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CHAPTER 35

The Mast-Head.


It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with
the other seamen my first mast-head came round.

In most American whalemen the mast-heads 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 mast-heads 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 mast-heads, 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 mast-heads 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
mast-head 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 mast-head 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 look-outs 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-mast-heads; 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-mast-heads 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 main-mast 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 gun-metal, stands his mast-head 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 mast-head
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 accountable.  The worthy Obed tells
us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were
regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island
erected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs
ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in
a hen-house.  A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay
whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to
the ready-manned boats nigh the beach.  But this custom has now
become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a
whale-ship at sea.  The three mast-heads are kept manned from
sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the
helm), and relieving each other every two hours.  In the serene
weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay,
to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.  There you stand, a
hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if
the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your
legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships
once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes.
There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing
ruffled but the waves.  The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy
trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor.  For the most
part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests
you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling
accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary
excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt
securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of
what you shall have for dinner--for all your meals for three years
and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is
immutable.

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at
the mast-head would amount to several entire months.  And it is much
to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a
portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly
destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or
adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains
to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or
any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men
temporarily isolate themselves.  Your most usual point of perch is
the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin
parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant
cross-trees.  Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about
as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns.  To be sure, in cold
weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a
watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more
of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of
its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even
move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an
ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat
is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional
skin encasing you.  You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in
your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of your
watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of
a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents
or pulpits, called CROW'S-NESTS, in which the look-outs of a
Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the
frozen seas.  In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled
"A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and
incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of
Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads
are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then
recently invented CROW'S-NEST of the Glacier, which was the name of
Captain Sleet's good craft.  He called it the SLEET'S CROW'S-NEST, in
honour of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and
free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call
our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original
inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after
ourselves any other apparatus we may beget.  In shape, the Sleet's
crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open
above, however, where it is furnished with a movable side-screen to
keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.  Being fixed on the
summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in
the bottom.  On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship,
is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas,
comforters, and coats.  In front is a leather rack, in which to keep
your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences.  When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in
this crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with
him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot,
for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea
unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at
them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot
down upon them is a very different thing.  Now, it was plainly a
labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the
little detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so
enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very
scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a
small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the
errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all
binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of
the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to
there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I
say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here,
yet, for all his learned "binnacle deviations," "azimuth compass
observations," and "approximate errors," he knows very well, Captain
Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic
meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that
well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side
of his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand.  Though, upon the
whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and
learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so
utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and
comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded
head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest
within three or four perches of the pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is
greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those
seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float.  For one, I
used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to
have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find
there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg
over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery
pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept
but sorry guard.  With the problem of the universe revolving in me,
how could I--being left completely to myself at such a
thought-engendering altitude--how could I but lightly hold my
obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, "Keep your
weather eye open, and sing out every time."

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
Nantucket!  Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad
with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness;
and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his
head.  Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before
they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you
ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the
richer.  Nor are these monitions at all unneeded.  For nowadays, the
whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and
absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth,
and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.  Childe Harold not
unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless
disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:--

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!  Ten thousand
blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded
young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling
sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so
hopelessly lost to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret
souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise.  But all in
vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is
imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the
visual nerve?  They have left their opera-glasses at home.

"Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've
been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a
whale yet.  Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up
here."  Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of
them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like
listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded
youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he
loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the
visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind
and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing
that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some
undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive
thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through
it.  In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came;
becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled
Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round
globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a
gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from
the inscrutable tides of God.  But while this sleep, this dream is on
ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your
identity comes back in horror.  Over Descartian vortices you hover.
And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one
half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the
summer sea, no more to rise for ever.  Heed it well, ye Pantheists!



CHAPTER 36

The Quarter-Deck.


(ENTER AHAB: THEN, ALL)


It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one
morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the
cabin-gangway to the deck.  There most sea-captains usually walk at
that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few
turns in the garden.

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his
old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all
over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his
walk.  Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow;
there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints
of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark.  And, so full of
his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at
the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that
thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so
completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward
mould of every outer movement.

"D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's in him
pecks the shell.  'Twill soon be out."

The hours wore on;--Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing
the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.

It drew near the close of day.  Suddenly he came to a halt by the
bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and
with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send
everybody aft.

"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
ship-board except in some extraordinary case.

"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab.  "Mast-heads, there! come down!"

When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and
not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not
unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after
rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among
the crew, started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were
nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck.  With bent head and
half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering
whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask,
that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing
a pedestrian feat.  But this did not last long.  Vehemently pausing,
he cried:--

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of
clubbed voices.

"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so
magnetically thrown them.

"And what do ye next, men?"

"Lower away, and after him!"

"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"

"A dead whale or a stove boat!"

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began
to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that
they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless
questions.

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in
his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly,
almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:--

"All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a
white whale.  Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?"--holding
up a broad bright coin to the sun--"it is a sixteen dollar piece,
men.  D'ye see it?  Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul."

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was
slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if
to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile
lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and
inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of
his vitality in him.

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the
main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold
with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever
of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a
crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with
three holes punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whosoever of
ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my
boys!"

"Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they
hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.

"It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw down the
topmaul: "a white whale.  Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out."

All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even
more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
separately touched by some specific recollection.

"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same
that some call Moby Dick."

"Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab.  "Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?"

"Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?" said
the Gay-Header deliberately.

"And has he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for
a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?"

"And he have one, two, three--oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like
him--him--" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round
and round as though uncorking a bottle--"like him--him--"

"Corkscrew!" cried Ahab, "aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted
and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a
whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after
the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like
a split jib in a squall.  Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye
have seen--Moby Dick--Moby Dick!"

"Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus
far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last
seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder.
"Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick--but it was not Moby Dick
that took off thy leg?"

"Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye,
my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick
that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now.  Aye, aye," he
shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a
heart-stricken moose; "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale
that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!"
Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted
out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the
Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames
before I give him up.  And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to
chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of
earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.  What say ye,
men, will ye splice hands on it, now?  I think ye do look brave."

"Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for
Moby Dick!"

"God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout.  "God bless ye,
men.  Steward! go draw the great measure of grog.  But what's this
long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale?
art not game for Moby Dick?"

"I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too,
Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we
follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance.
How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest
it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket
market."

"Nantucket market!  Hoot!  But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest
a little lower layer.  If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then,
let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!"

"He smites his chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it
rings most vast, but hollow."

"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee
from blindest instinct!  Madness!  To be enraged with a dumb thing,
Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

"Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer.  All visible objects,
man, are but as pasteboard masks.  But in each event--in the living
act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning
thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the
unreasoning mask.  If man will strike, strike through the mask!  How
can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.  Sometimes I
think there's naught beyond.  But 'tis enough.  He tasks me; he heaps
me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice
sinewing it.  That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be
the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak
that hate upon him.  Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the
sun if it insulted me.  For could the sun do that, then could I do
the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy
presiding over all creations.  But not my master, man, is even that
fair play.  Who's over me?  Truth hath no confines.  Take off thine
eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare!  So,
so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow.
But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays
itself.  There are men from whom warm words are small indignity.  I
meant not to incense thee.  Let it go.  Look! see yonder Turkish
cheeks of spotted tawn--living, breathing pictures painted by the
sun.  The Pagan leopards--the unrecking and unworshipping things,
that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they
feel!  The crew, man, the crew!  Are they not one and all with Ahab,
in this matter of the whale?  See Stubb! he laughs!  See yonder
Chilian! he snorts to think of it.  Stand up amid the general
hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!  And what is it?
Reckon it.  'Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for
Starbuck.  What is it more?  From this one poor hunt, then, the best
lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every
foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone?  Ah! constrainings seize
thee; I see! the billow lifts thee!  Speak, but speak!--Aye, aye! thy
silence, then, THAT voices thee.  (ASIDE) Something shot from my
dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs.  Starbuck now is
mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion."

"God keep me!--keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.

But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab
did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from
the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the
cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as
for a moment their hearts sank in.  For again Starbuck's downcast
eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh
died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved
and rolled as before.  Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye
not when ye come?  But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye
shadows!  Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications
of the foregoing things within.  For with little external to
constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still
drive us on.

"The measure! the measure!" cried Ahab.

Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he
ordered them to produce their weapons.  Then ranging them before him
near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three
mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's
company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant
searchingly eyeing every man of his crew.  But those wild eyes met
his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of
their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the
bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.

"Drink and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman.  "The crew alone now drink.  Round with it, round!
Short draughts--long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof.  So,
so; it goes round excellently.  It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye.  Well done; almost drained.  That way it went,
this way it comes.  Hand it me--here's a hollow!  Men, ye seem the
years; so brimming life is gulped and gone.  Steward, refill!

"Attend now, my braves.  I have mustered ye all round this capstan;
and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand
there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may
in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before
me.  O men, you will yet see that--Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies
come not sooner.  Hand it me.  Why, now, this pewter had run brimming
again, were't not thou St. Vitus' imp--away, thou ague!

"Advance, ye mates!  Cross your lances full before me.  Well done!
Let me touch the axis."  So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the
three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so
doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing
intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask.  It seemed as
though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have
shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the
Leyden jar of his own magnetic life.  The three mates quailed before
his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect.  Stubb and Flask looked
sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.

"In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well.  For did ye three but
once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, THAT
had perhaps expired from out me.  Perchance, too, it would have
dropped ye dead.  Perchance ye need it not.  Down lances!  And now,
ye mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen
there--yon three most honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant
harpooneers.  Disdain the task?  What, when the great Pope washes the
feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer?  Oh, my sweet cardinals!
your own condescension, THAT shall bend ye to it.  I do not order ye;
ye will it.  Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"

Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held,
barbs up, before him.

"Stab me not with that keen steel!  Cant them; cant them over! know
ye not the goblet end?  Turn up the socket!  So, so; now, ye
cup-bearers, advance.  The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!"
Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed
the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.

"Now, three to three, ye stand.  Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league.
Ha!  Starbuck! but the deed is done!  Yon ratifying sun now waits to
sit upon it.  Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man
the deathful whaleboat's bow--Death to Moby Dick!  God hunt us all,
if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!"  The long, barbed steel
goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white
whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss.
Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered.  Once more, and finally,
the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when,
waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired
within his cabin.



CHAPTER 37

Sunset.


THE CABIN; BY THE STERN WINDOWS; AHAB SITTING ALONE, AND GAZING OUT.


I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er
I sail.  The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let
them; but first I pass.

Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like
wine.  The gold brow plumbs the blue.  The diver sun--slow dived from
noon--goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless
hill.  Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of
Lombardy.  Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not
its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly
confounds.  'Tis iron--that I know--not gold.  'Tis split, too--that
I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against
the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no
helmet in the most brain-battering fight!

Dry heat upon my brow?  Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly
spurred me, so the sunset soothed.  No more.  This lovely light, it
lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er
enjoy.  Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying
power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst
of Paradise!  Good night--good night! (WAVING HIS HAND, HE MOVES FROM
THE WINDOW.)

'Twas not so hard a task.  I thought to find one stubborn, at the
least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels,
and they revolve.  Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder,
they all stand before me; and I their match.  Oh, hard! that to fire
others, the match itself must needs be wasting!  What I've dared,
I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do!  They think me
mad--Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened!  That
wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!  The prophecy was
that I should be dismembered; and--Aye!  I lost this leg.  I now
prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.  Now, then, be the
prophet and the fulfiller one.  That's more than ye, ye great gods,
ever were.  I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists,
ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!  I will not say as schoolboys
do to bullies--Take some one of your own size; don't pommel ME!  No,
ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but YE have run and hidden.
Come forth from behind your cotton bags!  I have no long gun to
reach ye.  Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can
swerve me.  Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve
yourselves! man has ye there.  Swerve me?  The path to my fixed
purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.
Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under
torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!  Naught's an obstacle, naught's an
angle to the iron way!



CHAPTER 38

Dusk.


BY THE MAINMAST; STARBUCK LEANING AGAINST IT.


My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman!
Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field!
But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me!  I
think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it.
Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with
a cable I have no knife to cut.  Horrible old man!  Who's over him,
he cries;--aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he
lords it over all below!  Oh!  I plainly see my miserable office,--to
obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!  For in
his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.  Yet is
there hope.  Time and tide flow wide.  The hated whale has the round
watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe.
His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside.  I would up
heart, were it not like lead.  But my whole clock's run down; my
heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.


[A BURST OF REVELRY FROM THE FORECASTLE.]


Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of
human mothers in them!  Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea.  The
white whale is their demigorgon.  Hark! the infernal orgies! that
revelry is forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft!  Methinks it
pictures life.  Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay,
embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where
he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of
the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings.  The long
howl thrills me through!  Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch!
Oh, life!  'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to
knowledge,--as wild, untutored things are forced to feed--Oh, life!
'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me!
that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in
me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures!  Stand by
me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!



CHAPTER 39

First Night Watch.

Fore-Top.

(STUBB SOLUS, AND MENDING A BRACE.)


Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--I've been thinking over it
ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence.  Why so?
Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer; and
come what will, one comfort's always left--that unfailing comfort is,
it's all predestinated.  I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but
to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening
felt.  Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too.  I twigged it, knew
it; had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I
clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it.  Well, Stubb, WISE
Stubb--that's my title--well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb?  Here's a
carcase.  I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will,
I'll go to it laughing.  Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your
horribles!  I feel funny.  Fa, la! lirra, skirra!  What's my juicy
little pear at home doing now?  Crying its eyes out?--Giving a party
to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate's
pennant, and so am I--fa, la! lirra, skirra!  Oh--

We'll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.


A brave stave that--who calls?  Mr. Starbuck?  Aye, aye, sir--(ASIDE)
he's my superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken.--Aye, aye,
sir, just through with this job--coming.



CHAPTER 40

Midnight, Forecastle.

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.

(FORESAIL RISES AND DISCOVERS THE WATCH STANDING, LOUNGING, LEANING,
AND LYING IN VARIOUS ATTITUDES, ALL SINGING IN CHORUS.)

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain's commanded.--

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the digestion!  Take a
tonic, follow me!
(SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)

Our captain stood upon the deck,
A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
And by your braces stand,
And we'll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Eight bells there, forward!

2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Avast the chorus!  Eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy?  Strike
the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch.
I've the sort of mouth for that--the hogshead mouth.  So, so,
(THRUSTS HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!
Eight bells there below!  Tumble up!

DUTCH SAILOR.
Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that.  I mark this in
our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as filliping to
others.  We sing; they sleep--aye, lie down there, like ground-tier
butts.  At 'em again!  There, take this copper-pump, and hail 'em
through it.  Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses.  Tell 'em
it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to
judgment.  That's the way--THAT'S it; thy throat ain't spoiled with
eating Amsterdam butter.

FRENCH SAILOR.
Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in
Blanket Bay.  What say ye?  There comes the other watch.  Stand by
all legs!  Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!

PIP.
(SULKY AND SLEEPY)
Don't know where it is.

FRENCH SAILOR.
Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears.  Jig it, men, I say; merry's
the word; hurrah!  Damn me, won't you dance?  Form, now, Indian-file,
and gallop into the double-shuffle?  Throw yourselves!  Legs! legs!

ICELAND SAILOR.
I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste.  I'm
used to ice-floors.  I'm sorry to throw cold water on the subject;
but excuse me.

MALTESE SAILOR.
Me too; where's your girls?  Who but a fool would take his left hand
by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do?  Partners!  I must
have partners!

SICILIAN SAILOR.
Aye; girls and a green!--then I'll hop with ye; yea, turn
grasshopper!

LONG-ISLAND SAILOR.
Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us.  Hoe corn when you
may, say I.  All legs go to harvest soon.  Ah! here comes the music;
now for it!

AZORE SAILOR.
(ASCENDING, AND PITCHING THE TAMBOURINE UP THE SCUTTLE.)
Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount!
Now, boys!
(THE HALF OF THEM DANCE TO THE TAMBOURINE; SOME GO BELOW; SOME SLEEP
OR LIE AMONG THE COILS OF RIGGING.  OATHS A-PLENTY.)

AZORE SAILOR.
(DANCING)
Go it, Pip!  Bang it, bell-boy!  Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it,
bell-boy!  Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!

PIP.
Jinglers, you say?--there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.

CHINA SAILOR.
Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of thyself.


FRENCH SAILOR.
Merry-mad!  Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!  Split
jibs! tear yourselves!

TASHTEGO.
(QUIETLY SMOKING)
That's a white man; he calls that fun: humph!  I save my sweat.

OLD MANX SAILOR.
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are
dancing over.  I'll dance over your grave, I will--that's the
bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
corners.  O Christ! to think of the green navies and the
green-skulled crews!  Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as
you scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it.
Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once.

3D NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Spell oh!--whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a
calm--give us a whiff, Tash.

(THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS.  MEANTIME THE SKY
DARKENS--THE WIND RISES.)

LASCAR SAILOR.
By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon.  The sky-born, high-tide
Ganges turned to wind!  Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!

MALTESE SAILOR.
(RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.)
It's the waves--the snow's caps turn to jig it now.  They'll shake
their tassels soon.  Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go
drown, and chassee with them evermore!  There's naught so sweet on
earth--heaven may not match it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild
bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe,
bursting grapes.

SICILIAN SAILOR.
(RECLINING.)
Tell me not of it!  Hark ye, lad--fleet interlacings of the
limbs--lithe swayings--coyings--flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all
graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come
satiety.  Eh, Pagan? (NUDGING.)

TAHITAN SAILOR.
(RECLINING ON A MAT.)
Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!--the Heeva-Heeva!  Ah! low
veiled, high palmed Tahiti!  I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft
soil has slid!  I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green the first
day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite.  Ah me!--not thou
nor I can bear the change!  How then, if so be transplanted to yon
sky?  Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears,
when they leap down the crags and drown the villages?--The blast! the
blast!  Up, spine, and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS FEET.)

PORTUGUESE SAILOR.
How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side!  Stand by for reefing,
hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go
lunging presently.

DANISH SAILOR.
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest!  Well
done!  The mate there holds ye to it stiffly.  He's no more afraid
than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with
storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!

4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
He has his orders, mind ye that.  I heard old Ahab tell him he must
always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a
pistol--fire your ship right into it!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove!  We are the lads to hunt
him up his whale!

ALL.
Aye! aye!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
How the three pines shake!  Pines are the hardest sort of tree to
live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the
crew's cursed clay.  Steady, helmsman! steady.  This is the sort of
weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.
Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in
the sky--lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.

DAGGOO.
What of that?  Who's afraid of black's afraid of me!  I'm quarried
out of it!

SPANISH SAILOR.
(ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!--the old grudge makes me touchy
(ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of
mankind--devilish dark at that.  No offence.

DAGGOO (GRIMLY).
None.

ST. JAGO'S SAILOR.
That Spaniard's mad or drunk.  But that can't be, or else in his one
case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in working.

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
What's that I saw--lightning?  Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR.
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

DAGGOO (SPRINGING).
Swallow thine, mannikin!  White skin, white liver!

SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM).
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!

ALL.
A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF).
A row a'low, and a row aloft--Gods and men--both brawlers!  Humph!

BELFAST SAILOR.
A row! arrah a row!  The Virgin be blessed, a row!  Plunge in with
ye!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Fair play!  Snatch the Spaniard's knife!  A ring, a ring!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
Ready formed.  There! the ringed horizon.  In that ring Cain struck
Abel.  Sweet work, right work!  No?  Why then, God, mad'st thou the
ring?

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails!  Stand by to reef
topsails!

ALL.
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)


PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS).
Jollies?  Lord help such jollies!  Crish, crash! there goes the
jib-stay!  Blang-whang!  God!  Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal
yard!  It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of
the year!  Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now?  But there they
go, all cursing, and here I don't.  Fine prospects to 'em; they're on
the road to heaven.  Hold on hard!  Jimmini, what a squall!  But
those chaps there are worse yet--they are your white squalls, they.
White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr!  Here have I heard all
their chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but spoken
of once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my
tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him!
Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have
mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men
that have no bowels to feel fear!


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