M D

H M

P : 1851
S :

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 E

(S L C U
G S )

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see

him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a
queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of
all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old
grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by

what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving
out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh
up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not
true.”
Hackluyt.

“W . … Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from

roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.”
Webster’s Dictionary.

“W . … It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger.

Wallen; a.s. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.”
Richardson’s Dictionary.
‫חו‬ Hebrew.
ϰητος Greek.
Cetus Latin.
Whœl Anglo-Saxon.
Hvalt Danish.
Wal Dutch.
Hwal Swedish.
Whale Icelandic.
Whale English.
Baleine French.
Ballena Spanish.
Pekee-nuee-nuee Fegee.
Pehee-nuee-nuee Erromangoan.
 E

(S S -S -L )

It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of

a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least,
take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in
these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching
the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing,
these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a
glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said,
thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and
generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I
am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of
this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be
too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the
more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall
ye forever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court
and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the
royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before
are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of
long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.
Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses!
Extracts

“And God created great whales.”

Genesis.

“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think

the deep to be hoary.”
Job.

“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”

Jonah.

“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast

made to play therein.”
Psalms.

“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
Isaiah.

“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch.”
Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals.

“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that
are: among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene,
take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of land.”
Holland’s Pliny.
“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about
sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea,
appeared. Among the former, one was of a most monstrous
size. … This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves
on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.”
Tooke’s Lucian. “The True History.”

“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-

whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of
which he brought some to the king. … The best whales were
catched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight,
some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had
killed sixty in two days.”
Other or Octher’s verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by
King Alfred, AD .

“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into
it in great security, and there sleeps.”
Montaigne, “Apology for Raimond Sebond.”

“Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan

described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.”
Rabelais.

“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.”

Stowe’s Annals.

“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling
pan.”
Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms.

“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have

received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch
that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one
whale.”
Ibid. “History of Life and Death.”
“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward
bruise.”
King Henry.

“Very like a whale.”

Hamlet.

“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art

Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine.”
The Faerie Queen.

“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a

peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.”
Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert.

“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid
sit.”
Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide
his V.E.

“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail

He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
…
Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.”
Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands.

“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth

or State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.”
Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan.

“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a

sprat in the mouth of a whale.”
Pilgrim’s Progress.
“That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.”
Paradise Lost.

“There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.”
Ibid.

“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a

sea of oil swimming in them.”
Fuller’s Profane and Holy State.

“So close behind some promontory lie

The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.”
Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.

“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off
his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will
come; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.”
Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas.

“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and
in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and
vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders.”
Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.

“Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were
forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they
should run their ship upon them.”
Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation.
“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. … Some say the whale can’t open his
mouth, but that is a fable. … They frequently climb up the masts
to see whether they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has
a ducat for his pains. … I was told of a whale taken near
Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings in his belly. … One
of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in
Spitzbergen that was white all over.”
A Voyage to Greenland, AD . Harris Coll.

“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno ,

one eighty feet in length of the whalebone kind came in, which
(as I was informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford
weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of
Pitferren.”
Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross.

“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Spermaceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that
was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.”
Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. AD
.

“Whales in the sea

God’s voice obey.”
N. E. Primer.

“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in

those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than
we have to the northward of us.”
Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, AD .

“… and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such

an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”
Ulloa’s South America.

“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,

We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”
Rape of the Lock.

“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those

that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will
appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless
the largest animal in creation.”
Goldsmith, Nat. Hist.

“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
speak like great whales.”
Goldsmith to Johnson.

“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it

was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed,
and were then towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to
conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to avoid being
seen by us.”
Cook’s Voyages.

“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in

so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are
afraid to mention even their names, and carry dung, limestone,
juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in
their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near
approach.”
Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to
Iceland in .

“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active,

fierce animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the
fishermen.”
Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in
.

“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?”

 Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket
Whale-Fishery.

“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.”

Edmund Burke. (somewhere.)

“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be

grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting
the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish,
which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown
ashore or caught near the coast, are the property of the king.”
Blackstone.

“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:

Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.”
Falconer’s Shipwreck.

“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,

And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven.
“So fire with water to compare,
The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
To express unwieldy joy.”
Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London.

“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a

stroke, with immense velocity.”
John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale. (A small
sized one.)

“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of
the waterworks at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its
passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to
the blood gushing from the whale’s heart.”
Paley’s Theology.
“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.”
Baron Cuvier.

“In degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not

take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with
them.”
Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti
Whale Fishery.

“In the free element beneath me swam,

Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”
Montgomery’s World before the Flood.

“Io! Paean! Io! sing,

To the finny people’s king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.”
Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale.

“In the year some persons were on a high hill observing

the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one
observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where
our children’s grandchildren will go for bread.”
Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket.
“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in
the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.”
Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.

“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had
been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty
years ago.”
Ibid.

“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his spout; he
threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish
to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!”
Cooper’s Pilot.

“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette
that whales had been introduced on the stage there.”
Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.

“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have
been stove by a whale.”
“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of
Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large
Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean.” By Owen Chace of
Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, .

“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,

The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea.”
Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

“The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the

capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to , yards
or nearly six English miles. …
…
“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air,
which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or
four miles.”
Scoresby.

“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his
enormous head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at
everything around him; he rushes at the boats with his head;
they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and
sometimes utterly destroyed. … It is a matter of great
astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so
interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an
animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely
neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the
numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late
years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most
convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.”
Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale, .

“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than
the True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a
formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more
frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons
offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and
mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most
dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.”
Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe,
.

October . “There she blows,” was sung out from the

masthead.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”
“Steady, sir.”
“Masthead ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”
“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There
she breaches!”
 “Sing out! sing out every time!”
“Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—thar she blows—
bowes—bo-o-os!”
“How far off?”
“Two miles and a half.”
“Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands!”
J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize. .

“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the

horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island
of Nantucket.”
Narrative of the Globe Mutiny, by Lay and Hussey survivors. AD
.

“Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he

parried the assault for some time with a lance; but the furious
monster at length rushed on the boat; himself and comrades
only being preserved by leaping into the water when they saw
the onset was inevitable.”
Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett.

“Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and

peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of
eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding
largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and
most persevering industry.”
Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the U.S. Senate, on the
application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. .

“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a
moment.”
The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’s Adventures
and the Whale’s Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise
of the Commodore Preble. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever.

“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will
send you to hell.”
 Life of Samuel Comstock (the mutineer), by his brother, William
Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship Globe narrative.

“The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean,

in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India,
though they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of
the whale.”
McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary.

“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound

forward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale,
the whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clues to that
same mystic Northwest Passage.”
From “Something” unpublished.

“It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without

being struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short
sail, with lookouts at the mastheads, eagerly scanning the wide
expanse around them, has a totally different air from those
engaged in regular voyage.”
Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex.

“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may

recollect having seen large curved bones set upright in the
earth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to
alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that these were
the ribs of whales.”
Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean.

“It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these
whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of
the savages enrolled among the crew.”
Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-
Ship Hobomack.

“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling

vessels (American) few ever return in the ships on board of
which they departed.”
 Cruise in a Whale Boat.

“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up

perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.”
Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman.

“The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you

would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere
appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.”
A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.

“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales)

probably male and female, slowly swimming, one after the other,
within less than a stone’s throw of the shore” (Terra Del Fuego),
“over which the beech tree extended its branches.”
Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist.

“ ‘Stern all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he

saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the
head of the boat, threatening it with instant destruction;—‘Stern
all, for your lives!’ ”
Wharton the Whale Killer.

“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,

While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!”
Nantucket Song.

“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale

In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea.”
Whale Song.
 I

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—

having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to
interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the
watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen
and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim
about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my
soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and
especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it
requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately
stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats
off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This
is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato
throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is
nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their
degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings
towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with
her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves,
and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight
of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from
Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall,
northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around
the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in
ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon
the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China;
some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better
seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in
lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to
desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they
here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water,
and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them
but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of
yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh
the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they
stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes
and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet
here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles
of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down
in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is
magic in it. Let the most absentminded of men be plunged in his
deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going,
and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that
region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try
this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
metaphysical professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and
water are wedded forever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest,
shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all
the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There
stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix
were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle;
and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant
woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of
mountains bathed in their hillside blue. But though the picture lies
thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like
leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the
shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go
visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you
wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm
wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara
but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see
it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two
handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he
sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway
Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy
soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your
first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical
vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight
of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the
Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all
this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story
of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild
image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But
that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the
image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious
of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as
a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a
purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.
Besides, passengers get seasick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of
nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I
never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I
ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon
the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For
my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and
tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do
to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs,
schooners, and whatnot. And as for going as cook—though I confess
there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on
shipboard—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though
once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and
peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to
say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous
dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river
horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge
bake-houses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead.
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from
spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this
sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all,
if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in
awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca
and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears
off in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount
to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you
think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular
instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the
old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump
and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all
right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the
same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is;
and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should
rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a
single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers
themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world
between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the
most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed
upon us. But being paid—what will compare with it? The urbane
activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous,
considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all
earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.
Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world,
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
Commodore on the quarterdeck gets his atmosphere at second hand
from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but
not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders
in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect
it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as
a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a
whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has
the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and
influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer
than anyone else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage,
formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn
up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo
between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the
bill must have run something like this:

“G C E P
U S .
“Whaling voyage by one Ishmael.
“Bloody battle in Afghanistan.”

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage,
when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies,
and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in
farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I
recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs
and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various
disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides
cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my
own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the
great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster
roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he
rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the
whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand
Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With
other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements;
but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things
remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could
still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on
friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome;
the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated
into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid
most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the
air.
 II

T C

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpetbag, tucked it under my arm,

and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of
old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night
in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little
packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching
that place would offer, till the following Monday.
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling
stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it
may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For
my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft,
because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything
connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me.
Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually
monopolising the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor
old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great
original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the first dead
American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did
those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to
give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did
that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in order to
discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the
bowsprit?
Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before
me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it
became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep
meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and
dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place.
With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought
up a few pieces of silver—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to
myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my
bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness
towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to
lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price,
and don’t be too particular.
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The
Crossed Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there.
Further on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,”
there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the
packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the
congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement—
rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty
projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my
boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again
thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the
street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on,
Ishmael, said I at last; don’t you hear? get away from before the
door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now
by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there,
doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either
hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a
tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that
quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a
smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which
stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for
the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to
stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying
particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed
city, Gomorrah? But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-
Fish?”—this, then must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” However, I
picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and
opened a second, interior door.
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred
black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black
Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church;
and the preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and
the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael,
muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of “The
Trap!”
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the
docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a
swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly
representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words
underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”
Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connection,
thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I
suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light
looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and
the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have
been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the
swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that
here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea
coffee.
It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side
palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak
corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse
howling than ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon,
nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to anyone indoors, with his
feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. “In judging of that
tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose
works I possess the only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous
difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that
sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the
wight Death is the only glazier.” True enough, thought I, as this
passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well.
Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house.
What a pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though,
and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it’s too late to make any
improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on,
and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus
there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and
shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears
with rags, and put a corncob into his mouth, and yet that would not
keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives,
in his red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh,
pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern
lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting
conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with
my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding
them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in
Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise
along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit
itself, in order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone
before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg
should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too
lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a
president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of
orphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and
there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our
frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.
 III

T S -I

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,

low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very
large oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced,
that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by
diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful
inquiry of the neighbors, that you could anyway arrive at an
understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of
shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some
ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had
endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and
earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially
by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you
at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might
not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,
portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the
picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a
nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to
drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,
half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to
it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that
marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas,
deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a
midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal
elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—
It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all
these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the
picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But
stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the
great leviathan himself?
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons
with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a
Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering
there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an
exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the
enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mastheads.
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots
of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle
sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a
long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered
what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-
harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with
these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and
deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance,
now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen
whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a
corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a
whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original
iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the
body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found
imbedded in the hump.
Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—
cut through what in old times must have been a great central
chimney with fireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still
duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and
such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you
trod some old craft’s cockpits, especially of such a howling night,
when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side
stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases,
filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest
nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-
looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be
that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s
jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are
shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks;
and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by
which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old
man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and
death.
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison.
Though true cylinders without—within, the villainous green goggling
glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel
meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’
goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a
penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure,
which you may gulp down for a shilling.
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen
gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of
skrimshander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be
accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was
full—not a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his
forehead, “you hain’t no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s
blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better
get used to that sort of thing.”
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and
that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with
the half of any decent man’s blanket.
“I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper?
Supper’ll be ready directly.”
 I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on
the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it
with his jackknife, stooping over and diligently working away at the
space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full
sail, but he didn’t make much headway, I thought.
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an
adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord
said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each
in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets,
and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers.
But the fare was of the most substantial kind—not only meat and
potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One
young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these
dumplings in a most direful manner.
“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty.”
“Landlord,” I whispered, “that ain’t the harpooneer is it?”
“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the
harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings,
he don’t—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes ’em rare.”
“The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he
here?”
“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.
I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark
complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it
so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and
get into bed before I did.
Supper over, the company went back to the barroom, when,
knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest
of the evening as a looker on.
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the
landlord cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the
offing this morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah,
boys; now we’ll have the latest news from the Feegees.”
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung
open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their
shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen
comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with
icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had
just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered.
No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale’s
mouth—the bar—when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating,
soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad
cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of
gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds
and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or
whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of
an ice-island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does
even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they
began capering about most obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and
though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates
by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making
as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and
since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my
shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative
is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He
stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a
cofferdam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was
deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the
contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some
reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at
once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature,
I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the
Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions
had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I
saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few
minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it
seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a
cry of “Bulkington! Bulkington! where’s Bulkington?” and darted out
of the house in pursuit of him.
It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate
myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the
entrance of the seamen.
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good
deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is,
but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it
comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a
strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections
indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a
sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors
no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore.
To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have
your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and
sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated
the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be
of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be
home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon
me at midnight—how could I tell from what vile hole he had been
coming?
“Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan’t
sleep with him. I’ll try the bench here.”
“Just as you please; I’m sorry I can’t spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress, and it’s a plaguy rough board here”—feeling of the knots
and notches. “But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I’ve got a carpenter’s
plane there in the bar—wait, I say, and I’ll make ye snug enough.” So
saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first
dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the
while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last
the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The
landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven’s
sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know
how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine
plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing
them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about
his business, and left me in a brown study.
 I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot
too short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too
narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches
higher than the planed one—so there was no yoking them. I then
placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against
the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down
in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over
me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at
all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one
from the window, and both together formed a series of small
whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought
to spend the night.
The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn’t I steal
a march on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to
be wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea;
but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what
the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the
harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me
down!
Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of
spending a sufferable night unless in some other person’s bed, I
began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable
prejudices against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I’ll wait awhile;
he must be dropping in before long. I’ll have a good look at him then,
and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all—there’s
no telling.
But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and
threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
“Landlord!” said I, “what sort of a chap is he—does he always
keep such late hours?” It was now hard upon twelve o’clock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to
be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. “No,” he
answered, “generally he’s an early bird—airley to bed and airley to
rise—yes, he’s the bird what catches the worm. But tonight he went
out a peddling, you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so
late, unless, may be, he can’t sell his head.”
 “Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this
you are telling me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to
say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed
Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head
around this town?”
“That’s precisely it,” said the landlord, “and I told him he couldn’t
sell it here, the market’s overstocked.”
“With what?” shouted I.
“With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the world?”
“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you’d better stop
spinning that yarn to me—I’m not green.”
“May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but I
rayther guess you’ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you
a slanderin’ his head.”
“I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s.
“It’s broke a’ready,” said he.
“Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?”
“Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I guess.”
“Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
snowstorm—“landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I
have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow—a sort of
connection, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who
and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects
safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so
good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I
take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I’ve
no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean,
landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would
thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.”
 “Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “that’s a purty long
sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be
easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived
from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of ’balmed New
Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he’s sold all on ’em but
one, and that one he’s trying to sell tonight, cause tomorrow’s
Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin’ human heads about the
streets when folks is goin’ to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday,
but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out of the door with four heads
strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.”
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery,
and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling
me—but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who
stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged
in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators?
“Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.”
“He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s getting dreadful
late, you had better be turning flukes—it’s a nice bed; Sal and me
slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There’s plenty of
room for two to kick about in that bed; it’s an almighty big bed that.
Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in
the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night,
and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking
his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn’t do. Come along here, I’ll give
ye a glim in a jiffy;” and so saying he lighted a candle and held it
towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when
looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed “I vum it’s Sunday—
you won’t see that harpooneer tonight; he’s come to anchor
somewhere—come along then; do come; won’t ye come?”
I considered the matter a moment, and then upstairs we went, and
I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure
enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any
four harpooneers to sleep abreast.
“There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea
chest that did double duty as a washstand and centre table; “there,
make yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.” I turned round
from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.
 Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though
none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I
then glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre
table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude
shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man
striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there
was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner;
also a large seaman’s bag, containing the harpooneer’s wardrobe,
no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of
outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fireplace, and a tall
harpoon standing at the head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the
light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at
some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to
nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little
tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an
Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat,
as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be
possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and
parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it
on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being
uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though
this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went
up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such
a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave
myself a kink in the neck.
I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about
this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking
some time on the bedside, I got up and took off my monkey jacket,
and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my
coat, and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to
feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what
the landlord said about the harpooneer’s not coming home at all that
night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of
my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into
bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven.
 Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken
crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could
not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had
pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I
heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light
come into the room from under the door.
Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word
till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New
Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and
without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off
from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working away at
the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the
room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for
some time while employed in unlacing the bag’s mouth. This
accomplished, however, he turned round—when, good heavens!
what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow colour,
here and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares. Yes,
it’s just as I thought, he’s a terrible bedfellow; he’s been in a fight, got
dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that
moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I
plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black
squares on his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At
first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth
occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man—a whaleman
too—who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I
concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages,
must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I,
after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.
But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I
mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares
of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of
tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun’s tanning a white man
into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South
Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary
effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing
through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all.
But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced
fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a
sealskin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the
middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly
thing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off
his hat—a new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with fresh
surprise. There was no hair on his head—none to speak of at least—
nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald
purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had
not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted
out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window,
but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make
of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my
comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being
completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess
I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who
had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so
afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him,
and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed
inexplicable in him.
Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last
showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him
were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too,
was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a
Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster
shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark
green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now
quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other
shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in
this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads
too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy
to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk!
But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went
about something that completely fascinated my attention, and
convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy
grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on
a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious
little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour
of a three days’ old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head,
at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby
preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all
limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I
concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it
proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace,
and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunchbacked
image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and
all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fireplace
made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image,
feeling but ill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First
he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket,
and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship
biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the
shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty
snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers
(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last
succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and
ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the
little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never
moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still
stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying
in a singsong or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during
which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last
extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and
bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a
sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness,
and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his
business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was
high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the
spell in which I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it
for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the
handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next
moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk
between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not
help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from
him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he
might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.
But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill
comprehended my meaning.
“Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I
kill-e.” And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about
me in the dark.
“Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord!
Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”
“Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!” again
growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk
scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen
would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord
came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up
to him.
“Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here
wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.”
“Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that
that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?”
“I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads
around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg,
look here—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—
you sabbee?”
“Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe
and sitting up in bed.
“You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk,
and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a
civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a
moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely
looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about,
thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has
just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better
sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
“Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or
whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn
in with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.
It’s dangerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.”
This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again
politely motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as
much as to say—“I won’t touch a leg of ye.”
“Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”
I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
 IV

T C

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm

thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had
almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of
patchwork, full of odd little particoloured squares and triangles; and
this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth
of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing
I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and
shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this
same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that
same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I
first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their
hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure
that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I
was a child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that
befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely
settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper
or other—I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen
a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who,
somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to
bed supperless—my mother dragged me by the legs out of the
chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o’clock in
the afternoon of the st June, the longest day in the year in our
hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so upstairs
I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly
as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the
sheets.
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must
elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed!
the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the
sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the
streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse
and worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw
myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a
good slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but
condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But
she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I
had to go to my room. For several hours I lay there broad awake,
feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from
the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a
troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it—half
steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room
was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running
through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be
heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm
hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent
form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely
seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay
there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my
hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the
horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at
last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly
remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I
lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to
this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to
those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s
pagan arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events
soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive
to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—
unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still
hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.
I now strove to rouse him—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a
snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-
collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the
counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side,
as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I;
abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a
tomahawk! “Queequeg!—in the name of goodness, Queequeg,
wake!” At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant
expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow
male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a
grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over
like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff
as a pikestaff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not
altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim
consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly
dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no
serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so
curious a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made up
touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were,
reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain
signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he
would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the
whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the
circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is, these
savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is
marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this particular
compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much
civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring
at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for the time
my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man
like Queequeg you don’t see every day, he and his ways were well
worth unusual regarding.
 He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very
tall one, by the by, and then—still minus his trousers—he hunted up
his boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his
next movement was to crush himself—boots in hand, and hat on—
under the bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I
inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of
propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when
putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in
the transition stage—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just
enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest
possible manners. His education was not yet completed. He was an
undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very
probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then,
if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of
getting under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his
hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began
creaking and limping about the room, as if, not being much
accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones—
probably not made to order either—rather pinched and tormented
him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that
the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain
view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous
figure that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat
and boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet
somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as
possible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that
time in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but
Queequeg, to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his
ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his
waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the washstand
centre table, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face. I
was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he
takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden
stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding
up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or
rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using
Rogers’s best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the
less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel the
head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long
straight edges are always kept.
The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched
out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and
sporting his harpoon like a marshal’s baton.
 V

I quickly followed suit, and descending into the barroom accosted the
grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,
though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
bedfellow.
However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too
scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his
own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him
not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be
spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully
laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you
perhaps think for.
The barroom was now full of the boarders who had been dropping
in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at.
They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and
third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea
blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and
brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all
wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.
This young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue,
and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been
three days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks
a few shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him.
In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly
bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But
who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various
tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one
array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.
“Grub, ho!” now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we
went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become
quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not
always, though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and
Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least
assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in
a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary
walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was
the sum of poor Mungo’s performances—this kind of travel, I say,
may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still,
for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere.
These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance
that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear
some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly
every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they
looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of
whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales
on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead
without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—
all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as
sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight
of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight;
these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!
But as for Queequeg—why, Queequeg sat there among them—at
the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be
sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could
not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast
with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the
table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling
the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done
by him, and everyone knows that in most people’s estimation, to do
anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here; how he
eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to
beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he
withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-
pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his
inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.
 VI

T S

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish

an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.
In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from
foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets,
Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies.
Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at
Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the
natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In
these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New
Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages
outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It
makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans,
Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of
the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see
other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly
arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire
men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly
young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now
seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green
as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you
would think them but a few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting
round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat,
girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with
a sou’-wester and a bombazine cloak.
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one—I
mean a downright bumpkin dandy—a fellow that, in the dog-days,
will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his
hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to
make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery,
you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the
seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his
waistcoats; straps to his canvas trousers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how
bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art
driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers,
cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New
Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract
of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as
the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough
to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the
dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true
enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The
streets do not run with milk; nor in the springtime do they pave them
with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you
find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent,
than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this
once scraggy scoria of a country?
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder
lofty mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these
brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific,
and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged
up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a
feat like that?
In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises apiece.
You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,
they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly
burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long
avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful
and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passerby
their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So
omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has
superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks
thrown aside at creation’s final day.
And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red
roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation
of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens.
Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem,
where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor
sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were
drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.
 VII

T C

In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and

few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or
Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I
did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to
driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the
cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and
sailors’ wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at
times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed
purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were
insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and
there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing
several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following,
but I do not pretend to quote:—

Sacred
To the memory
Of
John Talbot,
Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard,
Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
November st, .
This tablet
Is erected to his Memory
By his sister.

Sacred
To the memory
Of
Robert Long, Willis Ellery, Nathan Coleman, Walter Canny, Seth
Macy, and Samuel Gleig,
Forming one of the boats’ crews
Of
The ship Eliza
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
On the Off-shore Ground in the
Pacific,
December st, .
This marble
Is here placed by their surviving
Shipmates.

Sacred
To the memory
Of
The late
Captain Ezekiel Hardy,
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the
coast of Japan,
August rd, .
This tablet
Is erected to his Memory
By
His widow.
 Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated
myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see
Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there
was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance.
This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my
entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and,
therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall.
Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared
there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many
are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did
several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of
some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were
assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak
tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who
standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye
know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter
blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What
despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and
unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith,
and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly
perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the
cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are
included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell
no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands;
how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other
world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus
entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living
earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon
immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless
trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago;
how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we
nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the
living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a
knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not
without their meanings.
 But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from
these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the
murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the
whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate
may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful
inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a
stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in
this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a
man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken
this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my
shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking
at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun
through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my
body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers
for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will,
for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.
 VIII

T P

I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back
upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the
congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the
chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the
whalemen, among whom he was a very great favourite. He had been
a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had
dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father
Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old
age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among
all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a
newly developing bloom—the spring verdure peeping forth even
beneath February’s snow. No one having previously heard his
history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the
utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical
peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life
he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella,
and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran
down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed
almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had
absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one
removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when,
arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect,
it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished
the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder,
like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a
whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red
worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed,
and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance,
considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in
bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with
both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father
Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still
reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if
ascending the main-top of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case
with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds
were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first
glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient
for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary.
For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height,
slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up
the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving
him impregnable in his little Quebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for
this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and
sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any
mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober
reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something
unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he
signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly
ties and connections? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of
the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-
containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well
of water within the walls.
 But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplain’s former sea-farings. Between the
marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed
its back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant
ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks
and snowy breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling
clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth
an angel’s face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance
upon the ship’s tossed deck, something like that silver plate now
inserted into the Victory’s plank where Nelson fell. “Ah, noble ship,”
the angel seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and
bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are
rolling off—serenest azure is at hand.”
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that
had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the
likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a
projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed
beak.
What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this
earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads
the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first
descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is
the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.
Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage
complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
 IX

T S

Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority

ordered the scattered people to condense. “Starboard gangway,
there! side away to larboard—larboard gangway to starboard!
Midships! midships!”
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches,
and a still slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, and all was quiet
again, and every eye on the preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his
large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and
offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and
praying at the bottom of the sea.
This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of
a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he
commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner
towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation
and joy—

“The ribs and terrors in the whale,

Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,
And lift me deepening down to doom.
 “I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
Oh, I was plunging to despair.
“In black distress, I called my God,
When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints—
No more the whale did me confine.
“With speed he flew to my relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.
“My song for ever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power.”

Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above
the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly
turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand
down upon the proper page, said: “Beloved shipmates, clinch the
last verse of the first chapter of Jonah—‘And God had prepared a
great fish to swallow up Jonah.’ ”
“Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters—four yarns—
is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.
Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sealine sound! what
a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that
canticle in the fish’s belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand!
We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy
bottom of the waters; seaweed and all the slime of the sea is about
us! But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches?
Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful
men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it
is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hardheartedness,
suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance,
prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all
sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful
disobedience of the command of God—never mind now what that
command was, or how conveyed—which he found a hard command.
But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—
remember that—and hence, he oftener commands us than
endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey
ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the
hardness of obeying God consists.
“With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men
will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the
Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and
seeks a ship that’s bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a
hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could
have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opinion of
learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as
far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in
those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea.
Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most
easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or
Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just
outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that
Jonah sought to flee worldwide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most
contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty
eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile
burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning
is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on
the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he
touched a deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no baggage, not a
hatbox, valise, or carpetbag—no friends accompany him to the wharf
with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps
on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the
moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s evil
eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and
confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of
the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their
gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other—‘Jack,
he’s robbed a widow;’ or, ‘Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;’ or,
‘Harry lad, I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah,
or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.’ Another runs
to read the bill that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which
the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the
apprehension of a parricide, and containing a description of his
person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his
sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their
hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his
boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will
not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion. So
he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be the
man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the
cabin.
“ ‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly
making out his papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that
harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to
flee again. But he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish;
how soon sail ye, sir?’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up
to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner
does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance.
‘We sail with the next coming tide,’ at last he slowly answered, still
intently eyeing him. ‘No sooner, sir?’—‘Soon enough for any honest
man that goes a passenger.’ Ha! Jonah, that’s another stab. But he
swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll sail with ye,’—he
says—‘the passage money how much is that?—I’ll pay now.’ For it is
particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be
overlooked in this history, ‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere the craft
did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
“Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment
detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the
penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel
freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is
stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah’s Captain prepares to test the
length of Jonah’s purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him
thrice the usual sum; and it’s assented to. Then the Captain knows
that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight
that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his
purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every
coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, anyway, he mutters; and
Jonah is put down for his passage. ‘Point out my stateroom, Sir,’
says Jonah now, ‘I’m travel-weary; I need sleep.’ ‘Thou lookest like
it,’ says the Captain, ‘there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock
the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling
there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something
about the doors of convicts’ cells being never allowed to be locked
within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his
berth, and finds the little stateroom ceiling almost resting on his
forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted
hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship’s waterline, Jonah feels the
heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall
hold him in the smallest of his bowels’ wards.
“Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the
wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and
all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with
reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but
made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp
alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes
roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no
refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more
and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all
awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight
upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in
crookedness!’
“Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the
Roman racehorse but so much the more strike his steel tags into
him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy
anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at
last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as
over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and
there’s naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth,
Jonah’s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to
sleep.
“And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables;
and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all
careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of
recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels;
he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the
ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to
lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard;
when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank
thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in all this raging
tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and
raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds
he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open
mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was
gone down into the sides of the ship—a berth in the cabin as I have
taken it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to
him, and shrieks in his dead ear, ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper!
arise!’ Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to
his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out
upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther
billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the
ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the
mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the
white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the
blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit
pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the
tormented deep.
“Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his
cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The
sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of
him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to
high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this
great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah’s; that discovered,
then how furiously they mob him with their questions. ‘What is thine
occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But
mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager
mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not
only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another
answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is
forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
“ ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he cries—and then—‘I fear the Lord the God of
Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!’ Fear him, O
Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway,
he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners
became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when
Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well
knew the darkness of his deserts—when wretched Jonah cries out to
them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for
his sake this great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from
him, and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the
indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to
God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
“And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into
the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and
the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving
smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a
masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he
drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale
shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his
prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly. But
observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is,
Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that
his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God,
contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he
will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true
and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for
punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is
shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the
whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for
his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin
not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah.”
While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher,
who, when describing Jonah’s sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm
himself. His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed
arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that
rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his
eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that
was strange to them.
There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the
leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with
closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and
himself.
But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his
head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he
spake these words:
“Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands
press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the
lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still
more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly
would I come down from this masthead and sit on the hatches there
where you sit, and listen as you listen, while someone of you reads
me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as
a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or
speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those
unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled
at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to
escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is
everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God
came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs
of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along ‘into the midst of the
seas,’ where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms
down, and ‘the weeds were wrapped about his head,’ and all the
watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the
reach of any plummet—‘out of the belly of hell’—when the whale
grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God heard the
engulfed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto
the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the
whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and
all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon the dry
land;’ when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah,
bruised and beaten—his ears, like two seashells, still multitudinously
murmuring of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And
what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of
Falsehood! That was it!
“This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms
from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters
when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to
please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more
to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not
dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false
were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it,
while preaching to others is himself a castaway!”
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting
his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried
out with a heavenly enthusiasm—“But oh! shipmates! on the
starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the
top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the
main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him—a far, far
upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and
commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship
of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight
is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and
destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of
Senators and Judges. Delight—topgallant delight is to him, who
acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a
patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows
of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure
Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his,
who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O
Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I
die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine
own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that
he should live out the lifetime of his God?”
 He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his
face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had
departed, and he was left alone in the place.
 X

AB F

Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg

there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction
some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on
the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face
that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a
jackknife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to
himself in his heathenish way.
But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon,
going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his
lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every
fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly
around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of
astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming
to commence at number one each time, as though he could not
count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of
fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of
pages was excited.
With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and
hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his
countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means
disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly
tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in
his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a
spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there
was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his
uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who
had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too,
that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and
brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would,
this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was
phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it
reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular
busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two
long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George
Washington cannibalistically developed.
Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile
to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded
my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single
glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the
marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping
together the night previous, and especially considering the
affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the
morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages
are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take
them. At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of
simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also that
Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other
seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to
have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this
struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was
something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty
thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which
was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as
strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he
seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content
with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this
was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard
there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers,
we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So
soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a
philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must
have “broken his digester.”
As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that
mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then
only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms
gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent,
solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began
to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my
splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish
world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very
indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized
hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to
see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And
those same things that would have repelled most others, they were
the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I,
since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my
bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my
best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these
advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s
hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased,
perhaps a little complimented.
We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to
explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the
few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and
from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various
outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social
smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered
me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of
his, and keeping it regularly passing between us.
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the
Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it
out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally
and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he
pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and
said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s
phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if
need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship
would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted;
but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply.
After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our
room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took
out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco,
drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the
table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions,
pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going
to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trousers’
pockets. I let them stay. He then went about his evening prayers,
took out his idol, and removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs
and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but
well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in
case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.
I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do
you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven
and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an
insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to
do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to
do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—
that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what
do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in
my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must
then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the
shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt
biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed
his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace
with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to
sleep without some little chat.
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the
very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often
lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our
hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.
 XI

We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed
legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable
and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our
confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether
departed, and we felt like getting up again, though daybreak was yet
some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent
position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found
ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning
against the headboard with our four knees drawn up close together,
and our two noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were
warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was
so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bedclothes too, seeing that there
was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy
bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no
quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing
exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable,
and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be
comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the
tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why
then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully
and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment
should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious
discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is
to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and
the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark
in the heart of an arctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when
all at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between
sheets, whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I
have a way of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to
concentrate the snugness of being in bed. Because no man can ever
feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness
were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be
more congenial to our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and
coming out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the
imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o’clock-
at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at all
object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a
light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a
strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it
said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking
in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices
grow when love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing
better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because
he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I no more
felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of insurance. I was
only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing
a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets
drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one
to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of
smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away
to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native
island; and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell
it. He gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not
a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become
more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present
the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.
 XII

Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West

and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native
woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he
were a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul,
lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a
specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his
uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who
were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent
blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the
cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement
of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s
influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his
canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship
must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a
coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove
thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat,
among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the
stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a
flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his
foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and
throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt
there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended
a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King,
and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness,
and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented,
and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young
savage—this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin.
They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of
him. But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign
cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might
happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For
at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound desire to
learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still
happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they
were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that
even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more
so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor;
and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to
Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also,
poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in
all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these
Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence
the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and
having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead
and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He
answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or
rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and
undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he
said, he would return—as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For
the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats
in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that
barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.
 I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his
future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old
vocation. Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and
informed him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the
most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.
He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the
same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same
mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in
his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously
assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was
an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great
usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the
mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known
to merchant seamen.
His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg
embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out
the light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very
soon were sleeping.
 XIII

Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a

barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using,
however, my comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the
boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which
had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter
Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much
alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied
with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including
my own poor carpetbag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and
hammock, away we went down to the Moss, the little Nantucket
packet schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along the
people stared; not at Queequeg so much—for they were used to
seeing cannibals like him in their streets—but at seeing him and me
upon such confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along
wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping
to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why he
carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all
whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance,
he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a
particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured
stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with
the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers and mowers,
who go into the farmers’ meadows armed with their own scythes—
though in no wise obliged to furnish them—even so, Queequeg, for
his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story
about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor.
The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry
his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about
the thing—though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise
way in which to manage the barrow—Queequeg puts his chest upon
it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the
wharf. “Why,” said I, “Queequeg, you might have known better than
that, one would think. Didn’t the people laugh?”
Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of
Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant
water of young coconuts into a large stained calabash like a
punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central
ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain
grand merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its
commander—from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman,
at least for a sea captain—this commander was invited to the
wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess just
turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at
the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being
assigned the post of honor, placed himself over against the
punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King,
Queequeg’s father. Grace being said—for those people have their
grace as well as we—though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who
at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary,
copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts—
Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the
immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated
and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage
circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the
ceremony, and thinking himself—being Captain of a ship—as having
plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King’s
own house—the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the
punchbowl;—taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said
Queequeg, “what you tink now?—Didn’t our people laugh?”
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the
schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one
side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees
all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks
on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-
wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while
from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended
noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new
cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage
ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a
third, and so on, forever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea,
the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the
little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his
snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike
earth!—that common highway all over dented with the marks of
slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity
of the sea which will permit no records.
At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel
with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and
pointed teeth. On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did
homage to the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before
the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn
tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in
land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by
the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the
jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who
marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as
though a white man were anything more dignified than a
whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins
there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the
heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these
young saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the
bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the
brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous
dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then
slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with
bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon
him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.
“Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running towards that
officer; “Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.”
“Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking
up to Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you
know you might have killed that chap?”
“What him say?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
“He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,”
pointing to the still shivering greenhorn.
“Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an
unearthly expression of disdain, “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e;
Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!”
“Look you,” roared the Captain, “I’ll kill-e you, you cannibal, if you
try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.”
But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain
to mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the mainsail had
parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying
from side to side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the
deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was
swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching
at the boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and
back again, almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant
seemed on the point of snapping into splinters. Nothing was done,
and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on deck rushed
towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower
jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this consternation,
Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path
of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the
bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the
boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was
that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the
wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat,
Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long
living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen
swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him,
and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing
foam. I looked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be
saved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself
perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now took an instant’s
glance around him, and seeming to see just how matters were, dived
down and disappeared. A few minutes more, and he rose again, one
arm still striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form. The
boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All
hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his
pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till
poor Queequeg took his last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think
that he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous
Societies. He only asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe
the brine off; that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and
leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him,
seemed to be saying to himself—“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in
all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.”
 XIV

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so,

after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real
corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore,
more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere
hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is
more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute
for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they
have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import
Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to
stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are
carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there
plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in
summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades
in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something
like Laplander snowshoes; that they are so shut up, belted about,
every way enclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the
ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will
sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But
these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was
settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an
eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off
an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their
child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow
in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous
passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty
ivory casket—the poor little Indian’s skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach,
should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and
quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for
mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured
cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored
this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it;
peeped in at Behring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans
declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has
survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That
Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness
of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded
than his most fearless and malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits,
issuing from their anthill in the sea, overrun and conquered the
watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them
the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers
did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon
Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their
blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are
the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own
empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant
ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even
pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the
road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like
themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless
deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea;
he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro
ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there
lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it
overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie
cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as
chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so
that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more
strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless
gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between
billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his
sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds
of walruses and whales.
 XV

It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to
anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no
business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The
landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin
Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the
proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and
moreover he had assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him,
was famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we
could not possibly do better than try potluck at the Try Pots. But the
directions he had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our
starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard, and
then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three
points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first man we met
where the place was: these crooked directions of his very much
puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted
that the yellow warehouse—our first point of departure—must be left
on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say
it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in
the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to
inquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no
mistaking.
 Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by
asses’ ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old topmast, planted in
front of an old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off
on the other side, so that this old topmast looked not a little like a
gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the
time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague
misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two
remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for
me. It’s ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my
first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s
chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too!
Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled
woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of
the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like
an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a
purple woollen shirt.
“Get along with ye,” said she to the man, “or I’ll be combing ye!”
“Come on, Queequeg,” said I, “all right. There’s Mrs. Hussey.”
And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but
leaving Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs.
Upon making known our desires for a supper and a bed,
Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding for the present, ushered us
into a little room, and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a
recently concluded repast, turned round to us and said—“Clam or
Cod?”
“What’s that about Cods, ma’am?” said I, with much politeness.
“Clam or Cod?” she repeated.
“A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean,
Mrs. Hussey?” says I, “but that’s a rather cold and clammy reception
in the winter time, ain’t it, Mrs. Hussey?”
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the
purple Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear
nothing but the word “clam,” Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open
door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out “clam for two,”
disappeared.
 “Queequeg,” said I, “do you think that we can make out a supper
for us both on one clam?”
However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie
the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking
chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet
friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely
bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted
pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and
plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being
sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing
his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being
surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition: when
leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey’s clam
and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment.
Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word “cod” with great
emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury
steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time
a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.
We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl,
thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the
head? What’s that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people?
“But look, Queequeg, ain’t that a live eel in your bowl? Where’s your
harpoon?”
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved
its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder
for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till
you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The
area before the house was paved with clamshells. Mrs. Hussey wore
a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his
account books bound in superior old sharkskin. There was a fishy
flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one
morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some
fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled cow feeding on fish
remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod’s
decapitated head, looking very slipshod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from
Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg
was about to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her
arm, and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her
chambers. “Why not?” said I; “every true whaleman sleeps with his
harpoon—but why not?” “Because it’s dangerous,” says she. “Ever
since young Stiggs coming from that unfort’nt v’y’ge of his, when he
was gone four years and a half, with only three barrels of ile, was
found dead in my first floor back, with his harpoon in his side; ever
since then I allow no boarders to take sich dangerous weepons in
their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg” (for she had learned his
name), “I will just take this here iron, and keep it for you till morning.
But the chowder; clam or cod tomorrow for breakfast, men?”
“Both,” says I; “and let’s have a couple of smoked herring by way
of variety.”
 XVI

T S

In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise

and no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that
he had been diligently consulting Yojo—the name of his black little
god—and Yojo had told him two or three times over, and strongly
insisted upon it everyway, that instead of our going together among
the whaling-fleet in harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead
of this, I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship
should rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending
us; and, in order to do so, had already pitched upon a vessel, which,
if left to myself, I, Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the
world as though it had turned out by chance; and in that vessel I
must immediately ship myself, for the present irrespective of
Queequeg.
I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed
great confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s judgment and surprising
forecast of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as
a rather good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the
whole, but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.
Now, this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching the
selection of our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little
relied upon Queequeg’s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to
carry us and our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances
produced no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and
accordingly prepared to set about this business with a determined
rushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that trifling
little affair. Next morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up with Yojo
in our little bedroom—for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or
Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg
and Yojo that day; how it was I never could find out, for, though I
applied myself to it several times, I never could master his liturgies
and XXXIX Articles—leaving Queequeg, then, fasting on his
tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his sacrificial fire of
shavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After much prolonged
sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that there were three
ships up for three-years’ voyages—The Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and
the Pequod. Devil-Dam, I do not know the origin of; Tit-bit is obvious;
Pequod, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated
tribe of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct as the ancient Medes. I
peered and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to the
Tit-bit; and finally, going on board the Pequod, looked around her for
a moment, and then decided that this was the very ship for us.
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I
know;—square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-
box galliots, and whatnot; but take my word for it, you never saw
such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship
of the old school, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-
footed look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the
typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull’s complexion was
darkened like a French grenadier’s, who has alike fought in Egypt
and Siberia. Her venerable bows looked bearded. Her masts—cut
somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost
overboard in a gale—her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the
three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and
wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flagstone in Canterbury
Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these her old antiquities,
were added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild
business that for more than half a century she had followed. Old
Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate, before he commanded
another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one of the
principal owners of the Pequod—this old Peleg, during the term of
his chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and
inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and device,
unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake’s carved buckler
or bedstead. She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian
emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory. She was a
thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the
chased bones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open
bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long
sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her
old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through
base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-
ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported
there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from
the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who
steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds
back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow
a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
Now when I looked about the quarterdeck, for someone having
authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage,
at first I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of
tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the mainmast. It
seemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical
shape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of
limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws
of the right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle
of these slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other,
and at the apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres
waved to and fro like the topknot on some old Pottowottamie
Sachem’s head. A triangular opening faced towards the bows of the
ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view forward.
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one
who by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon,
and the ship’s work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the
burden of command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken
chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which
was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which
the wigwam was constructed.
There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the
appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like
most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the
Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic network
of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have
arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always
looking to windward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to
become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a
scowl.
“Is this the Captain of the Pequod?” said I, advancing to the door
of the tent.
“Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of
him?” he demanded.
“I was thinking of shipping.”
“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer—ever been
in a stove boat?”
“No, Sir, I never have.”
“Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?”
“Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been
several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that—”
“Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see
that leg?—I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of
the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I
suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in those
marchant ships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a
whaling, eh?—it looks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh?—Hast not been
a pirate, hast thou?—Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?—
Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?”
I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the
mask of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an
insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices,
and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod
or the Vineyard.
“But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think
of shipping ye.”
 “Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.”
“Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on
Captain Ahab?”
“Who is Captain Ahab, sir?”
“Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship.”
“I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain
himself.”
“Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg—that’s who ye are speaking
to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the
Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs,
including crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going
to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do,
I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it,
past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou
wilt find that he has only one leg.”
“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?”
“Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was
devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty
that ever chipped a boat!—ah, ah!”
I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at
the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I
could, “What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I
know there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though
indeed I might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the
accident.”
“Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d’ye see;
thou dost not talk shark a bit. Sure, ye’ve been to sea before now;
sure of that?”
“Sir,” said I, “I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in
the merchant—”
“Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant
service—don’t aggravate me—I won’t have it. But let us understand
each other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet
feel inclined for it?”
“I do, sir.”
“Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live
whale’s throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!”
 “I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to be
got rid of, that is; which I don’t take to be the fact.”
“Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to
find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in
order to see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well
then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow,
and then back to me and tell me what ye see there.”
For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not
knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest.
But concentrating all his crow’s feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg
started me on the errand.
Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that
the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now
obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was
unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the
slightest variety that I could see.
“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came back; “what did
ye see?”
“Not much,” I replied—“nothing but water; considerable horizon
though, and there’s a squall coming up, I think.”
“Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish
to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can’t ye see the
world where you stand?”
I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and
the Pequod was as good a ship as any—I thought the best—and all
this I now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he
expressed his willingness to ship me.
“And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he
added—“come along with ye.” And so saying, he led the way below
deck into the cabin.
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most
uncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad,
who along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the
vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports,
being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children,
and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head,
or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket
invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do
yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was
a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and
to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure
the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously
modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of
these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and
whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a
vengeance.
So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with
Scripture names—a singularly common fashion on the island—and
in childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of
the Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless
adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these
unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not
unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And
when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force,
with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the
stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest
waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north,
been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all
nature’s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin
voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some
help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty
language—that man makes one in a whole nation’s census—a
mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all
detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other
circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling
morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For all men tragically great
are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young
ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. But, as yet we have not
to do with such an one, but with quite another; and still a man, who,
if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the
Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired
whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg—who cared not a rush for what
are called serious things, and indeed deemed those selfsame
serious things the veriest of all trifles—Captain Bildad had not only
been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket
Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many
unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn—all that had not
moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as
altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was
there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain
Bildad. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms
against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic
and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he
in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore.
How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad
reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did
not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since
come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is
one thing, and this practical world quite another. This world pays
dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes of the
drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat;
from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally
a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his
adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly
age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving
of his well-earned income.
Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
incorrigible old hunks, and in his seagoing days, a bitter, hard
taskmaster. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a
curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his
crew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the
hospital, sore exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially
for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hardhearted, to say the least.
He never used to swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow
he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of
them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye
intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you
could clutch something—a hammer or a marlinspike, and go to work
like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and
idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact
embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he
carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft,
economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.
Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom
when I followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space
between the decks was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad,
who always sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails.
His broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed;
his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on
nose, he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.
“Bildad,” cried Captain Peleg, “at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have
been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my
certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?”
As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,
Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up,
and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.
“He says he’s our man, Bildad,” said Peleg, “he wants to ship.”
“Dost thee?” said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to
me.
“I dost,” said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.
“What do ye think of him, Bildad?” said Peleg.
“He’ll do,” said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away
at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible.
I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as
Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I
said nothing, only looking round me sharply. Peleg now threw open a
chest, and drawing forth the ship’s articles, placed pen and ink
before him, and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was
high time to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to
engage for the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling
business they paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain,
received certain shares of the profits called lays, and that these lays
were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the
respective duties of the ship’s company. I was also aware that being
a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large; but
considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a
rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had heard I should
be offered at least the th lay—that is, the th part of the clear
net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount
to. And though the th lay was what they call a rather long lay, yet
it was better than nothing; and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty
nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it, not to speak of my
three years’ beef and board, for which I would not have to pay one
stiver.
It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a
princely fortune—and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am
one of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite
content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am
putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I
thought that the th lay would be about the fair thing, but would
not have been surprised had I been offered the th, considering I
was of a broad-shouldered make.
But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had
heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old
crony Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of the
Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered
owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship’s affairs to
these two. And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might
have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now
found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin,
and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was
vainly trying to mend a pen with his jackknife, old Bildad, to my no
small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in
these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling
to himself out of his book, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon
earth, where moth—”
“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye say, what lay
shall we give this young man?”
“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the seven hundred
and seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, would it?—‘where moth
and rust do corrupt, but lay—’ ”
 Lay, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one,
shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do
corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed; and though from
the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet
the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and
seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make
a teenth of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the
time.
“Why, blast your eyes, Bildad,” cried Peleg, “thou dost not want to
swindle this young man! he must have more than that.”
“Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,” again said Bildad, without
lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling—“for where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
“I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,” said Peleg,
“do ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say.”
Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
“Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider
the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship—widows and
orphans, many of them—and that if we too abundantly reward the
labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread from those
widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh
lay, Captain Peleg.”
“Thou Bildad!” roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the
cabin. “Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these
matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would
be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round
Cape Horn.”
“Captain Peleg,” said Bildad steadily, “thy conscience may be
drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can’t tell; but as thou
art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy
conscience be but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee
foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg.”
“Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye
insult me. It’s an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he’s
bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and
start my soul-bolts, but I’ll—I’ll—yes, I’ll swallow a live goat with all
his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured
son of a wooden gun—a straight wake with ye!”
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a
marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.
Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all
idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily
commanded, I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad,
who, I made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the
awakened wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down
again on the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the
slightest intention of withdrawing. He seemed quite used to
impenitent Peleg and his ways. As for Peleg, after letting off his rage
as he had, there seemed no more left in him, and he, too, sat down
like a lamb, though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated.
“Whew!” he whistled at last—“the squall’s gone off to leeward, I think.
Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen,
will ye. My jackknife here needs the grindstone. That’s he; thank ye,
Bildad. Now then, my young man, Ishmael’s thy name, didn’t ye say?
Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth lay.”
“Captain Peleg,” said I, “I have a friend with me who wants to ship
too—shall I bring him down tomorrow?”
“To be sure,” said Peleg. “Fetch him along, and we’ll look at him.”
“What lay does he want?” groaned Bildad, glancing up from the
book in which he had again been burying himself.
“Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad,” said Peleg. “Has he ever
whaled it any?” turning to me.
“Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg.”
“Well, bring him along then.”
And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I
had done a good morning’s work, and that the Pequod was the
identical ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me
round the Cape.
But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the
Captain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though,
indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out,
and receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself
visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages
are so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly
brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment
of that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port,
but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is
always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing
yourself into his hands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg,
inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.
“And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It’s all right enough;
thou art shipped.”
“Yes, but I should like to see him.”
“But I don’t think thou wilt be able to at present. I don’t know
exactly what’s the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the
house; a sort of sick, and yet he don’t look so. In fact, he ain’t sick;
but no, he isn’t well either. Anyhow, young man, he won’t always see
me, so I don’t suppose he will thee. He’s a queer man, Captain
Ahab—so some think—but a good one. Oh, thou’lt like him well
enough; no fear, no fear. He’s a grand, ungodly, godlike man,
Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then
you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the
common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ’mong the cannibals;
been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in
mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and
the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and
he ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou
knowest, was a crowned king!”
“And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs,
did they not lick his blood?”
“Come hither to me—hither, hither,” said Peleg, with a significance
in his eye that almost startled me. “Look ye, lad; never say that on
board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not
name himself. ’Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed
mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the
old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow
prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the
same. I wish to warn thee. It’s a lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I’ve
sailed with him as mate years ago; I know what he is—a good
man—not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good
man—something like me—only there’s a good deal more of him.
Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the
passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was
the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that
about, as anyone might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his
leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody—
desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off.
And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it’s
better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So
goodbye to thee—and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he
happens to have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife—
not three voyages wedded—a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by
that sweet girl that old man has a child: hold ye then there can be
any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted,
if he be, Ahab has his humanities!”
As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been
incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain
wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the
time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know
what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a
strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all
describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it;
and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at
what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to
me then. However, my thoughts were at length carried in other
directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.
 XVII

T R

As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to

continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards nightfall;
for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious
obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart
to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toadstool;
or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a
degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow
down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on
account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his
name.
I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in
these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other
mortals, pagans and whatnot, because of their half-crazy conceits on
these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the
most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;—but what of
that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he
seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him
would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us
all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow
dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances
and rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the
door; but no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside.
“Queequeg,” said I softly through the keyhole:—all silent. “I say,
Queequeg! why don’t you speak? It’s I—Ishmael.” But all remained
still as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such
abundant time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I
looked through the keyhole; but the door opening into an odd corner
of the room, the keyhole prospect was but a crooked and sinister
one. I could only see part of the footboard of the bed and a line of
the wall, but nothing more. I was surprised to behold resting against
the wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg’s harpoon, which the
landlady the evening previous had taken from him, before our
mounting to the chamber. That’s strange, thought I; but at any rate,
since the harpoon stands yonder, and he seldom or never goes
abroad without it, therefore he must be inside here, and no possible
mistake.
“Queequeg!—Queequeg!”—all still. Something must have
happened. Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly
resisted. Running downstairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the
first person I met—the chambermaid. “La! La!” she cried, “I thought
something must be the matter. I went to make the bed after
breakfast, and the door was locked; and not a mouse to be heard;
and it’s been just so silent ever since. But I thought, may be, you had
both gone off and locked your baggage in for safe keeping. La! La,
ma’am!—Mistress! murder! Mrs. Hussey! apoplexy!”—and with these
cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and
a vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the
occupation of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black
boy meantime.
“Wood-house!” cried I, “which way to it? Run for God’s sake, and
fetch something to pry open the door—the axe!—the axe! he’s had a
stroke; depend upon it!”—and so saying I was unmethodically
rushing upstairs again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed
the mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her
countenance.
“What’s the matter with you, young man?”
 “Get the axe! For God’s sake, run for the doctor, someone, while I
pry it open!”
“Look here,” said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-
cruet, so as to have one hand free; “look here; are you talking about
prying open any of my doors?”—and with that she seized my arm.
“What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you, shipmate?”
In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to
understand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-
cruet to one side of her nose, she ruminated for an instant; then
exclaimed—“No! I haven’t seen it since I put it there.” Running to a
little closet under the landing of the stairs, she glanced in, and
returning, told me that Queequeg’s harpoon was missing. “He’s killed
himself,” she cried. “It’s unfort’nate Stiggs done over again—there
goes another counterpane—God pity his poor mother!—it will be the
ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where’s that girl?—
there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a
sign, with—‘no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the
parlor;’—might as well kill both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be
merciful to his ghost! What’s that noise there? You, young man,
avast there!”
And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to
force open the door.
“I don’t allow it; I won’t have my premises spoiled. Go for the
locksmith, there’s one about a mile from here. But avast!” putting her
hand in her side-pocket, “here’s a key that’ll fit, I guess; let’s see.”
And with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequeg’s
supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.
“Have to burst it open,” said I, and was running down the entry a
little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing
I should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a
sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.
With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob
slamming against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there,
good heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-
collected; right in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and
holding Yojo on top of his head. He looked neither one way nor the
other way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of active
life.
“Queequeg,” said I, going up to him, “Queequeg, what’s the matter
with you?”
“He hain’t been a sittin’ so all day, has he?” said the landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt
like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost
intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained;
especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of
eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.
“Mrs. Hussey,” said I, “he’s alive at all events; so leave us, if you
please, and I will see to this strange affair myself.”
Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon
Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could
do—for all my polite arts and blandishments—he would not move a
peg, nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my
presence in the slightest way.
I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan;
do they fast on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so;
yes, it’s part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he’ll get
up sooner or later, no doubt. It can’t last forever, thank God, and his
Ramadan only comes once a year; and I don’t believe it’s very
punctual then.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long
stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding
voyage, as they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a
schooner or brig, confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic
Ocean only); after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly
eleven o’clock, I went upstairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this
time Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a
termination. But no; there he was just where I had left him; he had
not stirred an inch. I began to grow vexed with him; it seemed so
downright senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and half
the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood on his
head.
“For heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up
and have some supper. You’ll starve; you’ll kill yourself, Queequeg.”
But not a word did he reply.
Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to
sleep; and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But
previous to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it
over him, as it promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing
but his ordinary round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I
could not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and
the mere thought of Queequeg—not four feet off—sitting there in that
uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me
really wretched. Think of it; sleeping all night in the same room with a
wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable
Ramadan!
But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till
break of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted
Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon
as the first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff
and grating joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where
I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his
Ramadan was over.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s
religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or
insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it
also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a
positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an
uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that
individual aside and argue the point with him.
And just so I now did with Queequeg. “Queequeg,” said I, “get into
bed now, and lie and listen to me.” I then went on, beginning with the
rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the
various religions of the present time, during which time I labored to
show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged
ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad
for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious
laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that he being in
other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it
pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably
foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I,
fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all
thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the
reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy
notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather
digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-
dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary
dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it
in. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a
great feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great
battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o’clock
in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.
“No more, Queequeg,” said I, shuddering; “that will do;” for I knew
the inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor
who had visited that very island, and he told me that it was the
custom, when a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all
the slain in the yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one,
they were placed in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round
like a pilau, with breadfruit and coconuts; and with some parsley in
their mouths, were sent round with the victor’s compliments to all his
friends, just as though these presents were so many Christmas
turkeys.
After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow
seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered
from his own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more
than one third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would;
and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about
the true religion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of
condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a
great pity that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly
lost to evangelical pagan piety.
At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously
hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should
not make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to
board the Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with
halibut bones.
 XVIII

H M

As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship,
Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice
loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my
friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no
cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their
papers.
“What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?” said I, now jumping
on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.
“I mean,” he replied, “he must show his papers.”
“Yes,” said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head
from behind Peleg’s, out of the wigwam. “He must show that he’s
converted. Son of darkness,” he added, turning to Queequeg, “art
thou at present in communion with any Christian church?”
“Why,” said I, “he’s a member of the first Congregational Church.”
Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket
ships at last come to be converted into the churches.
“First Congregational Church,” cried Bildad, “what! that worships in
Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman’s meetinghouse?” and so saying,
taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow
bandana handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out
of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good
long look at Queequeg.
 “How long hath he been a member?” he then said, turning to me;
“not very long, I rather guess, young man.”
“No,” said Peleg, “and he hasn’t been baptized right either, or it
would have washed some of that devil’s blue off his face.”
“Do tell, now,” cried Bildad, “is this Philistine a regular member of
Deacon Deuteronomy’s meeting? I never saw him going there, and I
pass it every Lord’s day.”
“I don’t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his
meeting,” said I; “all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member
of the First Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself,
Queequeg is.”
“Young man,” said Bildad sternly, “thou art skylarking with me—
explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean?
answer me.”
Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “I mean, sir, the same
ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg
there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son
and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation
of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of
us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief;
in that we all join hands.”
“Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing nearer.
“Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a foremast
hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy—why
Father Mapple himself couldn’t beat it, and he’s reckoned something.
Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell
Quohog there—what’s that you call him? tell Quohog to step along.
By the great anchor, what a harpoon he’s got there! looks like good
stuff that; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever
your name is, did you ever stand in the head of a whaleboat? did you
ever strike a fish?”
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped
upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the
whaleboats hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and
poising his harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:—
“Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him?
well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!” and taking sharp aim at it,
he darted the iron right over old Bildad’s broad brim, clean across
the ship’s decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.
“Now,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him
whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead.”
“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin
gangway. “Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We
must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats.
Look ye, Quohog, we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that’s more than
ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.”
So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg
was soon enrolled among the same ship’s company to which I
myself belonged.
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything
ready for signing, he turned to me and said, “I guess, Quohog there
don’t know how to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou
sign thy name or make thy mark?”
But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before
taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but
taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place,
an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed
upon his arm; so that through Captain Peleg’s obstinate mistake
touching his appellative, it stood something like this:—

Quohog.
his four-cornered cross mark.

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing

Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge
pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts,
and selecting one entitled The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to
Lose, placed it in Queequeg’s hands, and then grasping them and
the book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, “Son
of darkness, I must do my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship,
and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to
thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for
aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon;
turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness
gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!”
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad’s language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
“Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our
harpooneer,” cried Peleg. “Pious harpooneers never make good
voyagers—it takes the shark out of ’em; no harpooneer is worth a
straw who ain’t pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once
the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he
joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened
about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from
whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy
Jones.”
“Peleg! Peleg!” said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, “thou
thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest,
Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death; how, then, canst thou
prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell
me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in
that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with
Captain Ahab, did’st thou not think of Death and the Judgment
then?”
“Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin,
and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets—“hear him, all of
ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would
sink! Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts
making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every
sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment
then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain
Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands—how to rig
jury-masts—how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was
thinking of.”
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck,
where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking
some sailmakers who were mending a topsail in the waist. Now and
then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine,
which otherwise might have been wasted.
 XIX

T P

“Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?”

Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering
away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own
thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who,
pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in
question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and
patched trousers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A
confluent smallpox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left
it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing
waters have been dried up.
“Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated.
“You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying to gain a
little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
“Aye, the Pequod—that ship there,” he said, drawing back his
whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the
fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.
“Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.”
“Anything down there about your souls?”
“About what?”
“Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. “No matter
though, I know many chaps that hav’n’t got any—good luck to ’em;
and they are all the better off for it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a
wagon.”
“What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.
“He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that
sort in other chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous
emphasis upon the word he.
“Queequeg,” said I, “let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere; he’s talking about something and somebody we don’t
know.”
“Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old
Thunder yet, have ye?”
“Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane
earnestness of his manner.
“Captain Ahab.”
“What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?”
“Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name.
Ye hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye?”
“No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be
all right again before long.”
“All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then
this left arm of mine will be all right; not before.”
“What do you know about him?”
“What did they tell you about him? Say that!”
“They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that
he’s a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.”
“That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump
when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the
word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened
to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days
and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard
afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing
about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing
his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word
about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don’t think ye
did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But
hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it;
aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that everyone knows
a’most—I mean they know he’s only one leg; and that a parmacetti
took the other off.”
“My friend,” said I, “what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don’t
know, and I don’t much care; for it seems to me that you must be a
little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab,
of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all
about the loss of his leg.”
“All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?”
“Pretty sure.”
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a
little, turned and said:—“Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on
the papers? Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be,
will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all
fixed and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with
him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em!
Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye;
I’m sorry I stopped ye.”
“Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell
us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are
mistaken in your game; that’s all I have to say.”
“And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
you are just the man for him—the likes of ye. Morning to ye,
shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded
not to make one of ’em.”
“Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—you can’t fool us.
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a
great secret in him.”
“Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.”
“Morning it is,” said I. “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this
crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?”
“Elijah.”
Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after
each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he
was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not
gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a
corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah
following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck
me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but
passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger
would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed
to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the
life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous,
half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all
kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all
connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had
lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what
Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous;
and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound
ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was
really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with
Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah
passed on, without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once
more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart,
a humbug.
 XX

A A

A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the
Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails
were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in
short, everything betokened that the ship’s preparations were
hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but
sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp lookout upon the hands: Bildad
did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men
employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after
nightfall.
On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was
given at all the inns where the ship’s company were stopping, that
their chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling
how soon the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down
our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it
seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship
did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal
to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of,
before the Pequod was fully equipped.
Everyone knows what a multitude of things—beds, saucepans,
knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nutcrackers, and
whatnot, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so
with whaling, which necessitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon
the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers,
and bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant vessels,
yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For
besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous
articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the
impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually
frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels
are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the
destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the
voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and
spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a
spare Captain and duplicate ship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of
the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread,
water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for
some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of
divers odds and ends of things, both large and small.
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain
Bildad’s sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and
indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed
resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found wanting in
the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would
come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward’s pantry; another
time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate’s desk, where he kept
his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of someone’s
rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name,
which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a
sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither
and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that
promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a
ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in
which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars.
But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming
on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand,
and a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself
nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about
with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival,
down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once
in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at
the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the
masthead, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.
During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the
craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was,
and when he was going to come on board his ship. To these
questions they would answer, that he was getting better and better,
and was expected aboard every day; meantime, the two captains,
Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the
vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I
would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy
being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying
my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so
soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man
suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already
involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his
suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I
said nothing, and tried to think nothing.
At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would
certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early
start.
 XXI

G A

It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when
we drew nigh the wharf.
“There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,” said I
to Queequeg, “it can’t be shadows; she’s off by sunrise, I guess;
come on!”
“Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming
close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then
insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the
uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was
Elijah.
“Going aboard?”
“Hands off, will you,” said I.
“Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way!”
“Ain’t going aboard, then?”
“Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of yours? Do you
know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?”
“No, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly and
wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most
unaccountable glances.
“Elijah,” said I, “you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing.
We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not
to be detained.”
 “Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?”
“He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.”
“Holloa!” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a
few paces.
“Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.”
But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my
shoulder, said—“Did ye see anything looking like men going towards
that ship a while ago?”
Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying,
“Yes, I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be
sure.”
“Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “Morning to ye.”
Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us;
and touching my shoulder again, said, “See if you can find ’em now,
will ye?”
“Find who?”
“Morning to ye! morning to ye!” he rejoined, again moving off. “Oh!
I was going to warn ye against—but never mind, never mind—it’s all
one, all in the family too;—sharp frost this morning, ain’t it? Goodbye
to ye. Shan’t see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it’s before the
Grand Jury.” And with these cracked words he finally departed,
leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic
impudence.
At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in
profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked
within; the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging.
Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle
open. Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger
there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole
length upon two chests, his face downwards and enclosed in his
folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him.
“Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?”
said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on
the wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to;
hence I would have thought myself to have been optically deceived
in that matter, were it not for Elijah’s otherwise inexplicable question.
But I beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly
hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body;
telling him to establish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the
sleeper’s rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough; and then,
without more ado, sat quietly down there.
“Gracious! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I.
“Oh! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “my country way; won’t
hurt him face.”
“Face!” said I, “call that his face? very benevolent countenance
then; but how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off,
Queequeg, you are heavy, it’s grinding the face of the poor. Get off,
Queequeg! Look, he’ll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don’t wake.”
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper,
and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe
passing over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon
questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to
understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and
sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were
in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and
to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy
up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and
alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much
better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-
sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and desiring him
to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some
damp marshy place.
While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the
tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the
sleeper’s head.
“What’s that for, Queequeg?”
“Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!”
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his
tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained
his foes and soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the
sleeping rigger. The strong vapor now completely filling the
contracted hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of
muffledness; then seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over
once or twice; then sat up and rubbed his eyes.
 “Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who be ye smokers?”
“Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?”
“Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails today. The
Captain came aboard last night.”
“What Captain?—Ahab?”
“Who but him indeed?”
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab,
when we heard a noise on deck.
“Holloa! Starbuck’s astir,” said the rigger. “He’s a lively chief mate,
that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to.” And so
saying he went on deck, and we followed.
It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos
and threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively
engaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing
various last things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained
invisibly enshrined within his cabin.
 XXII

M C

At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s

riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf,
and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whaleboat,
with her last gift—a nightcap for Stubb, the second mate, her
brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward—after all this, the
two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning
to the chief mate, Peleg said:
“Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain
Ahab is all ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from
shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. Muster ’em aft here—blast
’em!”
“No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,” said
Bildad, “but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.”
How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage,
Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on
the quarterdeck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea,
as well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no
sign of him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin.
But then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means
necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out
to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the
pilot’s; and as he was not yet completely recovered—so they said—
therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural
enough; especially as in the merchant service many captains never
show themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up
the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell
merrymaking with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for
good with the pilot.
But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for
Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the
talking and commanding, and not Bildad.
“Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors lingered at
the mainmast. “Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.”
“Strike the tent there!”—was the next order. As I hinted before, this
whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board
the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well
known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.
“Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the next
command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes.
Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the
pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg,
be it known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed
pilots of the port—he being suspected to have got himself made a
pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was
concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft—Bildad, I say,
might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the
approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal
stave of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared
forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with
hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had
told them that no profane songs would be allowed on board the
Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity, his sister,
had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman’s berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg
ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost
thought he would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up;
involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the
same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage
with such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with
the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite
of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden
sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the
apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my
immediate vicinity. That was my first kick.
“Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared.
“Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why
don’t ye spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap
with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green
pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!” And so
saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg
very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his
psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking
something today.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It
was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged
into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean,
whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long
rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the
white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles
depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon,
as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the
shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage
rang, his steady notes were heard—

“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,

Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.”

Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then.
They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in
the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there
was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and
meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the
spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
 At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed
no longer. The stout sailboat that had accompanied us began
ranging alongside.
It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were
affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to
depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long
and perilous a voyage—beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which
some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in
which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he,
once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw;
loath to say goodbye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest
to him—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious
strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word
there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards
the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen
Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; looked
right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last,
mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout
Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood
gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, “Nevertheless,
friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.”
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all
his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the
lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to
deck—now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief
mate.
But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look
about him—“Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back
the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside,
now! Careful, careful!—come, Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye,
Starbuck—luck to ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to ye, Mr. Flask—goodbye
and good luck to ye all—and this day three years I’ll have a hot
supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!”
“God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,” murmured
old Bildad, almost incoherently. “I hope ye’ll have fine weather now,
so that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye—a pleasant
sun is all he needs, and ye’ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage
ye go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don’t stave the boats
needlessly, ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full
three percent within the year. Don’t forget your prayers, either.
Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste the spare staves. Oh! the
sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t whale it too much a’
Lord’s days, men; but don’t miss a fair chance either, that’s rejecting
Heaven’s good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb;
it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask,
beware of fornication. Goodbye, goodbye! Don’t keep that cheese
too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it’ll spoil. Be careful with the
butter—twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye, if—”
“Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering—away!” and with
that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.
Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew
between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled;
we gave three heavyhearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate
into the lone Atlantic.
 XXIII

T L S

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,

newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her
vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see
standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe
and fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter just landed from a
four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again
for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his
feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep
memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless
grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the
storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The
port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety,
comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind
to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s
direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though
it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.
With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights
’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all
the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly
rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
 Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that
mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the
intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on
the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,
than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of
the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O
Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy
ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
 XXIV

T A

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of

whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be
regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable
pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of
the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to
establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of
whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal
professions. If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous
metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general
opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a
harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should
append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card,
such a procedure would be deemed preeminently presuming and
ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us
whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a
butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein,
we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are,
that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge
have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably
delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness
of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto
pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will
triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the
cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in
question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship
are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battlefields from
which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if
the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the
soldier’s profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has
freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition
of the sperm whale’s vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his
head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared
with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn
round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!
But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales;
see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt’s time have admirals of their whaling
fleets? Why did Louis XVI of France, at his own personal expense, fit
out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some
score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did
Britain between the years and pay to her whalemen in
bounties upwards of £ , , ? And lastly, how comes it that we
whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded
whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred
vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming
, , of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing,
$ , , ; and every year importing into our harbors a well
reaped harvest of $ , , . How comes all this, if there be not
something puissant in whaling?
But this is not the half; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,
point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty
years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world,
taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of
whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable
in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential
issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother,
who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be
a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful
suffice. For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in
ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She
has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no
Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European men-
of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire
salutes to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally
showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the
savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring
Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of
anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as
great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their
succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked
waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled
with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and
muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a
flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the
lifetime commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often,
adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men
accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship’s common log. Ah,
the world! Oh, the world!
Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but
colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on
between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces
on the Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the
jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if
space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those
whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia
from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal
democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was
given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first
blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned
those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched
there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.
Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the
emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the
benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in
their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same
truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the
way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried
the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-
bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship
alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the
threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to
shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet
every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous
chronicler, you will say.
The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?
Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job!
And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but
no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen,
took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of
those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament?
Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they
have no good blood in their veins.
No good blood in their veins? They have something better than
royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary
Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers
of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
harpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting
the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable.
Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English
statutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.”
 Oh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in
any grand imposing way.
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the
mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the
world’s capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the
Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed
procession.
Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real
dignity in whaling.
No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens
attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down
your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No
more! I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and
fifty whales. I account that man more honorable than that great
captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real
repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be
unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon
the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if,
at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any
precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the
honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale
College and my Harvard.
 XXV

In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but

substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell
eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be
blameworthy?
It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even
modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their
functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called,
and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt,
precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is
solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be,
though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well,
as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here,
concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in
common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who
anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a
mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has
probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he
can’t amount to much in his totality.
But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is
used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar
oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What
then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured,
unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?
Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and
queens with coronation stuff!
 XXVI

K S

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket,

and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though
born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes,
his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the
Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have
been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one
of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid
summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical
superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no
more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the
indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the
man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure
tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and
embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian,
this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and
to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a
patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all
climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet
lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly
confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the
most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter
of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were
certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases
seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly
conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural
reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly
incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in
some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from
intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward
presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the welded
iron of his soul, much more did his faraway domestic memories of
his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the
original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those
latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the
gush of daredevil daring, so often evinced by others in the more
perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I will have no man in my boat,”
said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to
mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that
which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but
that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a
coward.
“Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as
careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere
long see what that word “careful” precisely means when used by a
man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon
all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in
this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits
of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly
wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after
sundown; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted
in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean
to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and
that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What
doom was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could
he find the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck
which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been
extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so
organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as
he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently
engendering an element in him, which, under suitable
circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all
his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery
chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding
firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the
ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those
more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes
menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty
man.
But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the
complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I
have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay
shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem
detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and
murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces;
but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and
glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his
fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate
manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains
intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest
anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can
piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her
upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I
treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding
dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in
the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity
which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The
great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy!
His omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I
shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round
them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most
abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted
mounts; if I shall touch that workman’s arm with some ethereal light;
if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then
against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality,
which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!
Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to
the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst
clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and
paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew
Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a warhorse; who
didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty,
earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the
kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!
 XXVII

K S

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and
hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A
happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they
came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent
crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman
joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he
presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were
but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular
about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old
stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the
whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying
lance coolly and offhandedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He
would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the
most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb,
converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of
death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all,
might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that
way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it
to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves
there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the
order, and not sooner.
 What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easygoing,
unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs;
what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his;
that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black
little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would
almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his
nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready
loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever
he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from
the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in
readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his
legs into his trousers, he put his pipe into his mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least,
of his peculiar disposition; for everyone knows that this earthly air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless
miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and
as in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated
handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal
tribulations, Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of
disinfecting agent.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s
Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious
concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great
leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and
therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them
whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of
reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic
ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible
danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the
wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least
water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small
application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant,
unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the
matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a three
years’ voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that
length of time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought nails
and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was
one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They
called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he
could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name
in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side
timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy
concussions of those battering seas.
Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were
momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription
commanded three of the Pequod’s boats as headsmen. In that grand
order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his
forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as
captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling
spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the
harpooneers were flingers of javelins.
And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a
Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or
harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh
lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in
the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the
two, a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in
this place we set down who the Pequod’s harpooneers were, and to
what headsman each of them belonged.
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had
selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most
westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the
last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the
neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring
harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of
Gay-Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek
bones, and black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their
largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression—all this
sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of
those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England
moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main.
But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland,
Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the
unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the
sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would
almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier
Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince
of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s
squire.
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
negro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold.
Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the
sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the topsail
halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on
board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And
never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket,
and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having
now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of
owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped;
Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe,
moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks.
There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man
standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a
fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was
the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chessman beside him. As
for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the
present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the
mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born,
though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the
American whale fishery as with the American army and military and
merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the
construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say,
because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the
brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No
small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where
the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment
their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like
manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in
at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew.
Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. How it
is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best
whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes
too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men,
but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now,
federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An
Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the
ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the
world’s grievances before that bar from which not very many of them
ever come back. Black Little Pip—he never did—oh, no! he went
before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall
ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal
time, when sent for, to the great quarterdeck on high, he was bid
strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a
coward here, hailed a hero there!
 XXVIII

For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches

was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other
at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they
seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes
issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that
after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their
supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any
eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the
cabin.
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I
instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my
first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the
seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was
strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical
incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I
could not have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand
them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the
solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves. But
whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness—to call it so—
which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it
seemed against all warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though
the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more
barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-
ship companies which my previous experiences had made me
acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to the
fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian
vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was
especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the
mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless
misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every
presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and
men, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and
they were every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a
Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot
from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though
all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every
degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that
merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one
of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of
the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the
water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that
as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon
as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran
over me. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his
quarterdeck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of
the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the
stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without
consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted
aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid
bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast
Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and
continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck,
till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark,
lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes
made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper
lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig,
peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off
into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether
that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some
desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent,
throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially
by the mates. But once Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay-Head Indian
among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty
years old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon
him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at
sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey
Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never
before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild
Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the immemorial
credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with preternatural
powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted
him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid
out—which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then,
whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a
birthmark on him from crown to sole.
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and
the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I
hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing
to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had
previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned
from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was
dismasted off Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like
his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home
for it. He has a quiver of ’em.”
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each
side of the Pequod’s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen
shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so,
into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated,
and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight
out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of
firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the
fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he
spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their
minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy,
if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye.
And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a
crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of
some mighty woe.
Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin.
But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either
standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or
heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed,
began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse;
as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead
wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by
and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but,
as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny
deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the
Pequod was only making a passage now; not regularly cruising;
nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were
fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself,
to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one
interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow,
as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm
him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls,
April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the
barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send
forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted
visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful
allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint
blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon
flowered out in a smile.
 XXIX

E A ;T H ,S

Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod
now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea,
almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of
the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing,
redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped
up—flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights
seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in
lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the
golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, ’twas hard to choose
between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the
witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells
and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the
soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then,
memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless
twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought
on Ahab’s texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less
man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-
commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to
visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of
late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking,
his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks.
“It feels like going down into one’s tomb,”—he would mutter to
himself—“for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow
scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth.”
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night
were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band
below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the
sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some
cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their
slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin
to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-
scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the iron
banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of
humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained
from patrolling the quarterdeck; because to his wearied mates,
seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have
been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their
dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once,
the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with
heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to
mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a
certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain
Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay;
but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something
indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion
into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.
“Am I a cannonball, Stubb,” said Ahab, “that thou wouldst wad me
that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly
grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the
filling one at last.—Down, dog, and kennel!”
Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so
suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then
said excitedly, “I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but
less than half like it, sir.”
“Avast!” gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving
away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
“No, sir; not yet,” said Stubb, emboldened, “I will not tamely be
called a dog, sir.”
 “Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and
begone, or I’ll clear the world of thee!”
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing
terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
“I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,”
muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle.
“It’s very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don’t well know
whether to go back and strike him, or—what’s that?—down here on
my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in
me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It’s queer; very
queer; and he’s queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he’s about the
queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!—
his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad? Anyway there’s something on
his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it
cracks. He ain’t in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of
the twenty-four; and he don’t sleep then. Didn’t that Dough-Boy, the
steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man’s
hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at
the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort
of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old
man! I guess he’s got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it’s
a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say—worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I
don’t know what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He’s full
of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every night,
as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what’s that for, I should like to
know? Who’s made appointments with him in the hold? Ain’t that
queer, now? But there’s no telling, it’s the old game—Here goes for a
snooze. Damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while to be born into the
world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that’s
about the first thing babies do, and that’s a sort of queer, too. Damn
me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em. But that’s against
my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep
when you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again. But how’s that?
didn’t he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey,
and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as well have
kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn’t
observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It
flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil’s the matter with me? I
don’t stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort
of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been
dreaming, though—How? how? how?—but the only way’s to stash it;
so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I’ll see how this
plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight.”
 XXX

T P

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a
sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his
pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on
the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings
were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How
could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without
bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank,
and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from
his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his
face. “How now,” he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, “this
smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if
thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not
pleasuring—aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while;
to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying
whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What
business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for
sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs,
not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I’ll smoke no more—”
 He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the
waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
 XXXI

Q M

Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old
man’s ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried
to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off!
And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool,
kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you know
how curious all dreams are—through all this rage that I was in, I
somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not
much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. ‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘what’s the
row? It’s not a real leg, only a false leg.’ And there’s a mighty
difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That’s what
makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear
than a blow from a cane. The living member—that makes the living
insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while, mind, while I
was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid—so
confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was
thinking to myself, ‘what’s his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone
cane. Yes,’ thinks I, ‘it was only a playful cudgelling—in fact, only a
whaleboning that he gave me—not a base kick. Besides,’ thinks I,
‘look at it once; why, the end of it—the foot part—what a small sort of
end it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked me, there’s a
devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to a point only.’
But now comes the greatest joke of the dream, Flask. While I was
battering away at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old merman,
with a hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me
round. ‘What are you ’bout?’ says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened.
Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. ‘What
am I about?’ says I at last. ‘And what business is that of yours, I
should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do you want a kick?’ By the
lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his stern
to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a
clout—what do you think, I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his stern
was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second
thoughts, ‘I guess I won’t kick you, old fellow.’ ‘Wise Stubb,’ said he,
‘wise Stubb;’ and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his
own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn’t going to stop saying
over his ‘wise Stubb, wise Stubb,’ I thought I might as well fall to
kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for it,
when he roared out, ‘Stop that kicking!’ ‘Halloa,’ says I, ‘what’s the
matter now, old fellow?’ ‘Look ye here,’ says he; ‘let’s argue the
insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I—‘right
here it was.’ ‘Very good,’ says he—‘he used his ivory leg, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise Stubb, what have you
to complain of? Didn’t he kick with right good will? it wasn’t a
common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were kicked
by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It’s an honor; I
consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest
lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-
knights of; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old
Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; be kicked by
him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you
can’t help yourself, wise Stubb. Don’t you see that pyramid?’ With
that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to
swim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my
hammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask?”
“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho’.”
“May be; may be. But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask. D’ye see
Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best
thing you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to
him, whatever he says. Halloa! What’s that he shouts? Hark!”
“Masthead, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales
hereabouts! If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!”
“What do you think of that now, Flask? ain’t there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh? A white whale—did ye mark that,
man? Look ye—there’s something special in the wind. Stand by for
it, Flask. Ahab has that that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he
comes this way.”
 XXXII

Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be
lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass;
ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled
hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter
almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of
the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts
which are to follow.
It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad
genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task.
The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid
down.
“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology,” says Captain Scoresby, AD .
“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry
as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and
families. … Utter confusion exists among the historians of this
animal” (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, AD .
“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.”
“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field
strewn with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to
torture us naturalists.”
 Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and
Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though
of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and
so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales.
Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and
seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over
a few:—The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir
Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby;
Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacépède; Bonneterre;
Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen;
Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam
Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate
generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts
will show.
Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following
Owen ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real
professional harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby.
On the separate subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the
best existing authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing
of the great sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale
is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the
Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is
not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the
long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till
some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous or utterly
unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still
reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this
usurpation has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the
leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you
that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was to them the
monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a new
proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all—the
Greenland whale is deposed—the great sperm whale now reigneth!
There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the
living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale’s and
Bennett’s; both in their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-
ships, and both exact and reliable men. The original matter touching
the sperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small;
but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined
to scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific
or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other
hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.
Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the
present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I
hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete;
because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that
very reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute
anatomical description of the various species, or—in this place at
least—to much of any description. My object here is simply to project
the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not
the builder.
But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-
Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after
them; to have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations,
ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I
that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful
tauntings in Job might well appal me. “Will he (the leviathan) make a
covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain!” But I have
swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do
with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try.
There are some preliminaries to settle.
First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it
still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of
Nature, AD , Linnaeus declares, “I hereby separate the whales
from the fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the
year , sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against
Linnaeus’s express edict, were still found dividing the possession of
the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the
whales from the waters, he states as follows: “On account of their
warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow
ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex
lege naturae jure meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends
Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of
mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the
reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely
hinted they were humbug.
Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old
fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah
to back me. This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what
internal respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above,
Linnaeus has given you those items. But in brief, they are these:
lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold
blooded.
Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so
as conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then,
a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him.
However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded
meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not
a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is
still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost anyone must have
noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a
vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail,
though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal
position.
By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means
exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto
identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on
the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded
as alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish
must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come
the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three
primary (subdivisible into ), and these shall
comprehend them all, both small and large.
I, the F W ; II, the O W ; III, the D
W .
 As the type of the F I present the “Sperm Whale”; of the
O , the “Grampus”; of the D , the “Porpoise.”
F . Among these I here include the following chapters:—I,
The “Sperm Whale”; II, the “Right Whale”; III, the “Finback Whale”;
IV, the “Humpbacked Whale”; V, the “Razor Back Whale”; VI, the
“Sulphur Bottom Whale.”
B I (“Folio”), I (“Sperm Whale”).—This whale,
among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and
the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present
Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the
Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest
inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to
encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most
valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that
valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will,
in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name
that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some
centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in
his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally
obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would
seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature
identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland or
Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that
quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of
the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment
and medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you
nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course
of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known, its original
name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value
by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the
appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale
from which this spermaceti was really derived.
B I (“Folio”), II (“Right Whale”).—In one respect this
is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly
hunted by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone
or baleen; and the oil specially known as “whale oil,” an inferior
article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately
designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the Greenland
Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right
Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the
species thus multitudinously baptised. What then is the whale, which
I include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great
Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the
English whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French whalemen;
the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more
than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in
the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have
long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor’
West Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by
them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of
the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely
agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a
single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It
is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive
differences, that some departments of natural history become so
repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere treated of at
some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm whale.
B I (“Folio”), III (“Finback”).—Under this head I
reckon a monster which, by the various names of Finback, Tall-
Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is
commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by
passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In
the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Finback resembles the
right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour,
approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect,
formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand
distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is
often a conspicuous object. This fin is some three or four feet long,
growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an angular
shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest
other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be
seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately
calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-
like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it
may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat
resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on it. On
that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The Finback is not
gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters.
Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in
the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet
rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with
such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all
present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and
unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon
his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the Finback is
sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic species
denominated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen. Of
these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several
varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed
whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales;
under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen’s
names for a few sorts.
In connection with this appellative of “Whalebone whales,” it is of
great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may
be convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is
in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded
upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that
those marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted
to afford the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other
detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents.
How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are things
whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of
whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their
structure in other and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm
whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the
similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked whale and the
Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the
similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above
mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular
combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an
irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general methodization formed
upon such a basis. On this rock everyone of the whale-naturalists
has split.
But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the
whale, in his anatomy—there, at least, we shall be able to hit the
right classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the
Greenland whale’s anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we
have seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the
Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various
leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as
available to the systematizer as those external ones already
enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the
whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that
way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is
the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To
proceed.
B I (“Folio”), IV (“Hump Back”).—This whale is often
seen on the northern American coast. He has been frequently
captured there, and towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him
like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale.
At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently
distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump though a
smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the
most gamesome and lighthearted of all the whales, making more gay
foam and white water generally than any other of them.
B I (“Folio”), V (“Razor Back”).—Of this whale little is
known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn.
Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers.
Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his
back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more
of him, nor does anybody else.
B I (“Folio”), VI (“Sulphur Bottom”).—Another retiring
gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along
the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom
seen; at least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern
seas, and then always at too great a distance to study his
countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with rope-
walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can
say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.
Thus ends B I (“Folio”), and now begins B II (“Octavo”).
O . —These embrace the whales of middling magnitude,
among which present may be numbered:—I, the “Grampus”; II, the
“Black Fish”; III, the “Narwhale”; IV, the “Thrasher”; V, the “Killer.”
B II (“Octavo”), I (“Grampus”).—Though this fish,
whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a
proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is
he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the
grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have
recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from
fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions
round the waist. He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted,
though his oil is considerable in quantity, and pretty good for light. By
some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory of the
advance of the great sperm whale.
B II (“Octavo”), II (“Black Fish”).—I give the popular
fishermen’s names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.
Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say
so, and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-
called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So,
call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known,
and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are
curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on
his face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in
length. He is found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of
showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something
like a Roman nose. When not more profitably employed, the sperm
whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the
supply of cheap oil for domestic employment—as some frugal
housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by
themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though
their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you
upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
 B II (“Octavo”), III (“Narwhale”), that is, Nostril
whale.—Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I
suppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a
peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its
horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to
fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk,
growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the
horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an ill
effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a
clumsy left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or
lance answers, it would be hard to say. It does not seem to be used
like the blade of the swordfish and billfish; though some sailors tell
me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom
of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer;
for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it
sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But you
cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion
is, that however this one-sided horn may really be used by the
Narwhale—however that may be—it would certainly be very
convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I
have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and the
Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism
to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From
certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same sea-
unicorn’s horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote
against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense
prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the
same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into
hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great
curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return
from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled
hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship
sailed down the Thames; “when Sir Martin returned from that
voyage,” saith Black Letter, “on bended knees he presented to her
highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long
period after hung in the castle at Windsor.” An Irish author avers that
the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her
highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn
nature.
The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of
black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it,
and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
B II (“Octavo”), IV (“Killer”).—Of this whale little is
precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the
professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I
should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very
savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio
whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is
worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort
of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon
this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers,
on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.
B II (“Octavo”), V (“Thrasher”).—This gentleman is
famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes.
He mounts the Folio whale’s back, and as he swims, he works his
passage by flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the
world by a similar process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of
the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends B II (“Octavo”), and begins B III
(“Duodecimo”).
D .—These include the smaller whales. I, The “Huzza
Porpoise”; II, the “Algerine Porpoise”; III, the “Mealymouthed
Porpoise.”
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it
may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding
four or five feet should be marshalled among WHALES—a word,
which, in the popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness.
But the creatures set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly
whales, by the terms of my definition of what a whale is—i.e. a
spouting fish, with a horizontal tail.
B III (“Duodecimo”), I (“Huzza Porpoise”).—This is
the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is
of my own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises,
and something must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus,
because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad
sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July
crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the
mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy
billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the
wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can
withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then
heaven help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A
well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of
good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is
exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and
watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good
eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a porpoise
spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily
discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and
you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.
B III (“Duodecimo”), II (“Algerine Porpoise”).—A
pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is
somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same
general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have
lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured.
B III (“Duodecimo”), III (“Mealymouthed
Porpoise”).—The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the
Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he
has hitherto been designated, is that of the fishers—Right-Whale
Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the
vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the
Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is
of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his back
(most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental
Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though
his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a
boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship’s hull, called the “bright
waist,” that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate
colours, black above and white below. The white comprises part of
his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he
had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean
and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.

Beyond the D , this system does not proceed, inasmuch

as the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all
the Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by
reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their
forecastle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun.
If any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked,
then he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to
his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:—The Bottle-Nose
Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape
Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale;
the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the
Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old
English authorities, there might be quoted other lists of uncertain
whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit them
as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for
mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be
here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have
kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the
crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small
erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true
ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever
completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the
draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
 XXXIII

T S

Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a

place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on shipboard,
arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class
unknown of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is
evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two
centuries and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not
wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided
between him and an officer called the Specksnyder. Literally this
word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent
to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain’s authority was
restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel;
while over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the
Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British
Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old
Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged.
At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is
but one of the captain’s more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as
upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling
voyage largely depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not
only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances
(night watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship’s deck
is also his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands,
that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast,
and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior;
though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea,
is this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain;
and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are
lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their
meals in the captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly
communicating with it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the
longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils
of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all
of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages,
but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance,
intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases
tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen
generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian
family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live
together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the
quarterdeck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done
away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see
the skipper parading his quarterdeck with an elated grandeur not
surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much
outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the
shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the
least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the
only homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous
obedience; though he required no man to remove the shoes from his
feet ere stepping upon the quarterdeck; and though there were times
when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events
hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms,
whether of condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even
Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms
and usages of the sea.
 Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind
those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;
incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than
they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism
of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained
unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual
superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available
supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external
arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry
and base. This it is, that forever keeps God’s true princes of the
Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that
this air can give, to those men who become famous more through
their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine
Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of
the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme
political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even
to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the
case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire
encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased
before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist
who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and
direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as
the one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors
and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be
grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived
for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!
 XXXIV

T C -T

It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-

bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and
master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an
observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on
the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose
on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to
the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his
menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizzen shrouds, he
swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice,
saying, “Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,” disappears into the cabin.
When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and
Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is
seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns
along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says,
with some touch of pleasantness, “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends
the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and
then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right
with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and
with a rapid “Dinner, Mr. Flask,” follows after his predecessors.
But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the
quarterdeck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for,
tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking
off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a
hornpipe right over the Grand Turk’s head; and then, by a dexterous
sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizzentop for a shelf, he goes
down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,
reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a
new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask
enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the
Slave.
It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck
some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and
defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those
very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in
that same commander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not
to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the
head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical.
Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been
Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not
haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some
touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and
intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited
guests, that man’s unchallenged power and dominion of individual
influence for the time; that man’s royalty of state transcends
Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once
dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery
of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this
consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master,
then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of
sea-life just mentioned.
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-
lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still
deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be
served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab,
there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one
mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife, as he
carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world
they would have profaned that moment with the slightest
observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And
when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef
was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards him,
the mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it
tenderly; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against
the plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without
circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where
the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial
Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten
in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation;
only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb,
when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little
Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary family
party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have
been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself,
this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first
degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more
would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world;
nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had
Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as
noticed it. Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter.
Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on
account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he
deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter
was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern;
however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and
Flask is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask’s dinner was
badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start
of him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If
Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but
a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his
repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than
three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to
precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted
in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer,
from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise
than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve
his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction,
thought Flask, have forever departed from my stomach. I am an
officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the
forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There’s the
fruits of promotion now; there’s the vanity of glory: there’s the
insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of the
Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask’s official capacity, all
that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go
aft at dinnertime, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin skylight,
sitting silly and dumbfoundered before awful Ahab.
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the
first table in the Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in
inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather
was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then
the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its
residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants’ hall of
the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire carefree
license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior
fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed
afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers
chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report to it.
They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day
loading with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and
Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast,
often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-
junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively
about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then
Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a
fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a
sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up
bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher,
while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary
to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of
little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt
baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of
the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of
these three savages, Dough-Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-
quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all
things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his
little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the
blinds of its door, till all was over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego,
opposing his filed teeth to the Indian’s: crosswise to them, Daggoo
seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-
plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal
limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an African
elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro
was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly
possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep
up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a
person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep
of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils
snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are
giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric
smack of the lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so much so, that
the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of
teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego
singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be
picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery
hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor
did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for
their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at
dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating
sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could
he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly
have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas!
Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals.
Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time,
though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise
and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial
bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimitars in
scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally
lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they
were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before
sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar
quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American
whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by
rights the ship’s cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy
alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in
real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more
properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when
they did enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a house;
turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as
a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much
hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was
inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of
Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the
last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring
and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying
himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his
own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut
up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of
its gloom!
 XXXV

T M

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the
other seamen my first masthead came round.
In most American whalemen the mastheads are manned almost
simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she
may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her
proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years’
voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her—say,
an empty vial even—then, her mastheads are kept manned to the
last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port,
does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale
more.
Now, as the business of standing mastheads, ashore or afloat, is a
very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate
here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mastheads were the old
Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.
For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless,
by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest masthead in all Asia,
or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great
stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the
dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel
builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a
nation of masthead standers, is an assertion based upon the general
belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for
astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar
stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with
prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were
wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the
lookouts of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing
in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times,
who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole
latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the
ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a
dauntless stander-of-mastheads; who was not to be driven from his
place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing
everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern
standers-of-mastheads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron,
and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale,
are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon
discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top
of the column of Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one
hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks
below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great
Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering mainmast in
Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’ pillars, his column marks that
point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral
Nelson, also, on a capstan of gunmetal, stands his masthead in
Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London
smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there
is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon,
nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly
invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon
which they gaze; however it may be surmised, that their spirits
penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what
shoals and what rocks must be shunned.
It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the masthead
standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so,
is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian
of Nantucket, stands accoun