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CHAPTER 29

Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.


Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now
went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost
perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the
Tropic.  The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing,
redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped
up--flaked up, with rose-water snow.  The starred and stately nights
seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely
pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden
helmeted suns!  For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such
winsome days and such seducing nights.  But all the witcheries of
that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to
the outward world.  Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when
the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals
as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights.  And all these
subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the
less man has to do with aught that looks like death.  Among
sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths
to visit the night-cloaked deck.  It was so with Ahab; only that now,
of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly
speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to
the planks.  "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"--he would
mutter to himself--"for an old captain like me to be descending this
narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."

So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night
were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band
below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the
sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some
cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their
slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin
to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the
cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the
iron banister, to help his crippled way.  Some considering touch of
humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained
from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates,
seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have
been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their
dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks.  But once,
the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with
heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to
mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a
certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain
Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but
there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something
indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion
into it, of the ivory heel.  Ah!  Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab
then.

"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me
that fashion?  But go thy ways; I had forgot.  Below to thy nightly
grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the
filling one at last.--Down, dog, and kennel!"

Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly,
"I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half
like it, sir."

"Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving
away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.

"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be
called a dog, sir."

"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and
begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"

As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors
in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.

"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,"
muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle.
"It's very queer.  Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know
whether to go back and strike him, or--what's that?--down here on my
knees and pray for him?  Yes, that was the thought coming up in me;
but it would be the first time I ever DID pray.  It's queer; very
queer; and he's queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the
queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with.  How he flashed at me!--his
eyes like powder-pans! is he mad?  Anyway there's something on his
mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
He aint in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the
twenty-four; and he don't sleep then.  Didn't that Dough-Boy, the
steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's
hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the
foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort
of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it?  A hot old
man!  I guess he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's
a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say--worse nor a toothache.  Well, well;
I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it.  He's
full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every
night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's that for, I should
like to know?  Who's made appointments with him in the hold?  Ain't
that queer, now?  But there's no telling, it's the old game--Here
goes for a snooze.  Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born
into the world, if only to fall right asleep.  And now that I think
of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of
queer, too.  Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em.
But that's against my principles.  Think not, is my eleventh
commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth--So here goes
again.  But how's that? didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me
ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of THAT!  He
might as well have kicked me, and done with it.  Maybe he DID kick
me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow,
somehow.  It flashed like a bleached bone.  What the devil's the
matter with me?  I don't stand right on my legs.  Coming afoul of
that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out.  By the Lord, I
must have been dreaming, though--How? how? how?--but the only way's
to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I'll
see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight."



CHAPTER 30

The Pipe.


When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a
sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also
his pipe.  Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the
stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.

In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were
fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale.  How could
one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without
bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized?  For a Khan of the
plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was
Ahab.

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapour came from his mouth
in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face.
"How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this
smoking no longer soothes.  Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if
thy charm be gone!  Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not
pleasuring--aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to
windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale,
my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble.  What
business have I with this pipe?  This thing that is meant for
sereneness, to send up mild white vapours among mild white hairs, not
among torn iron-grey locks like mine.  I'll smoke no more--"

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea.  The fire hissed in
the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking
pipe made.  With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.



CHAPTER 31

Queen Mab.


Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

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

"I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'"

"May be; may be.  But it's made a wise man of me, Flask.  D'ye see
Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern?  Well, the best
thing you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to
him, whatever he says.  Halloa!  What's that he shouts?  Hark!"

"Mast-head, there!  Look sharp, all of ye!  There are whales
hereabouts!

If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!

"What do you think of that now, Flask? ain't there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh?  A white whale--did ye mark that,
man?  Look ye--there's something special in the wind.  Stand by for
it, Flask.  Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind.  But, mum; he
comes this way."



CHAPTER 32

Cetology.


Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be
lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities.  Ere that come to pass;
ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled
hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a
matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding
of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all
sorts which are to follow.

It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
that I would now fain put before you.  Yet is it no easy task.  The
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
essayed.  Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid
down.

"No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.

"It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the
inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and
families....  Utter confusion exists among the historians of this
animal" (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.

"Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters."
"Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea."  "A field
strewn with thorns."  "All these incomplete indications but serve to
torture us naturalists."

Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and
Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy.  Nevertheless, though of
real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and
so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales.
Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen,
who have at large or in little, written of the whale.  Run over a
few:--The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir
Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green;
Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest;
Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale;
Bennett; J.  Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and
the Rev.  T.  Cheever.  But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all
these have written, the above cited extracts will show.

Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman.  I mean Captain Scoresby.  On the separate
subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing
authority.  But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great
sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost
unworthy mentioning.  And here be it said, that the Greenland whale
is an usurper upon the throne of the seas.  He is not even by any
means the largest of the whales.  Yet, owing to the long priority of
his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years
back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and
which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few
scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every
way complete.  Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in
the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland
whale, without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas.  But
the time has at last come for a new proclamation.  This is Charing
Cross; hear ye! good people all,--the Greenland whale is
deposed,--the great sperm whale now reigneth!

There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the
living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt.  Those books are Beale's and
Bennett's; both in their time surgeons to English South-Sea
whale-ships, and both exact and reliable men.  The original matter
touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily
small; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though
mostly confined to scientific description.  As yet, however, the
sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any
literature.  Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten
life.

Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the
present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
laborers.  As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I
hereupon offer my own poor endeavors.  I promise nothing complete;
because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very
reason infallibly be faulty.  I shall not pretend to a minute
anatomical description of the various species, or--in this place at
least--to much of any description.  My object here is simply to
project the draught of a systematization of cetology.  I am the
architect, not the builder.

But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the
Post-Office is equal to it.  To grope down into the bottom of the sea
after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations,
ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing.  What am
I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan!  The awful
tauntings in Job might well appal me.  "Will he the (leviathan) make
a covenant with thee?  Behold the hope of him is vain!  But I have
swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do
with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will
try.  There are some preliminaries to settle.

First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters
it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish.  In his
System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate
the whales from the fish."  But of my own knowledge, I know that down
to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against
Linnaeus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of
the same seas with the Leviathan.

The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales
from the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm
bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow
ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex
lege naturae jure meritoque."  I submitted all this to my friends
Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine
in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons
set forth were altogether insufficient.  Charley profanely hinted
they were humbug.

Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.
This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal
respect does the whale differ from other fish.  Above, Linnaeus has
given you those items.  But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm
blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded.

Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
conspicuously to label him for all time to come?  To be short, then,
a whale is A SPOUTING FISH WITH A HORIZONTAL TAIL.  There you have
him.  However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded
meditation.  A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not
a fish, because he is amphibious.  But the last term of the
definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first.  Almost
any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have
not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail.  Whereas, among
spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably
assumes a horizontal position.

By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude
from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other
hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as
alien.*  Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish
must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology.  Now, then, come
the grand divisions of the entire whale host.


*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins
and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are
included by many naturalists among the whales.  But as these pig-fish
are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of
rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout,
I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with
their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.


First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them
all, both small and large.

I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.

As the type of the FOLIO I present the SPERM WHALE; of the OCTAVO,
the GRAMPUS; of the DUODECIMO, the PORPOISE.

FOLIOS.  Among these I here include the following chapters:--I. The
SPERM WHALE; II. the RIGHT WHALE; III. the FIN-BACK WHALE; IV. the
HUMP-BACKED WHALE; V. the RAZOR-BACK WHALE; VI. the SULPHUR-BOTTOM
WHALE.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER I. (SPERM WHALE).--This whale, among the
English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter
whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the
French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of
the Long Words.  He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the
globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most
majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce;
he being the only creature from which that valuable substance,
spermaceti, is obtained.  All his peculiarities will, in many other
places, be enlarged upon.  It is chiefly with his name that I now
have to do.  Philologically considered, it is absurd.  Some centuries
ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own
proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained
from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was
popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the
one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale.  It was
the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of
the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally
expresses.  In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce,
not being used for light, but only as an ointment and medicament.  It
was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of
rhubarb.  When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of
spermaceti became known, its original name was still retained by the
dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely
significant of its scarcity.  And so the appellation must at last
have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti
was really derived.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER II. (RIGHT WHALE).--In one respect this is
the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly
hunted by man.  It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or
baleen; and the oil specially known as "whale oil," an inferior
article in commerce.  Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately
designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the Greenland
Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right
Whale.  There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the
species thus multitudinously baptised.  What then is the whale, which
I include in the second species of my Folios?  It is the Great
Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the
English whalemen; the Baliene Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the
Growlands Walfish of the Swedes.  It is the whale which for more than
two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the
Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long
pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West
Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right
Whale Cruising Grounds.

Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the
English and the right whale of the Americans.  But they precisely
agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a
single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction.
It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive
differences, that some departments of natural history become so
repellingly intricate.  The right whale will be elsewhere treated of
at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm whale.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER III. (FIN-BACK).--Under this head I reckon a
monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and
Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the
whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing
the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks.  In the length he
attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale,
but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to
olive.  His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the
intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles.  His grand
distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is
often a conspicuous object.  This fin is some three or four feet
long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an
angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end.  Even if not the
slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin
will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface.  When
the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical
ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon
the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle
surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy
hour-lines graved on it.  On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes
back.  The Fin-Back is not gregarious.  He seems a whale-hater, as
some men are man-haters.  Very shy; always going solitary;
unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen
waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall
misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous
power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from
man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his
race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back.  From having the
baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the
right whale, among a theoretic species denominated WHALEBONE WHALES,
that is, whales with baleen.  Of these so called Whalebone whales,
there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are
little known.  Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed
whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are
the fishermen's names for a few sorts.

In connection with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of
great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it
is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan,
founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth;
notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously
seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of
Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the
whale, in his kinds, presents.  How then?  The baleen, hump,
back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are
indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any
regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other and
more essential particulars.  Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked
whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases.  Then, this
same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has
baleen; but there again the similitude ceases.  And it is just the
same with the other parts above mentioned.  In various sorts of
whales, they form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any
one of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy
all general methodization formed upon such a basis.  On this rock
every one of the whale-naturalists has split.

But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the
whale, in his anatomy--there, at least, we shall be able to hit the
right classification.  Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the
Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen?  Yet we have
seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the
Greenland whale.  And if you descend into the bowels of the various
leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part
as available to the systematizer as those external ones already
enumerated.  What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the
whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them
that way.  And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and
it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is
practicable.  To proceed.

BOOK I. (FOLIO) CHAPTER IV. (HUMP-BACK).--This whale is often seen on
the northern American coast.  He has been frequently captured there,
and towed into harbor.  He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or
you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale.  At any rate, the
popular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the
sperm whale also has a hump though a smaller one.  His oil is not
very valuable.  He has baleen.  He is the most gamesome and
light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water
generally than any other of them.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER V. (RAZOR-BACK).--Of this whale little is
known but his name.  I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn.  Of
a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers.  Though
no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which
rises in a long sharp ridge.  Let him go.  I know little more of him,
nor does anybody else.

BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER VI. (SULPHUR-BOTTOM).--Another retiring
gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along
the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings.  He is seldom
seen; at least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern
seas, and then always at too great a distance to study his
countenance.  He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks
of line.  Prodigies are told of him.  Adieu, Sulphur Bottom!  I can
say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.

Thus ends BOOK I. (FOLIO), and now begins BOOK II. (OCTAVO).

OCTAVOES.*--These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among
which present may be numbered:--I., the GRAMPUS; II., the BLACK FISH;
III., the NARWHALE; IV., the THRASHER; V., the KILLER.


*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those
of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to
them in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its dimensioned
form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo
volume does.


BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER I. (GRAMPUS).--Though this fish, whose
loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb
to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not
popularly classed among whales.  But possessing all the grand
distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have
recognised him for one.  He is of moderate octavo size, varying from
fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding
dimensions round the waist.  He swims in herds; he is never regularly
hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and pretty good
for light.  By some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory
of the advance of the great sperm whale.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER II. (BLACK FISH).--I give the popular
fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the
best.  Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall
say so, and suggest another.  I do so now, touching the Black Fish,
so-called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales.
So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please.  His voracity is well
known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips
are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on
his face.  This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in
length.  He is found in almost all latitudes.  He has a peculiar way
of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something
like a Roman nose.  When not more profitably employed, the sperm
whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the
supply of cheap oil for domestic employment--as some frugal
housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by
themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax.  Though
their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you
upwards of thirty gallons of oil.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER III. (NARWHALE), that is, NOSTRIL
WHALE.--Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I
suppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked
nose.  The creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn
averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to
fifteen feet.  Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk,
growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the
horizontal.  But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an
ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a
clumsy left-handed man.  What precise purpose this ivory horn or
lance answers, it would be hard to say.  It does not seem to be used
like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors
tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the
bottom of the sea for food.  Charley Coffin said it was used for an
ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar
Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so
breaks through.  But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be
correct.  My own opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may
really be used by the Narwhale--however that may be--it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading
pamphlets.  The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the
Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale.  He is certainly a curious
example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of
animated nature.  From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered
that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the
great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it
brought immense prices.  It was also distilled to a volatile salts
for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are
manufactured into hartshorn.  Originally it was in itself accounted
an object of great curiosity.  Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin
Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did
gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich
Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; "when Sir Martin
returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter, "on bended knees he
presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale,
which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor."  An
Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did
likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land
beast of the unicorn nature.

The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black.
His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it,
and he is seldom hunted.  He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER IV. (KILLER).--Of this whale little is
precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the
professed naturalist.  From what I have seen of him at a distance,
I should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus.  He is very
savage--a sort of Feegee fish.  He sometimes takes the great Folio
whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty
brute is worried to death.  The Killer is never hunted.  I never
heard what sort of oil he has.  Exception might be taken to the name
bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness.  For
we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks
included.

BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER V. (THRASHER).--This gentleman is famous
for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes.  He
mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage
by flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a
similar process.  Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the
Killer.  Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.

Thus ends BOOK II. (OCTAVO), and begins BOOK III. (DUODECIMO).

DUODECIMOES.--These include the smaller whales.  I. The Huzza
Porpoise.  II. The Algerine Porpoise.  III. The Mealy-mouthed
Porpoise.

To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or
five feet should be marshalled among WHALES--a word, which, in the
popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness.  But the creatures
set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of
my definition of what a whale is--i.e. a spouting fish, with a
horizontal tail.

BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER 1. (HUZZA PORPOISE).--This is the
common porpoise found almost all over the globe.  The name is of my
own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and
something must be done to distinguish them.  I call him thus, because
he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep
tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd.
Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner.
Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to
windward.  They are the lads that always live before the wind.  They
are accounted a lucky omen.  If you yourself can withstand three
cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the
spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye.  A well-fed, plump Huzza
Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil.  But the fine
and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable.
It is in request among jewellers and watchmakers.  Sailors put it on
their hones.  Porpoise meat is good eating, you know.  It may never
have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts.  Indeed, his spout is so
small that it is not very readily discernible.  But the next time you
have a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great Sperm whale
himself in miniature.

BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER II. (ALGERINE PORPOISE).--A pirate.
Very savage.  He is only found, I think, in the Pacific.  He is
somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general
make.  Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark.  I have lowered
for him many times, but never yet saw him captured.

BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER III. (MEALY-MOUTHED PORPOISE).--The
largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it
is known.  The only English name, by which he has hitherto been
designated, is that of the fishers--Right-Whale Porpoise, from the
circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio.
In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of
a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and
gentleman-like figure.  He has no fins on his back (most other
porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of
a hazel hue.  But his mealy-mouth spoils all.  Though his entire
back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line,
distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called the "bright waist,"
that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colours,
black above and white below.  The white comprises part of his head,
and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just
escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag.  A most mean and mealy
aspect!  His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.


Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the
Porpoise is the smallest of the whales.  Above, you have all the
Leviathans of note.  But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by
reputation, but not personally.  I shall enumerate them by their
fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun.
If any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked,
then he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to
his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:--The Bottle-Nose Whale;
the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading
Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the
Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc.
From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there might
be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of
uncouth names.  But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can
hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism,
but signifying nothing.

Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be
here, and at once, perfected.  You cannot but plainly see that I have
kept my word.  But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the
crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower.  For
small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity.  God keep me
from ever completing anything.  This whole book is but a
draught--nay, but the draught of a draught.  Oh, Time, Strength,
Cash, and Patience!



CHAPTER 33

The Specksynder.


Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a
place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board,
arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a
class unknown of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.

The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is evinced
by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in
the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an
officer called the Specksynder.  Literally this word means
Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief
Harpooneer.  In those days, the captain's authority was restricted to
the navigation and general management of the vessel; while over the
whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or
Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme.  In the British Greenland Fishery,
under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is
still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged.  At present
he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the
captain's more inferior subalterns.  Nevertheless, as upon the good
conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely
depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an
important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night
watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also
his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he
should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in
some way distinguished as their professional superior; though always,
by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.

Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is
this--the first lives aft, the last forward.  Hence, in whale-ships
and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the
captain; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers
are lodged in the after part of the ship.  That is to say, they take
their meals in the captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly
communicating with it.

Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the
longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils
of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all
of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages,
but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance,
intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases
tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen
generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family
these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for
all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck
are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.  Indeed,
many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper
parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in
any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if
he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.

And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only
homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though
he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping
upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to
peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be
detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of
condescension or IN TERROREM, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was
by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind
those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;
incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than
they were legitimately intended to subserve.  That certain sultanism
of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained
unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.  For be a man's
intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the
practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of
some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves,
more or less paltry and base.  This it is, that for ever keeps God's
true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the
highest honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous
more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful
of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over
the dead level of the mass.  Such large virtue lurks in these small
things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some
royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency.
But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of
geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian
herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization.  Nor, will
the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its
fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so
important in his art, as the one now alluded to.

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me.  Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand
in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in
the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!



CHAPTER 34

The Cabin-Table.


It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale
loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his
lord and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been
taking an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the
latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that
daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg.  From his complete
inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not
heard his menial.  But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds,
he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice,
saying, "Dinner, Mr. Starbuck," disappears into the cabin.

When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck,
the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then
Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the
planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some
touch of pleasantness, "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle.
The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly
shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right with
that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a
rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows after his predecessors.

But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,
seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all
sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off
his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe
right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight,
pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down
rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,
reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new
face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask
enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the
Slave.

It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck
some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and
defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those
very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in
that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not
to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head
of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical.  Wherefore
this difference?  A problem?  Perhaps not.  To have been Belshazzar,
King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but
courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane
grandeur.  But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit
presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that
man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the
time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for
Belshazzar was not the greatest.  Who has but once dined his friends,
has tasted what it is to be Caesar.  It is a witchery of social
czarship which there is no withstanding.  Now, if to this
consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master,
then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of
sea-life just mentioned.

Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned
sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but
still deferential cubs.  In his own proper turn, each officer waited
to be served.  They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in
Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance.  With
one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as
he carved the chief dish before him.  I do not suppose that for the
world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest
observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather.  No!  And
when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef
was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the
mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly;
and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the
plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without
circumspection.  For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where
the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial
Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in
awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation;
only he himself was dumb.  What a relief it was to choking Stubb,
when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below.  And poor little
Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary family
party.  His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have
been the drumsticks.  For Flask to have presumed to help himself,
this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first
degree.  Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more
would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world;
nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him.  And had Flask
helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed
it.  Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter.
Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on
account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he
deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter
was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however
it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!

Another thing.  Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and
Flask is the first man up.  Consider!  For hereby Flask's dinner was
badly jammed in point of time.  Starbuck and Stubb both had the start
of him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear.
If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have
but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his
repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than
three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to
precede Flask to the deck.  Therefore it was that Flask once admitted
in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an
officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be
otherwise than hungry, more or less.  For what he ate did not so much
relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.  Peace and
satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach.
I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned
beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast.
There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory:
there's the insanity of life!  Besides, if it were so that any mere
sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official
capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample
vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask
through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before
awful Ahab.

Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first
table in the Pequod's cabin.  After their departure, taking place in
inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or
rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward.  And
then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its
residuary legatees.  They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of
the high and mighty cabin.

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire
care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those
inferior fellows the harpooneers.  While their masters, the mates,
seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the
harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a
report to it.  They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like
Indian ships all day loading with spices.  Such portentous appetites
had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the
previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a
great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.
And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble
hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise.  And
once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory
by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty
wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the
circle preliminary to scalping him.  He was naturally a very nervous,
shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the
progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse.  And what with the
standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical
tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life
was one continual lip-quiver.  Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers
furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape from their
clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at
them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.

It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing
his filed teeth to the Indian's: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on
the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to
the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the
low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes
passenger in a ship.  But for all this, the great negro was
wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty.  It seemed hardly possible
that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the
vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person.
But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the
abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in
the sublime life of the worlds.  Not by beef or by bread, are giants
made or nourished.  But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of
the lip in eating--an ugly sound enough--so much so, that the
trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth
lurked in his own lean arms.  And when he would hear Tashtego singing
out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the
simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round
him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy.  Nor did the
whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their
lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they
would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not
at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy.  How could he forget that
in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been
guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions.  Alas!  Dough-Boy!
hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals.  Not a napkin
should he carry on his arm, but a buckler.  In good time, though, to
his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart;
to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones
jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.

But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were
scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before
sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar
quarters.

In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights
the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone
that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there.  So that, in real
truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be
said to have lived out of the cabin than in it.  For when they did
enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a house; turning
inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a
permanent thing, residing in the open air.  Nor did they lose much
hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was
inaccessible.  Though nominally included in the census of
Christendom, he was still an alien to it.  He lived in the world, as
the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri.  And as when
Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying
himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking
his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul,
shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen
paws of its gloom!
}
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