by the states-general in a.d. 1695.
but though no other nation has ever had anywritten whaling law, yet the american fishermen have been their own legislatorsand lawyers in this matter. they have provided a system which for tersecomprehensiveness surpasses justinian's pandects and the by-laws of the chinesesociety for the suppression of meddling with other people's business. yes; these laws might be engraven on aqueen anne's forthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so smallare they. i. a fast-fish belongs to the party fast toit. ii. a loose-fish is fair game for anybodywho can soonest catch it.
but what plays the mischief with thismasterly code is the admirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume ofcommentaries to expound it. first: what is a fast-fish? alive or dead a fish is technically fast,when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all controllableby the occupant or occupants,--a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire,or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. likewise a fish is technically fast when itbears a waif, or any other recognised symbol of possession; so long as the partywaifing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well astheir intention so to do.
these are scientific commentaries; but thecommentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harderknocks--the coke-upon-littleton of the fist. true, among the more upright and honourablewhalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases, where it would be anoutrageous moral injustice for one party to claim possession of a whale previouslychased or killed by another party. but others are by no means so scrupulous. some fifty years ago there was a curiouscase of whale-trover litigated in england, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that aftera hard chase of a whale in the northern
seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpooning the fish; theywere at last, through peril of their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines,but their boat itself. ultimately the defendants (the crew ofanother ship) came up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finallyappropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs. and when those defendants were remonstratedwith, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs' teeth, and assured themthat by way of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their line,
harpoons, and boat, which had remainedattached to the whale at the time of the seizure. wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for therecovery of the value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat.mr. erskine was counsel for the defendants; lord ellenborough was the judge. in the course of the defence, the wittyerskine went on to illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case,wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife's viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life;but in the course of years, repenting of
that step, he instituted an action torecover possession of her. erskine was on the other side; and he thensupported it by saying, that though the gentleman had originally harpooned thelady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandonedher; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; and therefore when asubsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then became that subsequent gentleman's property, along with whateverharpoon might have been found sticking in her.
now in the present case erskine contendedthat the examples of the whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of eachother. these pleadings, and the counter pleadings,being duly heard, the very learned judge in set terms decided, to wit,--that as for theboat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives; but that with regard tothe controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale,because it was a loose-fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off withthem, it (the fish) acquired a property in
those articles; and hence anybody whoafterwards took the fish had a right to them. now the defendants afterwards took thefish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs. a common man looking at this decision ofthe very learned judge, might possibly object to it. but ploughed up to the primary rock of thematter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted,and applied and elucidated by lord ellenborough in the above cited case; these
two laws touching fast-fish and loose-fish,i say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence;for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture, the temple of the law, like the temple of the philistines, has but twoprops to stand on. is it not a saying in every one's mouth,possession is half of the law: that is, regardless of how the thing came intopossession? but often possession is the whole of thelaw. what are the sinews and souls of russianserfs and republican slaves but fast-fish, whereof possession is the whole of the law?
what to the rapacious landlord is thewidow's last mite but a fast-fish? what is yonder undetected villain's marblemansion with a door-plate for a waif; what is that but a fast-fish? what is the ruinous discount whichmordecai, the broker, gets from poor woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keepwoebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a fast-fish? what is the archbishop of savesoul's incomeof l100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of savesoul's help) what is thatglobular l100,000 but a fast-fish?
what are the duke of dunder's hereditarytowns and hamlets but fast-fish? what to that redoubted harpooneer, johnbull, is poor ireland, but a fast-fish? what to that apostolic lancer, brotherjonathan, is texas but a fast-fish? and concerning all these, is not possessionthe whole of the law? but if the doctrine of fast-fish be prettygenerally applicable, the kindred doctrine of loose-fish is still more widely so. that is internationally and universallyapplicable. what was america in 1492 but a loose-fish,in which columbus struck the spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royalmaster and mistress?
what was poland to the czar? what greece to the turk?what india to england? what at last will mexico be to the unitedstates? all loose-fish. what are the rights of man and theliberties of the world but loose-fish? what all men's minds and opinions butloose-fish? what is the principle of religious beliefin them but a loose-fish? what to the ostentatious smugglingverbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but loose-fish?
what is the great globe itself but a loose-fish? and what are you, reader, but a loose-fishand a fast-fish, too? chapter 90.heads or tails. "de balena vero sufficit, si rex habeatcaput, et regina caudam." bracton, l. 3, c. 3. latin from the books of the laws ofengland, which taken along with the context, means, that of all whales capturedby anybody on the coast of that land, the king, as honourary grand harpooneer, must have the head, and the queen berespectfully presented with the tail.
a division which, in the whale, is muchlike halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder. now as this law, under a modified form, isto this day in force in england; and as it offers in various respects a strangeanomaly touching the general law of fast and loose-fish, it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteousprinciple that prompts the english railways to be at the expense of a separate car,specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. in the first place, in curious proof of thefact that the above-mentioned law is still
in force, i proceed to lay before you acircumstance that happened within the last two years. it seems that some honest mariners ofdover, or sandwich, or some one of the cinque ports, had after a hard chasesucceeded in killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally descriedafar off from the shore. now the cinque ports are partially orsomehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a lord warden. holding the office directly from the crown,i believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the cinque port territoriesbecome by assignment his.
by some writers this office is called asinecure. but not so. because the lord warden is busily employedat times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that samefobbing of them. now when these poor sun-burnt mariners,bare-footed, and with their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearilyhauled their fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good l150 from the precious oil and bone; and in fantasysipping rare tea with their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strengthof their respective shares; up steps a very
learned and most christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of blackstone underhis arm; and laying it upon the whale's head, he says--"hands off! this fish, mymasters, is a fast-fish. i seize it as the lord warden's." upon this the poor mariners in theirrespectful consternation--so truly english- -knowing not what to say, fall tovigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from thewhale to the stranger. but that did in nowise mend the matter, orat all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of blackstone.
at length one of them, after longscratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,"please, sir, who is the lord warden?" "the duke." "but the duke had nothing to do with takingthis fish?" "it is his." "we have been at great trouble, and peril,and some expense, and is all that to go to the duke's benefit; we getting nothing atall for our pains but our blisters?" "is the duke so very poor as to be forcedto this desperate mode of getting a livelihood?""it is his."
"i thought to relieve my old bed-riddenmother by part of my share of this whale." "it is his.""won't the duke be content with a quarter or a half?" "it is his."in a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his grace the duke of wellingtonreceived the money. thinking that viewed in some particularlights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed,under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his grace,begging him to take the case of those
unfortunate mariners into fullconsideration. to which my lord duke in substance replied(both letters were published) that he had already done so, and received the money,and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend gentleman) would decline meddlingwith other people's business. is this the still militant old man,standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms ofbeggars? it will readily be seen that in this casethe alleged right of the duke to the whale was a delegated one from the sovereign.
we must needs inquire then on whatprinciple the sovereign is originally invested with that right.the law itself has already been set forth. but plowdon gives us the reason for it. says plowdon, the whale so caught belongsto the king and queen, "because of its superior excellence." and by the soundest commentators this hasever been held a cogent argument in such matters.but why should the king have the head, and the queen the tail? a reason for that, ye lawyers!
in his treatise on "queen-gold," or queen-pinmoney, an old king's bench author, one william prynne, thus discourseth: "ye tailis ye queen's, that ye queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone." now this was written at a time when theblack limber bone of the greenland or right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. but this same bone is not in the tail; itis in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like prynne.but is the queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? an allegorical meaning may lurk here.
there are two royal fish so styled by theenglish law writers--the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certainlimitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinaryrevenue. i know not that any other author has hintedof the matter; but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in thesame way as the whale, the king receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded,may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality.and thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
chapter 91.the pequod meets the rose-bud. "in vain it was to rake for ambergriese inthe paunch of this leviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry."sir t. browne, v.e. it was a week or two after the last whalingscene recounted, and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapoury, mid-daysea, that the many noses on the pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers thanthe three pairs of eyes aloft. a peculiar and not very pleasant smell wassmelt in the sea. "i will bet something now," said stubb,"that somewhere hereabouts are some of those drugged whales we tickled the otherday.
i thought they would keel up before long." presently, the vapours in advance slidaside; and there in the distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened thatsome sort of whale must be alongside. as we glided nearer, the stranger showedfrench colours from his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl thatcircled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a blastedwhale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated anunappropriated corpse. it may well be conceived, what an unsavoryodor such a mass must exhale; worse than an
assyrian city in the plague, when theliving are incompetent to bury the departed. so intolerable indeed is it regarded bysome, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. yet are there those who will still do it;notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from such subjects is of a veryinferior quality, and by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose. coming still nearer with the expiringbreeze, we saw that the frenchman had a second whale alongside; and this secondwhale seemed even more of a nosegay than
the first. in truth, it turned out to be one of thoseproblematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigiousdyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies almost entirely bankrupt ofanything like oil. nevertheless, in the proper place we shallsee that no knowing fisherman will ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this,however much he may shun blasted whales in general. the pequod had now swept so nigh to thestranger, that stubb vowed he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in thelines that were knotted round the tail of
one of these whales. "there's a pretty fellow, now," hebanteringly laughed, standing in the ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! i well know that these crappoes offrenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering their boats forbreakers, mistaking them for sperm whale spouts; yes, and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes oftallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they will getwon't be enough to dip the captain's wick into; aye, we all know these things; but
look ye, here's a crappo that is contentwith our leavings, the drugged whale there, i mean; aye, and is content too withscraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. poor devil!i say, pass round a hat, some one, and let's make him a present of a little oilfor dear charity's sake. for what oil he'll get from that druggedwhale there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell. and as for the other whale, why, i'll agreeto get more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than he'llget from that bundle of bones; though, now
that i think of it, it may contain something worth a good deal more than oil;yes, ambergris. i wonder now if our old man has thought ofthat. it's worth trying. yes, i'm for it;" and so saying he startedfor the quarter-deck. by this time the faint air had become acomplete calm; so that whether or no, the pequod was now fairly entrapped in thesmell, with no hope of escaping except by its breezing up again. issuing from the cabin, stubb now calledhis boat's crew, and pulled off for the
stranger. drawing across her bow, he perceived thatin accordance with the fanciful french taste, the upper part of her stem-piece wascarved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it hereand there; the whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright redcolour. upon her head boards, in large giltletters, he read "bouton de rose,"--rose- button, or rose-bud; and this was theromantic name of this aromatic ship. though stubb did not understand the boutonpart of the inscription, yet the word rose,
and the bulbous figure-head put together,sufficiently explained the whole to him. "a wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with hishand to his nose, "that will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!" now in order to hold direct communicationwith the people on deck, he had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, andthus come close to the blasted whale; and so talk over it. arrived then at this spot, with one handstill to his nose, he bawled--"bouton-de- rose, ahoy! are there any of you bouton-de-roses that speak english?" "yes," rejoined a guernsey-man from thebulwarks, who turned out to be the chief-
mate."well, then, my bouton-de-rose-bud, have you seen the white whale?" "what whale?""the white whale--a sperm whale--moby dick, have ye seen him?"never heard of such a whale. cachalot blanche! white whale--no.""very good, then; good bye now, and i'll call again in a minute." then rapidly pulling back towards thepequod, and seeing ahab leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, hemoulded his two hands into a trumpet and
shouted--"no, sir, no!" upon which ahab retired, and stubb returnedto the frenchman. he now perceived that the guernsey-man, whohad just got into the chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in asort of bag. "what's the matter with your nose, there?"said stubb. "broke it?" "i wish it was broken, or that i didn'thave any nose at all!" answered the guernsey-man, who did not seem to relishthe job he was at very much. "but what are you holding yours for?"
"oh, nothing!it's a wax nose; i have to hold it on. fine day, ain't it? air rather gardenny, i should say; throw usa bunch of posies, will ye, bouton-de- rose?" "what in the devil's name do you wanthere?" roared the guernseyman, flying into a sudden passion. "oh! keep cool--cool? yes, that's the word!why don't you pack those whales in ice while you're working at 'em? but joking aside, though; do you know,rose-bud, that it's all nonsense trying to
get any oil out of such whales?as for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a gill in his whole carcase." "i know that well enough; but, d'ye see,the captain here won't believe it; this is his first voyage; he was a colognemanufacturer before. but come aboard, and mayhap he'll believeyou, if he won't me; and so i'll get out of this dirty scrape." "anything to oblige ye, my sweet andpleasant fellow," rejoined stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck.there a queer scene presented itself. the sailors, in tasselled caps of redworsted, were getting the heavy tackles in
readiness for the whales. but they worked rather slow and talked veryfast, and seemed in anything but a good humor.all their noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many jib-booms. now and then pairs of them would drop theirwork, and run up to the mast-head to get some fresh air. some thinking they would catch the plague,dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to their nostrils. others having broken the stems of theirpipes almost short off at the bowl, were
vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so thatit constantly filled their olfactories. stubb was struck by a shower of outcriesand anathemas proceeding from the captain's round-house abaft; and looking in thatdirection saw a fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar fromwithin. this was the tormented surgeon, who, afterin vain remonstrating against the proceedings of the day, had betaken himselfto the captain's round-house (cabinet he called it) to avoid the pest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreatiesand indignations at times. marking all this, stubb argued well for hisscheme, and turning to the guernsey-man had
a little chat with him, during which thestranger mate expressed his detestation of his captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory andunprofitable a pickle. sounding him carefully, stubb furtherperceived that the guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning theambergris. he therefore held his peace on that head,but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him, so that the twoquickly concocted a little plan for both circumventing and satirizing the captain, without his at all dreaming of distrustingtheir sincerity.
according to this little plan of theirs,the guernsey-man, under cover of an interpreter's office, was to tell thecaptain what he pleased, but as coming from stubb; and as for stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost inhim during the interview. by this time their destined victim appearedfrom his cabin. he was a small and dark, but ratherdelicate looking man for a sea-captain, with large whiskers and moustache, however;and wore a red cotton velvet vest with watch-seals at his side. to this gentleman, stubb was now politelyintroduced by the guernsey-man, who at once
ostentatiously put on the aspect ofinterpreting between them. "what shall i say to him first?" said he. "why," said stubb, eyeing the velvet vestand the watch and seals, "you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sortof babyish to me, though i don't pretend to be a judge." "he says, monsieur," said the guernsey-man,in french, turning to his captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel,whose captain and chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they had broughtalongside."
upon this the captain started, and eagerlydesired to know more. "what now?" said the guernsey-man to stubb. "why, since he takes it so easy, tell himthat now i have eyed him carefully, i'm quite certain that he's no more fit tocommand a whale-ship than a st. jago monkey. in fact, tell him from me he's a baboon." "he vows and declares, monsieur, that theother whale, the dried one, is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine,monsieur, he conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish."
instantly the captain ran forward, and in aloud voice commanded his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and atonce cast loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship. "what now?" said the guernsey-man, when thecaptain had returned to them. "why, let me see; yes, you may as well tellhim now that--that--in fact, tell him i've diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhapssomebody else." "he says, monsieur, that he's very happy tohave been of any service to us." hearing this, the captain vowed that theywere the grateful parties (meaning himself and mate) and concluded by inviting stubbdown into his cabin to drink a bottle of
bordeaux. "he wants you to take a glass of wine withhim," said the interpreter. "thank him heartily; but tell him it'sagainst my principles to drink with the man i've diddled. in fact, tell him i must go." "he says, monsieur, that his principleswon't admit of his drinking; but that if monsieur wants to live another day todrink, then monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from thesewhales, for it's so calm they won't drift." by this time stubb was over the side, andgetting into his boat, hailed the guernsey-
man to this effect,--that having a longtow-line in his boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out the lighter whale of the two from the ship'sside. while the frenchman's boats, then, wereengaged in towing the ship one way, stubb benevolently towed away at his whale theother way, ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually long tow-line. presently a breeze sprang up; stubb feignedto cast off from the whale; hoisting his boats, the frenchman soon increased hisdistance, while the pequod slid in between him and stubb's whale.
whereupon stubb quickly pulled to thefloating body, and hailing the pequod to give notice of his intentions, at onceproceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commencedan excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. you would almost have thought he wasdigging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck against thegaunt ribs, it was like turning up old roman tiles and pottery buried in fatenglish loam. his boat's crew were all in highexcitement, eagerly helping their chief,
and looking as anxious as gold-hunters. and all the time numberless fowls werediving, and ducking, and screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. stubb was beginning to look disappointed,especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly from out the veryheart of this plague, there stole a faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells without being absorbedby it, as one river will flow into and then along with another, without at all blendingwith it for a time. "i have it, i have it," cried stubb, withdelight, striking something in the
subterranean regions, "a purse! a purse!" dropping his spade, he thrust both handsin, and drew out handfuls of something that looked like ripe windsor soap, or richmottled old cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. you might easily dent it with your thumb;it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour.and this, good friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist. some six handfuls were obtained; but morewas unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured wereit not for impatient ahab's loud command to
stubb to desist, and come on board, elsethe ship would bid them good bye. > -chapter 92.ambergris. now this ambergris is a very curioussubstance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certainnantucket-born captain coffin was examined at the bar of the english house of commonson that subject. for at that time, and indeed until acomparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself,a problem to the learned. though the word ambergris is but the frenchcompound for grey amber, yet the two
substances are quite distinct. for amber, though at times found on thesea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is neverfound except upon the sea. besides, amber is a hard, transparent,brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads andornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles,precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. the turks use it in cooking, and also carryit to mecca, for the same purpose that
frankincense is carried to st. peter's inrome. some wine merchants drop a few grains intoclaret, to flavor it. who would think, then, that such fineladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in theinglorious bowels of a sick whale! yet so it is. by some, ambergris is supposed to be thecause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. how to cure such a dyspepsia it were hardto say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of brandreth's pills, andthen running out of harm's way, as laborers
do in blasting rocks. i have forgotten to say that there werefound in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first stubbthought might be sailors' trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than pieces of small squidbones embalmed in that manner. now that the incorruption of this mostfragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? bethink thee of that saying of st. paul incorinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown indishonour, but raised in glory.
and likewise call to mind that saying ofparacelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. also forget not the strange fact that ofall things of ill-savor, cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is theworst. i should like to conclude the chapter withthe above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often madeagainst whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectlysubstantiated by what has been said of the frenchman's two whales.
elsewhere in this volume the slanderousaspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout aslatternly, untidy business. but there is another thing to rebut. they hint that all whales always smell bad.now how did this odious stigma originate? i opine, that it is plainly traceable tothe first arrival of the greenland whaling ships in london, more than two centuriesago. because those whalemen did not then, and donot now, try out their oil at sea as the southern ships have always done; butcutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large
casks, and carry it home in that manner;the shortness of the season in those icy seas, and the sudden and violent storms towhich they are exposed, forbidding any other course. the consequence is, that upon breaking intothe hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the greenland dock, a savoris given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city grave- yard, for the foundations of a lying-in-hospital. i partly surmise also, that this wickedcharge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast ofgreenland, in former times, of a dutch
village called schmerenburgh or smeerenberg, which latter name is the oneused by the learned fogo von slack, in his great work on smells, a text-book on thatsubject. as its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, toput up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of thedutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to holland for thatpurpose. it was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full operation certainly gave forthno very pleasant savor. but all this is quite different with asouth sea sperm whaler; which in a voyage
of four years perhaps, after completelyfilling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it iscasked, the oil is nearly scentless. the truth is, that living or dead, if butdecently treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor canwhalemen be recognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a jew inthe company, by the nose. nor indeed can the whale possibly beotherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; takingabundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air.
i say, that the motion of a sperm whale'sflukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dressin a warm parlor. what then shall i liken the sperm whale tofor fragrance, considering his magnitude? must it not be to that famous elephant,with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an indian townto do honour to alexander the great? chapter 93.the castaway. it was but some few days after encounteringthe frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of thepequod's crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes
madly merry and predestinated craft with aliving and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove herown. now, in the whale ship, it is not every onethat goes in the boats. some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing thewhale. as a general thing, these ship-keepers areas hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats' crews. but if there happen to be an undulyslender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made aship-keeper.
it was so in the pequod with the littlenegro pippin by nick-name, pip by abbreviation. poor pip! ye have heard of him before; yemust remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly. in outer aspect, pip and dough-boy made amatch, like a black pony and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilarcolour, driven in one eccentric span. but while hapless dough-boy was by naturedull and torpid in his intellects, pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottomvery bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a
tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays andfestivities with finer, freer relish than any other race. for blacks, the year's calendar should shownaught but three hundred and sixty-five fourth of julys and new year's days. nor smile so, while i write that thislittle black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yonlustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets. but pip loved life, and all life'speaceable securities; so that the panic- striking business in which he had somehowunaccountably become entrapped, had most
sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thustemporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strangewild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native tolland county inconnecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and atmelodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. so, though in the clear air of day,suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthfulglow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would
show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground,and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. then come out those fiery effulgences,infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of thecrystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the king of hell. but let us to the story. it came to pass, that in the ambergrisaffair stubb's after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to becomequite maimed; and, temporarily, pip was put
into his place. the first time stubb lowered with him, pipevinced much nervousness; but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with thewhale; and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though stubb observing him, took care, afterwards, toexhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find itneedful. now upon the second lowering, the boatpaddled upon the whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave itscustomary rap, which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor pip'sseat.
the involuntary consternation of the momentcaused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part ofthe slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when atlast plumping into the water. that instant the stricken whale started ona fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor pip came allfoaming up to the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around hischest and neck. tashtego stood in the bows.he was full of the fire of the hunt.
he hated pip for a poltroon. snatching the boat-knife from its sheath,he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards stubb, exclaimedinterrogatively, "cut?" meantime pip's blue, choked face plainlylooked, do, for god's sake! all passed in a flash.in less than half a minute, this entire thing happened. "damn him, cut!" roared stubb; and so thewhale was lost and pip was saved. so soon as he recovered himself, the poorlittle negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew.
tranquilly permitting these irregularcursings to evaporate, stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still halfhumorous manner, cursed pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave him muchwholesome advice. the substance was, never jump from a boat,pip, except--but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. now, in general, stick to the boat, is yourtrue motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when leap from the boat,is still better. moreover, as if perceiving at last that ifhe should give undiluted conscientious advice to pip, he would be leaving him toowide a margin to jump in for the future;
stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, "stickto the boat, pip, or by the lord, i won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. we can't afford to lose whales by the likesof you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, pip, in alabama.bear that in mind, and don't jump any more." hereby perhaps stubb indirectly hinted,that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensitytoo often interferes with his benevolence. but we are all in the hands of the gods;and pip jumped again.
it was under very similar circumstances tothe first performance; but this time he did not breast out the line; and hence, whenthe whale started to run, pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurriedtraveller's trunk. alas!stubb was but too true to his word. it was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day;the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon,like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the extremest. bobbing up and down in that sea, pip's ebonhead showed like a head of cloves. no boat-knife was lifted when he fell sorapidly astern.
stubb's inexorable back was turned uponhim; and the whale was winged. in three minutes, a whole mile of shorelessocean was between pip and stubb. out from the centre of the sea, poor pipturned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, thoughthe loftiest and the brightest. now, in calm weather, to swim in the openocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore.but the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. the intense concentration of self in themiddle of such a heartless immensity, my god! who can tell it? mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathein the open sea--mark how closely they hug
their ship and only coast along her sides.but had stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? no; he did not mean to, at least. because there were two boats in his wake,and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to pip very quickly, andpick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not alwaysmanifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances notunfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked
with the same ruthless detestation peculiarto military navies and armies. but it so happened, that those boats,without seeing pip, suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gavechase; and stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that pip's ringed horizonbegan to expand around him miserably. by the merest chance the ship itself atlast rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot;such, at least, they said he was. the sea had jeeringly kept his finite bodyup, but drowned the infinite of his soul. not drowned entirely, though.
rather carried down alive to wondrousdepths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and frobefore his passive eyes; and the miser- merman, wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, pip saw the multitudinous, god-omnipresent, coralinsects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. he saw god's foot upon the treadle of theloom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. so man's insanity is heaven's sense; andwandering from all mortal reason, man comes
at last to that celestial thought, which,to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,indifferent as his god. for the rest, blame not stubb too hardly. the thing is common in that fishery; and inthe sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment befellmyself. chapter 94.a squeeze of the hand. that whale of stubb's, so dearly purchased,was duly brought to the pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoistingoperations previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the balingof the heidelburgh tun, or case.
while some were occupied with this latterduty, others were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with thesperm; and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon. it had cooled and crystallized to such adegree, that when, with several others, i sat down before a large constantine's bathof it, i found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in theliquid part. it was our business to squeeze these lumpsback into fluid. a sweet and unctuous duty!
no wonder that in old times this sperm wassuch a favourite cosmetic. such a clearer! such a sweetener! such asoftener! such a delicious molifier! after having my hands in it for only a fewminutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine andspiralise. as i sat there at my ease, cross-legged onthe deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; theship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as i bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltratedtissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, anddischarged all their opulence, like fully
ripe grapes their wine; as i snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,--literally andtruly, like the smell of spring violets; i declare to you, that for the time i livedas in a musky meadow; i forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, i washed my hands and my heart ofit; i almost began to credit the old paracelsan superstition that sperm is ofrare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, i felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, ormalice, of any sort whatsoever. squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morninglong; i squeezed that sperm till i myself
almost melted into it; i squeezed thatsperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and i found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it,mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. such an abounding, affectionate, friendly,loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last i was continually squeezingtheir hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,--oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longercherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy!
come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay,let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universallyinto the very milk and sperm of kindness. would that i could keep squeezing thatsperm for ever! for now, since by many prolonged, repeatedexperiences, i have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or atleast shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife,the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that i haveperceived all this, i am ready to squeeze case eternally.
in thoughts of the visions of the night, isaw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti. now, while discoursing of sperm, itbehooves to speak of other things akin to it, in the business of preparing the spermwhale for the try-works. first comes white-horse, so called, whichis obtained from the tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions ofhis flukes. it is tough with congealed tendons--a wadof muscle--but still contains some oil. after being severed from the whale, thewhite-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer.
they look much like blocks of berkshiremarble. plum-pudding is the term bestowed uponcertain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to theblanket of blubber, and often participating to a considerable degree in itsunctuousness. it is a most refreshing, convivial,beautiful object to behold. as its name imports, it is of anexceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dottedwith spots of the deepest crimson and purple. it is plums of rubies, in pictures ofcitron.
spite of reason, it is hard to keepyourself from eating it. i confess, that once i stole behind theforemast to try it. it tasted something as i should conceive aroyal cutlet from the thigh of louis le gros might have tasted, supposing him tohave been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually finevintage of the vineyards of champagne. there is another substance, and a verysingular one, which turns up in the course of this business, but which i feel it to bevery puzzling adequately to describe. it is called slobgollion; an appellationoriginal with the whalemen, and even so is
the nature of the substance. it is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair,most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequentdecanting. i hold it to be the wondrously thin,ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing. gurry, so called, is a term properlybelonging to right whalemen, but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. it designates the dark, glutinous substancewhich is scraped off the back of the greenland or right whale, and much of whichcovers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble leviathan.
nippers.strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary.but as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. a whaleman's nipper is a short firm stripof tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of leviathan's tail: it averages aninch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. edgewise moved along the oily deck, itoperates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic,allures along with it all impurities. but to learn all about these reconditematters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have along talk with its inmates.
this place has previously been mentioned asthe receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. when the proper time arrives for cutting upits contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night.on one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. they generally go in pairs,--a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. the whaling-pike is similar to a frigate'sboarding-weapon of the same name. the gaff is something like a boat-hook. with his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to asheet of blubber, and strives to hold it
from slipping, as the ship pitches andlurches about. meanwhile, the spade-man stands on thesheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. this spade is sharp as hone can make it;the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistiblyslide away from him, like a sledge. if he cuts off one of his own toes, or oneof his assistants', would you be very much astonished?toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men. chapter 95.the cassock.
had you stepped on board the pequod at acertain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forwardnigh the windlass, pretty sure am i that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmaticalobject, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. not the wondrous cistern in the whale'shuge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of hissymmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,--longer than akentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter
at the base, and jet-black as yojo, theebony idol of queequeg. and an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, inold times, its likeness was. such an idol as that found in the secretgroves of queen maachah in judea; and for worshipping which, king asa, her son, diddepose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15thchapter of the first book of kings. look at the sailor, called the mincer, whonow comes along, and assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, asthe mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he
were a grenadier carrying a dead comradefrom the field. extending it upon the forecastle deck, henow proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an african hunter the pelt ofa boa. this done he turns the pelt inside out,like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double itsdiameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. ere long, it is taken down; when removingsome three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits forarm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it.
the mincer now stands before you investedin the full canonicals of his calling. immemorial to all his order, thisinvestiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiarfunctions of his office. that office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curiouswooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces drop, fastas the sheets from a rapt orator's desk. arrayed in decent black; occupying aconspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, whata lad for a pope were this mincer!*
*bible leaves! bible leaves!this is the invariable cry from the mates to the mincer. it enjoins him to be careful, and cut hiswork into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business ofboiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased,besides perhaps improving it in quality. chapter 96.the try-works. besides her hoisted boats, an americanwhaler is outwardly distinguished by her try-works.
she presents the curious anomaly of themost solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship.it is as if from the open field a brick- kiln were transported to her planks. the try-works are planted between theforemast and mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. the timbers beneath are of a peculiarstrength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar,some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. the foundation does not penetrate the deck,but the masonry is firmly secured to the
surface by ponderous knees of iron bracingit on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. on the flanks it is cased with wood, and attop completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. removing this hatch we expose the greattry-pots, two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity.when not in use, they are kept remarkably clean. sometimes they are polished with soapstoneand sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls.
during the night-watches some cynical oldsailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. while employed in polishing them--one manin each pot, side by side--many confidential communications are carried on,over the iron lips. it is a place also for profoundmathematical meditation. it was in the left hand try-pot of thepequod, with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that i was firstindirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, willdescend from any point in precisely the
same time. removing the fire-board from the front ofthe try-works, the bare masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two ironmouths of the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. these mouths are fitted with heavy doors ofiron. the intense heat of the fire is preventedfrom communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extendingunder the entire inclosed surface of the works. by a tunnel inserted at the rear, thisreservoir is kept replenished with water as
fast as it evaporates.there are no external chimneys; they open direct from the rear wall. and here let us go back for a moment.it was about nine o'clock at night that the pequod's try-works were first started onthis present voyage. it belonged to stubb to oversee thebusiness. "all ready there?off hatch, then, and start her. you cook, fire the works." this was an easy thing, for the carpenterhad been thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage.
here be it said that in a whaling voyagethe first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood.after that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. in a word, after being tried out, thecrisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still containsconsiderable of its unctuous properties. these fritters feed the flames. like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns byhis own body. would that he consumed his own smoke! forhis smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale
it you must, and not only that, but youmust live in it for the time. it has an unspeakable, wild, hindoo odorabout it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres.it smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit. by midnight the works were in fulloperation. we were clear from the carcase; sail hadbeen made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. but that darkness was licked up by thefierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminatedevery lofty rope in the rigging, as with
the famed greek fire. the burning ship drove on, as ifremorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. so the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs ofthe bold hydriote, canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheetsof flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them inconflagrations. the hatch, removed from the top of theworks, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. standing on this were the tartarean shapesof the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-
ship's stokers. with huge pronged poles they pitchedhissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, tillthe snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. the smoke rolled away in sullen heaps.to every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed alleagerness to leap into their faces. opposite the mouth of the works, on thefurther side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass.this served for a sea-sofa. here lounged the watch, when not otherwiseemployed, looking into the red heat of the
fire, till their eyes felt scorched intheir heads. their tawny features, now all begrimed withsmoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy oftheir teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings ofthe works. as they narrated to each other their unholyadventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilizedlaughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildlygesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and thesea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived,
and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness ofthe sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, andviciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse,and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpartof her monomaniac commander's soul. so seemed it to me, as i stood at her helm,and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. wrapped, for that interval, in darknessmyself, i but the better saw the redness,
the madness, the ghastliness of others. the continual sight of the fiend shapesbefore me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindredvisions in my soul, so soon as i began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnighthelm. but that night, in particular, a strange(and ever since inexplicable) thing occurred to me. starting from a brief standing sleep, i washorribly conscious of something fatally wrong.
the jaw-bone tiller smote my side, whichleaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake inthe wind; i thought my eyes were open; i was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically stretching themstill further apart. but, spite of all this, i could see nocompass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since i had beenwatching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom,now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness.
uppermost was the impression, that whateverswift, rushing thing i stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushingfrom all havens astern. a stark, bewildered feeling, as of death,came over me. convulsively my hands grasped the tiller,but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way,inverted. my god! what is the matter with me? thoughti. lo! in my brief sleep i had turned myselfabout, and was fronting the ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. in an instant i faced back, just in time toprevent the vessel from flying up into the
wind, and very probably capsizing her. how glad and how grateful the relief fromthis unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being broughtby the lee! look not too long in the face of the fire,o man! never dream with thy hand on the helm! turn not thy back to the compass; acceptthe first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when itsredness makes all things look ghastly. to-morrow, in the natural sun, the skieswill be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn willshow in far other, at least gentler,
relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, theonly true lamp--all others but liars! nevertheless the sun hides not virginia'sdismal swamp, nor rome's accursed campagna, nor wide sahara, nor all the millions ofmiles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. the sun hides not the ocean, which is thedark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. so, therefore, that mortal man who hathmore of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, orundeveloped. with books the same.
the truest of all men was the man ofsorrows, and the truest of all books is solomon's, and ecclesiastes is the finehammered steel of woe. "all is vanity." all.this wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian solomon's wisdom yet. but he who dodges hospitals and jails, andwalks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; callscowper, young, pascal, rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by rabelais aspassing wise, and therefore jolly;--not
that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous solomon. but even solomon, he says, "the man thatwandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (i.e., even while living) "inthe congregation of the dead." give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest itinvert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me.there is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. and there is a catskill eagle in some soulsthat can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again andbecome invisible in the sunny spaces.
and even if he for ever flies within thegorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountaineagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. -chapter 97.the lamp. had you descended from the pequod's try-works to the pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for onesingle moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminatedshrine of canonized kings and counsellors. there they lay in their triangular oakenvaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hoodedeyes.
in merchantmen, oil for the sailor is morescarce than the milk of queens. to dress in the dark, and eat in the dark,and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. but the whaleman, as he seeks the food oflight, so he lives in light. he makes his berth an aladdin's lamp, andlays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship's black hull stillhouses an illumination. see with what entire freedom the whalemantakes his handful of lamps--often but old bottles and vials, though--to the coppercooler at the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat.
he burns, too, the purest of oil, in itsunmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, orastral contrivances ashore. it is sweet as early grass butter in april. he goes and hunts for his oil, so as to besure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts uphis own supper of game. chapter 98.stowing down and clearing up. already has it been related how the greatleviathan is afar off descried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the waterymoors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside
and beheaded; and how (on the principlewhich entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed)his great padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and,like shadrach, meshach, and abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathedthrough the fire;--but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing--singing, ifi may--the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and strikingthem down into the hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native
profundities, sliding along beneath thesurface as before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow. while still warm, the oil, like hot punch,is received into the six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching androlling this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over, end for end, and sometimesperilously scoot across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, exofficio, every sailor is a cooper.
at length, when the last pint is casked,and all is cool, then the great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship arethrown open, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. this done, the hatches are replaced, andhermetically closed, like a closet walled up. in the sperm fishery, this is perhaps oneof the most remarkable incidents in all the business of whaling. one day the planks stream with freshets ofblood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head areprofanely piled; great rusty casks lie
about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all thebulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seemsgreat leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening. but a day or two after, you look about you,and prick your ears in this self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats andtry-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a mostscrupulously neat commander. the unmanufactured sperm oil possesses asingularly cleansing virtue. this is the reason why the decks never lookso white as just after what they call an
affair of oil. besides, from the ashes of the burnedscraps of the whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesivenessfrom the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminatesit. hands go diligently along the bulwarks, andwith buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. the soot is brushed from the lower rigging.all the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed andput away. the great hatch is scrubbed and placed uponthe try-works, completely hiding the pots;
every cask is out of sight; all tackles arecoiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company, the wholeof this conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceedto their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, asbridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest holland. now, with elated step, they pace the planksin twos and threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, andfine cambrics; propose to mat the deck;
think of having hanging to the top; object not to taking tea by moonlight on thepiazza of the forecastle. to hint to such musked mariners of oil, andbone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. they know not the thing you distantlyallude to. away, and bring us napkins! but mark: aloft there, at the three mastheads, stand three men intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infalliblywill again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spotsomewhere.
yes; and many is the time, when, after theseverest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through forninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the line,--they only step to thedeck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, andin their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves tocleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor
fellows, just buttoning the necks of theirclean frocks, are startled by the cry of "there she blows!" and away they fly tofight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. oh! my friends, but this is man-killing!yet this is life. for hardly have we mortals by long toilingsextracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, withweary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly isthis done, when--there she blows!--the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail tofight some other world, and go through
young life's old routine again. oh! the metempsychosis! oh! pythagoras, that in bright greece, twothousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; i sailed with thee along theperuvian coast last voyage--and, foolish as i am, taught thee, a green simple boy, howto splice a rope! chapter 99.the doubloon. ere now it has been related how ahab waswont to pace his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacleand mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not
been added how that sometimes in thesewalks, when most plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, andstand there strangely eyeing the particular object before him. when he halted before the binnacle, withhis glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like ajavelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, asthe same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore thesame aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if nothopefulness.
but one morning, turning to pass thedoubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptionsstamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significancemight lurk in them. and some certain significance lurks in allthings, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an emptycipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about boston, to fill up somemorass in the milky way. now this doubloon was of purest, virgingold, raked somewhere out of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, overgolden sands, the head-waters of many a
pactolus flows. and though now nailed amidst all therustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet, untouchable andimmaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its quito glow. nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crewand every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shroudedwith thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunsetleft it last. for it was set apart and sanctified to oneawe-striking end; and however wanton in
their sailor ways, one and all, themariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. sometimes they talked it over in the wearywatch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever liveto spend it. now those noble golden coins of southamerica are as medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun'sdisks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of- plenty, and rich banners waving, are inluxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an
added preciousness and enhancing glories,by passing through those fancy mints, so spanishly poetic. it so chanced that the doubloon of thepequod was a most wealthy example of these things.on its round border it bore the letters, republica del ecuador: quito. so this bright coin came from a countryplanted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named afterit; and it had been cast midway up the andes, in the unwaning clime that knows noautumn. zoned by those letters you saw the likenessof three andes' summits; from one a flame;
a tower on another; on the third a crowingcock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, andthe keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at libra.before this equatorial coin, ahab, not unobserved by others, was now pausing. "there's something ever egotistical inmountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here,--threepeaks as proud as lucifer. the firm tower, that is ahab; the volcano,that is ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too,is ahab; all are ahab; and this round gold
is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each andevery man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. great pains, small gains for those who askthe world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddyface; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six monthsbefore he wheeled out of a former equinox at aries! from storm to storm!so be it, then.
born in throes, 't is fit that man shouldlive in pains and die in pangs! so be it, then! here's stout stuff for woe to work on.so be it, then." "no fairy fingers can have pressed thegold, but devil's claws must have left their mouldings there since yesterday,"murmured starbuck to himself, leaning against the bulwarks. "the old man seems to read belshazzar'sawful writing. i have never marked the coin inspectingly.he goes below; let me read. a dark valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the
trinity, in some faint earthly symbol. so in this vale of death, god girds usround; and over all our gloom, the sun of righteousness still shines a beacon and ahope. if we bend down our eyes, the dark valeshows her mouldy soil; but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way,to cheer. yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; andif, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him invain! this coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, butstill sadly to me. i will quit it, lest truth shake mefalsely."
"there now's the old mogul," soliloquizedstubb by the try-works, "he's been twigging it; and there goes starbuck from the same,and both with faces which i should say might be somewhere within nine fathomslong. and all from looking at a piece of gold,which did i have it now on negro hill or in corlaer's hook, i'd not look at it verylong ere spending it. humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion,i regard this as queer. i have seen doubloons before now in myvoyagings; your doubloons of old spain, your doubloons of peru, your doubloons ofchili, your doubloons of bolivia, your doubloons of popayan; with plenty of gold
moidores and pistoles, and joes, and halfjoes, and quarter joes. what then should there be in this doubloonof the equator that is so killing wonderful? by golconda! let me read it once.halloa! here's signs and wonders truly! that, now, is what old bowditch in hisepitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanac below calls ditto. i'll get the almanac and as i have hearddevils can be raised with daboll's arithmetic, i'll try my hand at raising ameaning out of these queer curvicues here with the massachusetts calendar.
here's the book.let's see now. signs and wonders; and the sun, he's alwaysamong 'em. hem, hem, hem; here they are--here they go--all alive:--aries, or the ram; taurus, or the bull and jimimi! here's gemini himself,or the twins. well; the sun he wheels among 'em. aye, here on the coin he's just crossingthe threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring.book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. you'll do to give us the bare words andfacts, but we come in to supply the
thoughts. that's my small experience, so far as themassachusetts calendar, and bowditch's navigator, and daboll's arithmetic go.signs and wonders, eh? pity if there is nothing wonderful insigns, and significant in wonders! there's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! by jove, i have it! look you, doubloon, your zodiac here is thelife of man in one round chapter; and now i'll read it off, straight out of the book.come, almanack! to begin: there's aries, or the ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then, taurus,
or the bull--he bumps us the first thing;then gemini, or the twins--that is, virtue and vice; we try to reach virtue, when lo! comes cancer the crab, and drags us back;and here, going from virtue, leo, a roaring lion, lies in the path--he gives a fewfierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail virgo, the virgin! that's our first love; we marry and thinkto be happy for aye, when pop comes libra, or the scales--happiness weighed and foundwanting; and while we are very sad about that, lord! how we suddenly jump, as scorpio, or the scorpion, stings us in therear; we are curing the wound, when whang
come the arrows all round; sagittarius, orthe archer, is amusing himself. as we pluck out the shafts, stand aside!here's the battering-ram, capricornus, or the goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, andheadlong we are tossed; when aquarius, or the water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up withpisces, or the fishes, we sleep. there's a sermon now, writ in high heaven,and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. jollily he, aloft there, wheels throughtoil and trouble; and so, alow here, does jolly stubb.oh, jolly's the word for aye!
adieu, doubloon! but stop; here comes little king-post;dodge round the try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll have to say.there; he's before it; he'll out with something presently. so, so; he's beginning.""i see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a certainwhale, this round thing belongs to him. so, what's all this staring been about? it is worth sixteen dollars, that's true;and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars.
i won't smoke dirty pipes like stubb, but ilike cigars, and here's nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes flask aloft tospy 'em out." "shall i call that wise or foolish, now; ifit be really wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then hasit a sort of wiseish look to it. but, avast; here comes our old manxman--theold hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. he luffs up before the doubloon; halloa,and goes round on the other side of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed onthat side; and now he's back again; what does that mean?
hark! he's muttering--voice like an oldworn-out coffee-mill. prick ears, and listen!" "if the white whale be raised, it must bein a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. i've studied signs, and know their marks;they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch in copenhagen.now, in what sign will the sun then be? the horse-shoe sign; for there it is, rightopposite the gold. and what's the horse-shoe sign?the lion is the horse-shoe sign--the roaring and devouring lion.
ship, old ship! my old head shakes to thinkof thee." "there's another rendering now; but stillone text. all sorts of men in one kind of world, yousee. dodge again! here comes queequeg--alltattooing--looks like the signs of the zodiac himself. what says the cannibal? as i live he's comparing notes; looking athis thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, isuppose, as the old women talk surgeon's astronomy in the back country.
and by jove, he's found something there inthe vicinity of his thigh--i guess it's sagittarius, or the archer. no: he don't know what to make of thedoubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers. but, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps asusual. what does he say, with that look of his? ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bowshimself; there is a sun on the coin--fire worshipper, depend upon it.ho! more and more.
this way comes pip--poor boy! would he haddied, or i; he's half horrible to me. he too has been watching all of theseinterpreters--myself included--and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthlyidiot face. stand away again and hear him. hark!""i look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.""upon my soul, he's been studying murray's grammar! improving his mind, poor fellow!but what's that he says now--hist!" "i look, you look, he looks; we look, yelook, they look."
"why, he's getting it by heart--hist!again." "well, that's funny." "and i, you, and he; and we, ye, and they,are all bats; and i'm a crow, especially when i stand a'top of this pine tree here.caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! ain't i a crow? and where's the scare-crow?there he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more pokedinto the sleeves of an old jacket." "wonder if he means me?--complimentary!--poor lad!--i could go hang myself. any way, for the present, i'll quit pip'svicinity.
i can stand the rest, for they have plainwits; but he's too crazy-witty for my sanity.so, so, i leave him muttering." "here's the ship's navel, this doubloonhere, and they are all on fire to unscrew it.but, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence? then again, if it stays here, that is ugly,too, for when aught's nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate.ha, ha! old ahab! the white whale; he'll nail ye! this is a pine tree.my father, in old tolland county, cut down
a pine tree once, and found a silver ringgrown over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring. how did it get there?and so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast,and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold!the green miser'll hoard ye soon! hish! hish!god goes 'mong the worlds blackberrying. cook! ho, cook! and cook us! jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, jenny,jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"
chapter 100.leg and arm. the pequod, of nantucket, meets the samuelenderby, of london. "ship, ahoy!hast seen the white whale?" so cried ahab, once more hailing a shipshowing english colours, bearing down under the stern. trumpet to mouth, the old man was standingin his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain,who was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. he was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or
thereabouts, dressed in a spaciousroundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like thebroidered arm of a hussar's surcoat. "hast seen the white whale!" "see you this?" and withdrawing it from thefolds that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminatingin a wooden head like a mallet. "man my boat!" cried ahab, impetuously, andtossing about the oars near him--"stand by to lower!" in less than a minute, without quitting hislittle craft, he and his crew were dropped
to the water, and were soon alongside ofthe stranger. but here a curious difficulty presenteditself. in the excitement of the moment, ahab hadforgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once stepped on board of anyvessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to thepequod, and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment'swarning. now, it is no very easy matter for anybody--except those who are almost hourly used to it, like whalemen--to clamber up a ship'sside from a boat on the open sea; for the
great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and theninstantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. so, deprived of one leg, and the strangeship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, ahab now foundhimself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardlyhope to attain. it has before been hinted, perhaps, thatevery little untoward circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprangfrom his luckless mishap, almost invariably
irritated or exasperated ahab. and in the present instance, all this washeightened by the sight of the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side,by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes;for at first they did not seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too muchof a cripple to use their sea bannisters. but this awkwardness only lasted a minute,because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, "isee, i see!--avast heaving there! jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle."
as good luck would have it, they had had awhale alongside a day or two previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and themassive curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. this was quickly lowered to ahab, who atonce comprehending it all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook(it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held himselffast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle.
soon he was carefully swung inside the highbulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. with his ivory arm frankly thrust forth inwelcome, the other captain advanced, and ahab, putting out his ivory leg, andcrossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, "aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!--an arm and a leg!--an arm that never can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that never canrun. where did'st thou see the white whale?--howlong ago?" "the white whale," said the englishman,pointing his ivory arm towards the east,
and taking a rueful sight along it, as ifit had been a telescope; "there i saw him, on the line, last season." "and he took that arm off, did he?" askedahab, now sliding down from the capstan, and resting on the englishman's shoulder,as he did so. "aye, he was the cause of it, at least; andthat leg, too?" "spin me the yarn," said ahab; "how wasit?" "it was the first time in my life that iever cruised on the line," began the englishman."i was ignorant of the white whale at that time.
well, one day we lowered for a pod of fouror five whales, and my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was,too, that went milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on theouter gunwale. presently up breaches from the bottom ofthe sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feetand wrinkles." "it was he, it was he!" cried ahab,suddenly letting out his suspended breath. "and harpoons sticking in near hisstarboard fin." "aye, aye--they were mine--my irons," criedahab, exultingly--"but on!"
"give me a chance, then," said theenglishman, good-humoredly. "well, this old great-grandfather, with thewhite head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously atmy fast-line! "aye, i see!--wanted to part it; free thefast-fish--an old trick--i know him." "how it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "i do not know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth,caught there somehow; but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to hishump! instead of the other whale's; that went off to windward, all fluking.
seeing how matters stood, and what a noblegreat whale it was--the noblest and biggest i ever saw, sir, in my life--i resolved tocapture him, spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be in. and thinking the hap-hazard line would getloose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for i have a devil of a boat's crewfor a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, i say, i jumped into my first mate's boat--mr. mounttop's here (by the way,captain--mounttop; mounttop--the captain);- -as i was saying, i jumped into mounttop'sboat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the
first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. but, lord, look you, sir--hearts and soulsalive, man--the next instant, in a jiff, i was blind as a bat--both eyes out--allbefogged and bedeadened with black foam-- the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marblesteeple. no use sterning all, then; but as i wasgroping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as i was groping, i say,after the second iron, to toss it overboard--down comes the tail like a lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving eachhalf in splinters; and, flukes first, the
white hump backed through the wreck, asthough it was all chips. we all struck out. to escape his terrible flailings, i seizedhold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like asucking fish. but a combing sea dashed me off, and at thesame instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; andthe barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here" (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); "yes, caughtme just here, i say, and bore me down to hell's flames, i was thinking; when, when,all of a sudden, thank the good god, the
barb ript its way along the flesh--clear along the whole length of my arm--came outnigh my wrist, and up i floated;--and that gentleman there will tell you the rest (bythe way, captain--dr. bunger, ship's surgeon: bunger, my lad,--the captain). now, bunger boy, spin your part of theyarn." the professional gentleman thus familiarlypointed out, had been all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible,to denote his gentlemanly rank on board. his face was an exceedingly round but soberone; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched trowsers; andhad thus far been dividing his attention
between a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two crippledcaptains. but, at his superior's introduction of himto ahab, he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding. "it was a shocking bad wound," began thewhale-surgeon; "and, taking my advice, captain boomer here, stood our old sammy--" "samuel enderby is the name of my ship,"interrupted the one-armed captain, addressing ahab; "go on, boy."
"stood our old sammy off to the northward,to get out of the blazing hot weather there on the line. but it was no use--i did all i could; satup with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet--" "oh, very severe!" chimed in the patienthimself; then suddenly altering his voice, "drinking hot rum toddies with me everynight, till he couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seasover, about three o'clock in the morning. oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed, andwas very severe in my diet. oh! a great watcher, and very dieteticallysevere, is dr. bunger.
(bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don't ye?you know you're a precious jolly rascal.) but, heave ahead, boy, i'd rather be killedby you than kept alive by any other man." "my captain, you must have ere thisperceived, respected sir"--said the imperturbable godly-looking bunger,slightly bowing to ahab--"is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many cleverthings of that sort. but i may as well say--en passant, as thefrench remark--that i myself--that is to say, jack bunger, late of the reverendclergy--am a strict total abstinence man; i never drink--" "water!" cried the captain; "he neverdrinks it; it's a sort of fits to him;
fresh water throws him into thehydrophobia; but go on--go on with the arm story." "yes, i may as well," said the surgeon,coolly. "i was about observing, sir, before captainboomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavors, thewound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet andseveral inches long. i measured it with the lead line.in short, it grew black; i knew what was threatened, and off it came.
but i had no hand in shipping that ivoryarm there; that thing is against all rule"- -pointing at it with the marlingspike--"that is the captain's work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end, toknock some one's brains out with, i suppose, as he tried mine once.he flies into diabolical passions sometimes. do ye see this dent, sir"--removing hishat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull,but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a
wound--"well, the captain there will tellyou how that came here; he knows." "no, i don't," said the captain, "but hismother did; he was born with it. oh, you solemn rogue, you--you bunger! wasthere ever such another bunger in the watery world? bunger, when you die, you ought to die inpickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal." "what became of the white whale?" now criedahab, who thus far had been impatiently listening to this by-play between the twoenglishmen. "oh!" cried the one-armed captain, "oh,yes!
well; after he sounded, we didn't see himagain for some time; in fact, as i before hinted, i didn't then know what whale itwas that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the line, we heard about moby dick--as somecall him--and then i knew it was he." "did'st thou cross his wake again?""twice." "but could not fasten?" "didn't want to try to: ain't one limbenough? what should i do without this other arm?and i'm thinking moby dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows."
"well, then," interrupted bunger, "give himyour left arm for bait to get the right. do you know, gentlemen"--very gravely andmathematically bowing to each captain in succession--"do you know, gentlemen, thatthe digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by divine providence, that it is quite impossible forhim to completely digest even a man's arm? and he knows it too.so that what you take for the white whale's malice is only his awkwardness. for he never means to swallow a singlelimb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. but sometimes he is like the old jugglingfellow, formerly a patient of mine in
ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when i gave himan emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see. no possible way for him to digest thatjack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily system. yes, captain boomer, if you are quickenough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege ofgiving decent burial to the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the
whale have another chance at you shortly,that's all." "no, thank ye, bunger," said the englishcaptain, "he's welcome to the arm he has, since i can't help it, and didn't know himthen; but not to another one. no more white whales for me; i've loweredfor him once, and that has satisfied me. there would be great glory in killing him,i know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he'sbest let alone; don't you think so, captain?"--glancing at the ivory leg. "he is.but he will still be hunted, for all that. what is best let alone, that accursed thingis not always what least allures.
he's all a magnet! how long since thou saw'st him last?which way heading?" "bless my soul, and curse the foulfiend's," cried bunger, stoopingly walking round ahab, and like a dog, strangelysnuffing; "this man's blood--bring the thermometer!--it's at the boiling point!-- his pulse makes these planks beat!--sir!"--taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing near to ahab's arm."avast!" roared ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks--"man the boat! which way heading?""good god!" cried the english captain, to
whom the question was put."what's the matter? he was heading east, i think.--is yourcaptain crazy?" whispering fedallah. but fedallah, putting a finger on his lip,slid over the bulwarks to take the boat's steering oar, and ahab, swinging thecutting-tackle towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower. in a moment he was standing in the boat'sstern, and the manilla men were springing to their oars.in vain the english captain hailed him. with back to the stranger ship, and faceset like a flint to his own, ahab stood upright till alongside of the pequod.
-chapter 101.the decanter. ere the english ship fades from sight, beit set down here, that she hailed from london, and was named after the late samuelenderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of enderby & sons; a house which in my poorwhaleman's opinion, comes not far behind the united royal houses of the tudors andbourbons, in point of real historical interest. how long, prior to the year of our lord1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fish-documents donot make plain; but in that year (1775) it
fitted out the first english ships that ever regularly hunted the sperm whale;though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant coffins andmaceys of nantucket and the vineyard had in large fleets pursued that leviathan, but only in the north and south atlantic: notelsewhere. be it distinctly recorded here, that thenantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the greatsperm whale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the wholeglobe who so harpooned him. in 1778, a fine ship, the amelia, fittedout for the express purpose, and at the
sole charge of the vigorous enderbys,boldly rounded cape horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat ofany sort in the great south sea. the voyage was a skilful and lucky one; andreturning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, the amelia's examplewas soon followed by other ships, english and american, and thus the vast sperm whalegrounds of the pacific were thrown open. but not content with this good deed, theindefatigable house again bestirred itself: samuel and all his sons--how many, theirmother only knows--and under their immediate auspices, and partly, i think, at their expense, the british government wasinduced to send the sloop-of-war rattler on
a whaling voyage of discovery into thesouth sea. commanded by a naval post-captain, therattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear.but this is not all. in 1819, the same house fitted out adiscovery whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters ofjapan. that ship--well called the "syren"--made anoble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great japanese whaling groundfirst became generally known. the syren in this famous voyage wascommanded by a captain coffin, a nantucketer.
all honour to the enderbies, therefore,whose house, i think, exists to the present day; though doubtless the original samuelmust long ago have slipped his cable for the great south sea of the other world. the ship named after him was worthy of thehonour, being a very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. i boarded her once at midnight somewhereoff the patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the forecastle.it was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps--every soul on board. a short life to them, and a jolly death.
and that fine gam i had--long, very longafter old ahab touched her planks with his ivory heel--it minds me of the noble,solid, saxon hospitality of that ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devilremember me, if i ever lose sight of it. flip?did i say we had flip? yes, and we flipped it at the rate of tengallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off there by patagonia),and all hands--visitors and all--were called to reef topsails, we were so top- heavy that we had to swing each other aloftin bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, sothat we hung there, reefed fast in the
howling gale, a warning example to alldrunken tars. however, the masts did not go overboard;and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, thoughthe savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much dilutedand pickled it to my taste. the beef was fine--tough, but with body init. they said it was bull-beef; others, that itwas dromedary beef; but i do not know, for certain, how that was. they had dumplings too; small, butsubstantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings.
i fancied that you could feel them, androll them about in you after they were swallowed. if you stooped over too far forward, yourisked their pitching out of you like billiard-balls. the bread--but that couldn't be helped;besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the only freshfare they had. but the forecastle was not very light, andit was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. but all in all, taking her from truck tohelm, considering the dimensions of the
cook's boilers, including his own liveparchment boilers; fore and aft, i say, the samuel enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong;crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band. but why was it, think ye, that the samuelenderby, and some other english whalers i know of--not all though--were such famous,hospitable ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating,and drinking, and laughing? i will tell you.the abounding good cheer of these english
whalers is matter for historical research. nor have i been at all sparing ofhistorical whale research, when it has seemed needed. the english were preceded in the whalefishery by the hollanders, zealanders, and danes; from whom they derived many termsstill extant in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touchingplenty to eat and drink. for, as a general thing, the englishmerchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the english whaler. hence, in the english, this thing ofwhaling good cheer is not normal and
natural, but incidental and particular;and, therefore, must have some special origin, which is here pointed out, and willbe still further elucidated. during my researches in the leviathanichistories, i stumbled upon an ancient dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smellof it, i knew must be about whalers. the title was, "dan coopman," wherefore iconcluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some amsterdam cooper in thefishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. i was reinforced in this opinion by seeingthat it was the production of one "fitz swackhammer."
but my friend dr. snodhead, a very learnedman, professor of low dutch and high german in the college of santa claus and st.pott's, to whom i handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble--this same dr.snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that "dan coopman" did not mean"the cooper," but "the merchant." in short, this ancient and learned lowdutch book treated of the commerce of holland; and, among other subjects,contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. and in this chapter it was, headed,"smeer," or "fat," that i found a long
detailed list of the outfits for thelarders and cellars of 180 sail of dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated bydr. snodhead, i transcribe the following: 400,000 lbs. of beef.60,000 lbs. friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock fish.550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread.2,800 firkins of butter. 20,000 lbs. texel & leyden cheese.144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article).550 ankers of geneva.
10,800 barrels of beer. most statistical tables are parchingly dryin the reading; not so in the present case, however, where the reader is flooded withwhole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer. at the time, i devoted three days to thestudious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profoundthoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and platonic application; and, furthermore, i compiledsupplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc.,consumed by every low dutch harpooneer in
that ancient greenland and spitzbergenwhale fishery. in the first place, the amount of butter,and texel and leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. i impute it, though, to their naturallyunctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation,and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid polar seas, on the very coasts of that esquimaux country where theconvivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.the quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels.
now, as those polar fisheries could only beprosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of one ofthese dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, andreckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 low dutch seamen inall; therefore, i say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fairproportion of that 550 ankers of gin. now, whether these gin and beerharpooneers, so fuddled as one might fancy them to have been, were the right sort ofmen to stand up in a boat's head, and take
good aim at flying whales; this would seemsomewhat improbable. yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. but this was very far north, be itremembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution; upon the equator, in oursouthern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss mightensue to nantucket and new bedford. but no more; enough has been said to showthat the old dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and thatthe english whalers have not neglected so excellent an example.
for, say they, when cruising in an emptyship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, atleast. and this empties the decanter. chapter 102.a bower in the arsacides. hitherto, in descriptively treating of thesperm whale, i have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separatelyand in detail upon some few interior structural features. but to a large and thorough sweepingcomprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still further, and untaggingthe points of his hose, unbuckling his
garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermostbones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditionalskeleton. but how now, ishmael? how is it, that you, a mere oarsman in thefishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? did erudite stubb, mounted upon yourcapstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the cetacea; and by help of the windlass,hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? explain thyself, ishmael.
can you land a full-grown whale on yourdeck for examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig?surely not. a veritable witness have you hitherto been,ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of jonah alone; the privilege ofdiscoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under- pinnings, making up the frame-work ofleviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries inhis bowels. i confess, that since jonah, few whalemenhave penetrated very far beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, i havebeen blessed with an opportunity to dissect
him in miniature. in a ship i belonged to, a small cub spermwhale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths forthe barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. think you i let that chance go, withoutusing my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all thecontents of that young cub? and as for my exact knowledge of the bonesof the leviathan in their gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledgei am indebted to my late royal friend tranquo, king of tranque, one of thearsacides.
for being at tranque, years ago, whenattached to the trading-ship dey of algiers, i was invited to spend part of thearsacidean holidays with the lord of tranque, at his retired palm villa at pupella; a sea-side glen not very fardistant from what our sailors called bamboo-town, his capital. among many other fine qualities, my royalfriend tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, hadbrought together in pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods ofwonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid
spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes;and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon hisshores. chief among these latter was a great spermwhale, which, after an unusually long raging gale, had been found dead andstranded, with his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopingsseemed his verdant jet. when the vast body had at last beenstripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, thenthe skeleton was carefully transported up the pupella glen, where a grand temple oflordly palms now sheltered it.
the ribs were hung with trophies; thevertebrae were carved with arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in theskull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapouryspout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all thedevotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted damocles. it was a wondrous sight. the wood was green as mosses of the icyglen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the industriousearth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with
a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp andwoof, and the living flowers the figures. all the trees, with all their ladenbranches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; allthese unceasingly were active. through the lacings of the leaves, thegreat sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all theseceaseless toilings? speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but onesingle word with thee!
nay--the shuttle flies--the figures floatfrom forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. the weaver-god, he weaves; and by thatweaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too,who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear thethousand voices that speak through it. for even so it is in all materialfactories. the spoken words that are inaudible amongthe flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, burstingfrom the opened casements. thereby have villainies been detected.
ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, inall this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. now, amid the green, life-restless loom ofthat arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--agigantic idler! yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp andwoof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver;himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresherverdure; but himself a skeleton. life folded death; death trellised life;the grim god wived with youthful life, and begat him curly-headed glories.
now, when with royal tranquo i visited thiswondrous whale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending fromwhere the real jet had issued, i marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as anobject of vertu. he laughed. but more i marvelled that the priestsshould swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. to and fro i paced before this skeleton--brushed the vines aside--broke through the ribs--and with a ball of arsacidean twine,wandered, eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours.
but soon my line was out; and following itback, i emerged from the opening where i entered.i saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones. cutting me a green measuring-rod, i oncemore dived within the skeleton. from their arrow-slit in the skull, thepriests perceived me taking the altitude of the final rib, "how now!" they shouted;"dar'st thou measure this our god! that's for us." "aye, priests--well, how long do ye makehim, then?" but hereupon a fierce contest rose amongthem, concerning feet and inches; they
cracked each other's sconces with theiryard-sticks--the great skull echoed--and seizing that lucky chance, i quicklyconcluded my own admeasurements. these admeasurements i now propose to setbefore you. but first, be it recorded, that, in thismatter, i am not free to utter any fancied measurement i please.because there are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy. there is a leviathanic museum, they tellme, in hull, england, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have somefine specimens of fin-backs and other whales.
likewise, i have heard that in the museumof manchester, in new hampshire, they have what the proprietors call "the only perfectspecimen of a greenland or river whale in the united states." moreover, at a place in yorkshire, england,burton constable by name, a certain sir clifford constable has in his possessionthe skeleton of a sperm whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full- grown magnitude of my friend kingtranquo's. in both cases, the stranded whales to whichthese two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietorsupon similar grounds.
king tranquo seizing his because he wantedit; and sir clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. sir clifford's whale has been articulatedthroughout; so that, like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in allhis bony cavities--spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan--and swing all day upon hislower jaw. locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keysat his side. sir clifford thinks of charging twopencefor a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echoin the hollow of his cerebellum; and
sixpence for the unrivalled view from hisforehead. the skeleton dimensions i shall now proceedto set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where i had them tattooed; as inmy wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving suchvaluable statistics. but as i was crowded for space, and wishedthe other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem i was then composing--at least, what untattooed parts might remain--i did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches atall enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
chapter 103.measurement of the whale's skeleton. in the first place, i wish to lay beforeyou a particular, plain statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whoseskeleton we are briefly to exhibit. such a statement may prove useful here. according to a careful calculation i havemade, and which i partly base upon captain scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons forthe largest sized greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful calculation, i say, a sperm whale of thelargest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something lessthan forty feet in its fullest
circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that, reckoningthirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combinedpopulation of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants. think you not then that brains, like yokedcattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman'simagination? having already in various ways put beforeyou his skull, spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers otherparts, i shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of hisunobstructed bones.
but as the colossal skull embraces so verylarge a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the mostcomplicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, orunder your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion of thegeneral structure we are about to view. in length, the sperm whale's skeleton attranque measured seventy-two feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life,he must have been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length compared with the livingbody.
of this seventy-two feet, his skull and jawcomprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain back-bone. attached to this back-bone, for somethingless than a third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which onceenclosed his vitals. to me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, withthe long, unrelieved spine, extending far away from it in a straight line, not alittle resembled the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted,and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected timber.the ribs were ten on a side.
the first, to begin from the neck, wasnearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each successively longer,till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs, which measuredeight feet and some inches. from that part, the remaining ribsdiminished, till the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some inches. in general thickness, they all bore aseemly correspondence to their length. the middle ribs were the most arched. in some of the arsacides they are used forbeams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams.
in considering these ribs, i could not butbe struck anew with the circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that theskeleton of the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. the largest of the tranque ribs, one of themiddle ones, occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. now, the greatest depth of the investedbody of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, thecorresponding rib measured but little more than eight feet. so that this rib only conveyed half of thetrue notion of the living magnitude of that
part. besides, for some way, where i now saw buta naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk inflesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. still more, for the ample fins, i here sawbut a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but bonelessflukes, an utter blank! how vain and foolish, then, thought i, fortimid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merelyporing over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. no. only in the heart of quickest perils;only when within the eddyings of his angry
flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea,can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out. but the spine.for that, the best way we can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high upon end. no speedy enterprise. but now it's done, it looks much likepompey's pillar. there are forty and odd vertebrae in all,which in the skeleton are not locked together. they mostly lie like the great knobbedblocks on a gothic spire, forming solid
courses of heavy masonry. the largest, a middle one, is in widthsomething less than three feet, and in depth more than four. the smallest, where the spine tapers awayinto the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. i was told that there were still smallerones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children,who had stolen them to play marbles with. thus we see how that the spine of even thehugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.
chapter 104.the fossil whale. from his mighty bulk the whale affords amost congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate.would you, you could not compress him. by good rights he should only be treated ofin imperial folio. not to tell over again his furlongs fromspiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the giganticinvolutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deckof a line-of-battle-ship. since i have undertaken to manhandle thisleviathan, it behooves me to approve myself
omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise;not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him out to theuttermost coil of his bowels. having already described him in most of hispresent habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnifyhim in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. applied to any other creature than theleviathan--to an ant or a flea--such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantablygrandiloquent. but when leviathan is the text, the case isaltered. fain am i to stagger to this emprise underthe weightiest words of the dictionary.
and here be it said, that whenever it hasbeen convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, i haveinvariably used a huge quarto edition of johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famouslexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be usedby a whale author like me. one often hears of writers that rise andswell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one.how, then, with me, writing of this leviathan? unconsciously my chirography expands intoplacard capitals.
give me a condor's quill!give me vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! friends, hold my arms! for in the mere act of penning my thoughtsof this leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outreachingcomprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men,and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empireon earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of alarge and liberal theme!
we expand to its bulk.to produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. no great and enduring volume can ever bewritten on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. ere entering upon the subject of fossilwhales, i present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in mymiscellaneous time i have been a stone- mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, andcisterns of all sorts. likewise, by way of preliminary, i desireto remind the reader, that while in the
earlier geological strata there are foundthe fossils of monsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are called the tertiaryformations seem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted links, between theantichronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are said to have entered the ark; all the fossil whales hithertodiscovered belong to the tertiary period, which is the last preceding the superficialformations. and though none of them precisely answer toany known species of the present time, they are yet sufficiently akin to them ingeneral respects, to justify their taking
rank as cetacean fossils. detached broken fossils of pre-adamitewhales, fragments of their bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past,at various intervals, been found at the base of the alps, in lombardy, in france, in england, in scotland, and in the statesof louisiana, mississippi, and alabama. among the more curious of such remains ispart of a skull, which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the rue dauphine in paris,a short street opening almost directly upon the palace of the tuileries; and bones disinterred in excavating the great docksof antwerp, in napoleon's time.
cuvier pronounced these fragments to havebelonged to some utterly unknown leviathanic species. but by far the most wonderful of allcetacean relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, foundin the year 1842, on the plantation of judge creagh, in alabama. the awe-stricken credulous slaves in thevicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. the alabama doctors declared it a hugereptile, and bestowed upon it the name of basilosaurus.
but some specimen bones of it being takenacross the sea to owen, the english anatomist, it turned out that this allegedreptile was a whale, though of a departed species. a significant illustration of the fact,again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes butlittle clue to the shape of his fully invested body. so owen rechristened the monster zeuglodon;and in his paper read before the london geological society, pronounced it, insubstance, one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globehave blotted out of existence.
when i stand among these mighty leviathanskeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partialresemblances to the existing breeds of sea- monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to theannihilated antichronical leviathans, their incalculable seniors; i am, by a flood,borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; fortime began with man. here saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, andi obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those polar eternities; when wedgedbastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the tropics; and in all the 25,000
miles of this world's circumference, not aninhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. then the whole world was the whale's; and,king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the andes and thehimmalehs. who can show a pedigree like leviathan? ahab's harpoon had shed older blood thanthe pharaoh's. methuselah seems a school-boy.i look round to shake hands with shem. i am horror-struck at this antemosaic,unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having beenbefore all time, must needs exist after all
humane ages are over. but not alone has this leviathan left hispre-adamite traces in the stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marlbequeathed his ancient bust; but upon egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almost fossiliferouscharacter, we find the unmistakable print of his fin. in an apartment of the great temple ofdenderah, some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling asculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and
dolphins, similar to the grotesque figureson the celestial globe of the moderns. gliding among them, old leviathan swam asof yore; was there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before solomon wascradled. nor must there be omitted another strangeattestation of the antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality,as set down by the venerable john leo, the old barbary traveller. "not far from the sea-side, they have atemple, the rafters and beams of which are made of whale-bones; for whales of amonstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore.
the common people imagine, that by a secretpower bestowed by god upon the temple, no whale can pass it without immediate death. but the truth of the matter is, that oneither side of the temple, there are rocks that shoot two miles into the sea, andwound the whales when they light upon 'em. they keep a whale's rib of an incrediblelength for a miracle, which lying upon the ground with its convex part uppermost,makes an arch, the head of which cannot be reached by a man upon a camel's back. this rib (says john leo) is said to havelayn there a hundred years before i saw it. their historians affirm, that a prophet whoprophesy'd of mahomet, came from this
temple, and some do not stand to assert,that the prophet jonas was cast forth by the whale at the base of the temple." in this afric temple of the whale i leaveyou, reader, and if you be a nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worshipthere.
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