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CHAPTER 56

Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of
Whaling Scenes.


In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly
tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them
which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern,
especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc.  But I
pass that matter by.

I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's.  In the
previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to.  Huggins's
is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best.
All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle
figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping
his second chapter.  His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales,
though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some
parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like in its general effect.
Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J.  Ross Browne are pretty
correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved.  That is not
his fault though.

Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but
they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression.
He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad
deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well
done, that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living
whale as seen by his living hunters.

But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to
be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery.  Respectively, they
represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale.  In the first
engraving a noble Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might,
just risen beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and
bearing high in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the
stoven planks.  The prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is
drawn just balancing upon the monster's spine; and standing in that
prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time, you behold an
oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale,
and in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice.  The action of the
whole thing is wonderfully good and true.  The half-emptied line-tub
floats on the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons
obliquely bob in it; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered
about the whale in contrasting expressions of affright; while in the
black stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon the scene.
Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of this
whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw
so good a one.

In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside
the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his
black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the
Patagonian cliffs.  His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so
that from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there
must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below.  Sea fowls
are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and
maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent
back.  And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing
through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake,
and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught
nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.  Thus, the foreground is
all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is
the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of
the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered
fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole
inserted into his spout-hole.

Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not.  But my life for it
he was either practically conversant with his subject, or else
marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman.  The French are
the lads for painting action.  Go and gaze upon all the paintings of
Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and
breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at
Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash
of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors
dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs?  Not wholly unworthy of a
place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and
engravings they have of their whaling scenes.  With not one tenth of
England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of
that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations
with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real
spirit of the whale hunt.  For the most part, the English and
American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the
mechanical outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the
whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is
about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid.  Even
Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff
full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of
classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels;
and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the
inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified
Arctic snow crystals.  I mean no disparagement to the excellent
voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it
was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a
sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two
other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself "H.  Durand."  One of them, though not precisely adapted to
our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts.
It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French
whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on
board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the
palms in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless
air.  The effect is very fine, when considered with reference to its
presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of
oriental repose.  The other engraving is quite a different affair:
the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of the
Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the
act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a
boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about
giving chase to whales in the distance.  The harpoons and lances lie
levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its
hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands
half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse.  From the ship,
the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the
smoke over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud,
rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the
activity of the excited seamen.



CHAPTER 57

Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in
Mountains; in Stars.


On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen
a crippled beggar (or KEDGER, as the sailors say) holding a painted
board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his
leg.  There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats
(presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity)
is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale.  Any time these
ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and
exhibited that stump to an incredulous world.  But the time of his
justification has now come.  His three whales are as good whales as
were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as
unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western clearings.
But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech
does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully
contemplating his own amputation.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and
Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm
Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone,
and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the
numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of
the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure.  Some of them
have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially
intended for the skrimshandering business.  But, in general, they
toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent
tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in
the way of a mariner's fancy.

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a
man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called
savagery.  Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois.
I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the
Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.

Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his
domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry.  An ancient
Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and
elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as
a Latin lexicon.  For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a
shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been
achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application.

As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage.  With
the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth,
of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone
sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its
maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full
of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old
Dutch savage, Albert Durer.

Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs
of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the
forecastles of American whalers.  Some of them are done with much
accuracy.

At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales
hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door.  When the porter
is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best.  But these knocking
whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays.  On the spires of
some old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed
there for weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that
are to all intents and purposes so labelled with "HANDS OFF!" you
cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.

In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of
the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks
against them in a surf of green surges.

Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is
continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from
some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the
profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges.  But you must
be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but
if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and
take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first
stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills,
that your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious
re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita,
though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera
chronicled them.

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace
out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them;
as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw
armies locked in battle among the clouds.  Thus at the North have I
chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the
bright points that first defined him to me.  And beneath the
effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined
the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of
Hydrus and the Flying Fish.

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons
for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies,
to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents
really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!



CHAPTER 58

Brit.


Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast
meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right
Whale largely feeds.  For leagues and leagues it undulated round us,
so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and
golden wheat.

On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure
from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing
fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that
manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip.

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so
these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and
leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*


*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the "Brazil Banks" does
not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there
being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.


But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at
all reminded one of mowers.  Seen from the mast-heads, especially
when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black
forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else.
And as in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a
distance will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants
without knowing them to be such, taking them for bare, blackened
elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for the first
time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea.  And even
when recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very
hard really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can
possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that
lives in a dog or a horse.

Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore.  For
though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the
land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general
view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties,
where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in
disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog?  The
accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear
comparative analogy to him.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra
incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to
discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the
most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and
indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who
have gone upon the waters; though but a moment's consideration will
teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and
however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may
augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea
will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest
frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of
these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness
of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a
widow.  That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the
wrecked ships of last year.  Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is
not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other?  Preternatural terrors rested upon the
Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground
opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever
sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships
and crews.

But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but
it is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host
who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself
hath spawned.  Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle
overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales
against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split
wrecks of ships.  No mercy, no power but its own controls it.
Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider,
the masterless ocean overruns the globe.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures
glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously
hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.  Consider also the
devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless
tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks.
Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose
creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the
world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most
docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you
not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?  For as this
appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man
there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed
by all the horrors of the half known life.  God keep thee!  Push not
off from that isle, thou canst never return!


CHAPTER 59

Squid.


Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on
her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air
impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three
tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three
mild palms on a plain.  And still, at wide intervals in the silvery
night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.

But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost
preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any
stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed
a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the
slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this
profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by
Daggoo from the main-mast-head.

In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher
and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed
before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills.  Thus
glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank.  Then once
more arose, and silently gleamed.  It seemed not a whale; and yet is
this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo.  Again the phantom went down, but on
re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every
man from his nod, the negro yelled out--"There! there again! there
she breaches! right ahead!  The White Whale, the White Whale!"

Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time
the bees rush to the boughs.  Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab
stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in
readiness to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance
in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm
of Daggoo.

Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect
the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the
particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his
eagerness betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner
did he distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick
intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering.

The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey.  Soon it went down, and while,
with oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the
same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose.  Almost forgetting
for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most
wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to
mankind.  A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a
glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long
arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest
of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within
reach.  No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable
token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the
billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck
still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild
voice exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him,
than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!"

"What was it, Sir?" said Flask.

"The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld,
and returned to their ports to tell of it."

But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the
vessel; the rest as silently following.

Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected
with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it
being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it
with portentousness.  So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all
of them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet
very few of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its
true nature and form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to
the sperm whale his only food.  For though other species of whales
find their food above water, and may be seen by man in the act of
feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones
below the surface; and only by inference is it that any one can tell
of what, precisely, that food consists.  At times, when closely
pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms
of the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty
feet in length.  They fancy that the monster to which these arms
belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that
the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in
order to attack and tear it.

There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid.  The manner in
which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking,
with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two
correspond.  But much abatement is necessary with respect to the
incredible bulk he assigns it.

By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of
cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would
seem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.



CHAPTER 60

The Line.


With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well
as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere
presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible
whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp,
slightly vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of
ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp
more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more
convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the
ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close
coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are
beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's
durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and
gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though
not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and
elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things),
is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp.  Hemp is a
dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a
golden-haired Circassian to behold.

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness.  At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is.  By
experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one
hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain
nearly equal to three tons.  In length, the common sperm whale-line
measures something over two hundred fathoms.  Towards the stern of
the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the
worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round,
cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of
concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart," or
minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese.  As the least
tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is
used in stowing the line in its tub.  Some harpooneers will consume
almost an entire morning in this business, carrying the line high
aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub,
so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and
twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line
being continuously coiled in both tubs.  There is some advantage in
this; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily
into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American
tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes
a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch
in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice,
which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very
much of a concentrated one.  When the painted canvas cover is clapped
on the American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off
with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.
This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts.
First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional
line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound
so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally
attached to the harpoon.  In these instances, the whale of course is
shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the
other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its
consort.  Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common
safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached
to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end
almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not
stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down
after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no
town-crier would ever find her again.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is
again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting
crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as
they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks
or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden
pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping
out.  From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and
is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms
(called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues
its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then
attached to the short-warp--the rope which is immediately connected
with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes
through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction.  All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the
timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the
deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs.  Nor can any son
of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen
intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him
that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these
horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot
be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in
his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly.  Yet habit--strange
thing! what cannot habit accomplish?--Gayer sallies, more merry
mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over
your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of
the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six
burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew
pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you
may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
those repeated whaling disasters--some few of which are casually
chronicled--of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by
the line, and lost.  For, when the line is darting out, to be seated
then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold
whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and
shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.  It is worse; for you cannot sit
motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking
like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the
slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and
simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a
Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could
never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm;
and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the
fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose
of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before
being brought into actual play--this is a thing which carries more of
true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair.  But why
say more?  All men live enveloped in whale-lines.  All are born with
halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift,
sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle,
ever-present perils of life.  And if you be a philosopher, though
seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more
of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.



CHAPTER 61

Stubb Kills a Whale.


If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents,
to Queequeg it was quite a different object.

"When you see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the
bow of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing
special to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the
spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea.  For this part of the
Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen
call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of
porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of
more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the
in-shore ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed
in what seemed an enchanted air.  No resolution could withstand it;
in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went
out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum
will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the
seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy.  So
that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for
every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the
slumbering helmsman.  The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests;
and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the
sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices
my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency
preserved me; with a shock I came back to life.  And lo! close under
our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in
the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy
back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a
mirror.  But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and
anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the whale looked like a
portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon.  But that pipe,
poor whale, was thy last.  As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the
sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into
wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the
vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth
the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted
the sparkling brine into the air.

"Clear away the boats!  Luff!" cried Ahab.  And obeying his own
order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the
spokes.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and
ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the
leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few
ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be
alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man
must speak but in whispers.  So seated like Ontario Indians on the
gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the
calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set.  Presently, as
we thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail
forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower
swallowed up.

"There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed
by Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a
respite was granted.  After the full interval of his sounding had
elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the
smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb
counted upon the honour of the capture.  It was obvious, now, that the
whale had at length become aware of his pursuers.  All silence of
cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.  Paddles were dropped,
and oars came loudly into play.  And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb
cheered on his crew to the assault.

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish.  All alive to his
jeopardy, he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting
from the mad yeast which he brewed.*


*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance
the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists.
Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant
part about him.  So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and
invariably does so when going at his utmost speed.  Besides, such is
the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head, and such the
tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by obliquely
elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself from
a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York
pilot-boat.


"Start her, start her, my men!  Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty
of time--but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all,"
cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke.  "Start her, now;
give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego.  Start her, Tash, my
boy--start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool--cucumbers is the
word--easy, easy--only start her like grim death and grinning devils,
and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves,
boys--that's all.  Start her!"

"Woo-hoo!  Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some
old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild.
"Kee-hee!  Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards
on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.

"Ka-la!  Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a
mouthful of Grenadier's steak.  And thus with oars and yells the
keels cut the sea.  Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the
van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the
smoke from his mouth.  Like desperadoes they tugged and they
strained, till the welcome cry was heard--"Stand up, Tashtego!--give
it to him!"  The harpoon was hurled.  "Stern all!"  The oarsmen
backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing along
every one of their wrists.  It was the magical line.  An instant
before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round
the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a
hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes
from his pipe.  As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so
also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through
and through both of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or
squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had
accidentally dropped.  It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged
sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it
out of your clutch.

"Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him
seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into
it.*  More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place.
The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins.
Stubb and Tashtego here changed places--stem for stern--a staggering
business truly in that rocking commotion.


*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be
stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the
running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or
bailer, is set apart for that purpose.  Your hat, however, is the
most convenient.


From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part
of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you
would have thought the craft had two keels--one cleaving the water,
the other the air--as the boat churned on through both opposing
elements at once.  A continual cascade played at the bows; a
ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion
from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking
craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea.  Thus they
rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent
being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the
steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his
centre of gravity.  Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as
they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened
his flight.

"Haul in--haul in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while
yet the boat was being towed on.  Soon ranging up by his flank,
Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart
after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat
alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow,
and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks
down a hill.  His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood,
which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake.  The
slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back
its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other
like red men.  And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was
agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff
after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart,
hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb
straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the
gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.

"Pull up--pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale
relaxed in his wrath.  "Pull up!--close to!" and the boat ranged
along the fish's flank.  When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly
churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there,
carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel
after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which
he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out.  But that gold
watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish.  And now it is
struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing
called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood,
overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the
imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to
struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the
day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into
view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and
contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized
respirations.  At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it
had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and
falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into
the sea.  His heart had burst!

"He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.

"Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth,
Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment,
stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.



CHAPTER 62

The Dart.


A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat
pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as
temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the
foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar.  Now it needs a
strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for
often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be
flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet.  But however
prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is expected to
pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is expected to
set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only by
incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations;
and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while
all the other muscles are strained and half started--what that is
none know but those who have tried it.  For one, I cannot bawl very
heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same time.  In this
straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at
once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry--"Stand up, and
give it to him!"  He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round
on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with
what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into
the whale.  No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body,
that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful;
no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and
disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their
blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are
absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship
owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer
that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how
can you expect to find it there when most wanted!

Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical
instant, that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and
harpooneer likewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent
jeopardy of themselves and every one else.  It is then they change
places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the little craft,
takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both
foolish and unnecessary.  The headsman should stay in the bows from
first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no
rowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances
obvious to any fisherman.  I know that this would sometimes involve a
slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the
harpooneer that has caused them.

To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of
this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not
from out of toil.



CHAPTER 63

The Crotch.


Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs.  So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters.

The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent
mention.  It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in
length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale
near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden
extremity of the harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly
projects from the prow.  Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to
its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as a
backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall.  It is customary to have
two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first
and second irons.

But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the
coming drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold.
It is a doubling of the chances.  But it very often happens that
owing to the instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale
upon receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the
harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the
second iron into him.  Nevertheless, as the second iron is already
connected with the line, and the line is running, hence that weapon
must, at all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat,
somehow and somewhere; else the most terrible jeopardy would involve
all hands.  Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in such cases;
the spare coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding chapter) making
this feat, in most instances, prudently practicable.  But this
critical act is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal
casualties.

Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,
skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the
lines, or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all
directions.  Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until
the whale is fairly captured and a corpse.

Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
simultaneously dangling about him.  For, of course, each boat is
supplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the
first one be ineffectually darted without recovery.  All these
particulars are faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to
elucidate several most important, however intricate passages, in
scenes hereafter to be painted.
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