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CHAPTER 51

The Spirit-Spout.


Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off
the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of
the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery
locality, southerly from St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was
seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow.  Lit up by the
moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god
uprising from the sea.  Fedallah first descried this jet.  For of
these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast
head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it
had been day.  And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night,
not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them.  You
may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old
Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the
moon, companions in one sky.  But when, after spending his uniform
interval there for several successive nights without uttering a
single sound; when, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was
heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner
started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the
rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.  "There she blows!"  Had the
trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still
they felt no terror; rather pleasure.  For though it was a most
unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
lowering.

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread.  The
best man in the ship must take the helm.  Then, with every mast-head
manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind.  The strange,
upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the
hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel
like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two
antagonistic influences were struggling in her--one to mount direct
to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal.  And
had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that
in him also two different things were warring.  While his one live
leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb
sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked.
But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like
arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen
that night.  Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second
time.

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some
days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced:
again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it,
once more it disappeared as if it had never been.  And so it served
us night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it.
Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the
case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or
three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be
advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet
seemed for ever alluring us on.

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things
invested the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore
that whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in
however far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was
cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick.  For a time,
there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting
apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in
order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last
in the remotest and most savage seas.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in
which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a
devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas
so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our
vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like
prow.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began
howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas
that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the
blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of
silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this
desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more
dismal than before.

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable
sea-ravens.  And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these
birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time
obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some
drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and
therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves.  And heaved
and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast
tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish
and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye?  Rather Cape Tormentoto, as
called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that
before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this
tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and
these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any
haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon.  But
calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of
feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary
jet would at times be descried.

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates.  In tempestuous times like these, after
everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done
but passively to await the issue of the gale.  Then Captain and crew
become practical fatalists.  So, with his ivory leg inserted into its
accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for
hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very
eyelashes together.  Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part
of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to
guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a
loosened belt.  Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as
if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through
all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves.  By night
the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean
prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast.  Even when wearied nature seemed
demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock.
Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night
going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him
with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the
rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time
before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and
coat.  On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of
tides and currents which have previously been spoken of.  His lantern
swung from his tightly clenched hand.  Though the body was erect, the
head was thrown back so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the
needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling.*


*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to
the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself
of the course of the ship.


Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.



CHAPTER 52

The Albatross.


South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good
cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney
(Albatross) by name.  As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at
the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to
a tyro in the far ocean fisheries--a whaler at sea, and long absent
from home.

As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus.  All down her sides, this spectral
appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all
her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees
furred over with hoar-frost.  Only her lower sails were set.  A wild
sight it was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three
mast-heads.  They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and
bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years of
cruising.  Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and
swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided
close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each
other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one
ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen,
mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.

"Ship ahoy!  Have ye seen the White Whale?"

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in
the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his
hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove
to make himself heard without it.  Meantime his ship was still
increasing the distance between.  While in various silent ways
the seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of this
ominous incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale's name
to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though
he would have lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the
threatening wind forbade.  But taking advantage of his windward
position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect that
the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he
loudly hailed--"Ahoy there!  This is the Pequod, bound round the
world!  Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean!
and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address
them to--"

At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly,
then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small
harmless fish, that for some days before had been placidly swimming
by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged
themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks.  Though in the
course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed
a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings.

"Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the
water.  There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed
more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before
evinced.  But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding
the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old
lion voice,--"Up helm!  Keep her off round the world!"

Round the world!  There is much in that sound to inspire proud
feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct?  Only
through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where
those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could
for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and
strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were
promise in the voyage.  But in pursuit of those far mysteries we
dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time
or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this
round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave
us whelmed.



CHAPTER 53

The Gam.


The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we
had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms.  But even had
this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded
her--judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions--if so it
had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative
answer to the question he put.  For, as it eventually turned out, he
cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger
captain, except he could contribute some of that information he so
absorbingly sought.  But all this might remain inadequately
estimated, were not something said here of the peculiar usages of
whaling-vessels when meeting each other in foreign seas, and
especially on a common cruising-ground.

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering
each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of
them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a
moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a
while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon
the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two
whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth--off
lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more
natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not
only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and
sociable contact.  And especially would this seem to be a matter of
course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose
captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things
to talk about.

For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers
of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and
thumb-worn files.  And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound
ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the
cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost
importance to her.  And in degree, all this will hold true concerning
whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the cruising-ground
itself, even though they are equally long absent from home.  For one
of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and
now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the
people of the ship she now meets.  Besides, they would exchange the
whaling news, and have an agreeable chat.  For not only would they
meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the
peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually
shared privations and perils.

Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
with Americans and English.  Though, to be sure, from the small
number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and
when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between
them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he
does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself.  Besides,
the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan
superiority over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean
Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of
sea-peasant.  But where this superiority in the English whalemen
does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees
in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English,
collectively, in ten years.  But this is a harmless little foible in
the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much
to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles
himself.

So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so.  Whereas,
some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic,
will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of
recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a
brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in
finical criticism upon each other's rig.  As for Men-of-War, when
they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of
silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there
does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly
love about it at all.  As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are
in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as
possible.  And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's
cross-bones, the first hail is--"How many skulls?"--the same way that
whalers hail--"How many barrels?"  And that question once answered,
pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on
both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous
likenesses.

But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler!  What does the whaler do when she meets another
whaler in any sort of decent weather?  She has a "GAM," a thing so
utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name
even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it,
and repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and
such like pretty exclamations.  Why it is that all Merchant-seamen,
and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors,
cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a
question it would be hard to answer.  Because, in the case of
pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs
has any peculiar glory about it.  It sometimes ends in uncommon
elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows.  And besides, when a man
is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his
superior altitude.  Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be
high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no
solid basis to stand on.

But what is a GAM?  You might wear out your index-finger running up
and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word.  Dr.
Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not
hold it.  Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many
years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born
Yankees.  Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be
incorporated into the Lexicon.  With that view, let me learnedly
define it.

GAM.  NOUN--A SOCIAL MEETING OF TWO (OR MORE) WHALESHIPS, GENERALLY
ON A CRUISING-GROUND; WHEN, AFTER EXCHANGING HAILS, THEY EXCHANGE
VISITS BY BOATS' CREWS; THE TWO CAPTAINS REMAINING, FOR THE TIME, ON
BOARD OF ONE SHIP, AND THE TWO CHIEF MATES ON THE OTHER.

There is another little item about Gamming which must not be
forgotten here.  All professions have their own little peculiarities
of detail; so has the whale fishery.  In a pirate, man-of-war, or
slave ship, when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always
sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat
there, and often steers himself with a pretty little milliner's
tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons.  But the whale-boat has
no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all.
High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water
on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs.  And as for a
tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and
therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew must leave the ship,
and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number, that
subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain,
having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing
like a pine tree.  And often you will notice that being conscious of
the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from the sides of
the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the importance
of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs.  Nor is this any
very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting steering
oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-oar
reciprocating by rapping his knees in front.  He is thus completely
wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by
settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of
the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of
foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth.  Merely make a
spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up.  Then,
again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes,
it would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen
steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything
with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command,
he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps
being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for
ballast.  Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well
authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an
uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say--to seize
hold of the nearest oarsman's hair, and hold on there like grim
death.
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