“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke”
Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear.
We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled
by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were
dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the
sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us
within a distance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it
tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base of a
cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no
more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were
dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely
landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut
loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship
had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon
some token of our perishing,— an oar or a lance pole.
CHAPTER 49
The Hyena
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed
affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast
practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more
than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He
bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all
hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich
of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for
small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril
of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly,
good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen
and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am
speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation;
it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before
might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part
of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to
breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with
it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White
Whale its object.
“There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.”
In the Shore Whaling, on soundings,
among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of
sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when
the body has gone down, they know where to look for it when it shall
have ascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from
the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again
lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a
Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of
its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is
so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is
often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were
now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all
sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared
far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
CHAPTER 82
The Honor and Glory of Whaling
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the
true method.
The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up
to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its
great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many
great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other
have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection
that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a
fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to
the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent.
Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms
to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one
knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely
Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast,
and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the
prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and
delivered and married the maid.
“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's policy of
insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential
comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.
With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the
Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue
hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to
far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;
and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He
gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of
his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar
with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story
such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.
CHAPTER 12
Biographical
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down on any map; true places never are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a
grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong
desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or
two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and
on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of
unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal
stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he
nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of
seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a
low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into
the water.
“Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending”
CHAPTER 17
The Ramadan
As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all
day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I
cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations,
never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other
creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of
footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the
torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the
inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.
I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these
things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,
pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these
subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most
absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;— but what of that? Queequeg
thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content;
and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let
him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans
alike— for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and
sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door;
but no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside.
"Queequeg," said I softly through the key-hole:—all silent. "I say,
Queequeg! why don't you speak? It's I—Ishmael." But all remained still
as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant
time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through
the key-hole; but the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the
key-hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see
part of the foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing
more. I was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden
shaft of Queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the evening previous
had taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber. That's strange,
thought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he
seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside
here, and no possible mistake.
“. . . these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the oceans skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.”
But ere he entered his
cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was
heard. Oh! Pip, thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy
strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the
melancholy ship, and mocked it!
CHAPTER 114
The Gilder
Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising
ground the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild,
pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on
the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or
sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or
seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small
success for their pains.
At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow
heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so
sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone
cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy
quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the
ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and
would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a
remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he
regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing
only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high
rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when
the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while their
hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.
The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these
there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied
children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when
the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most
mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate,
and form one seamless whole.
Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as
temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem
to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath
upon them prove but tarnishing.
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
But this is almost the case now. American authors have received
more just and discriminating praise (however loftily and ridiculously
given, in certain cases) even from some Englishmen, than from their own
countrymen. There are hardly five critics in America; and several of
them are asleep. As for patronage, it is the American author who now
patronizes his country, and not his country him. And if at times some
among them appeal to the people for more recognition, it is not always
with selfish motives, but patriotic ones.
It is true, that but few of them as yet have evinced that decided
originality which merits great praise. But that graceful writer, who
perhaps of all Americans has received the most plaudits from his own
country for his productions,--that very popular and amiable writer,
however good and self-reliant in many things, perhaps owes his chief
reputation to the self-acknowledged imitation of a foreign model, and
to the studied avoidance of all topics but smooth ones. But it is
better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has
never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true
test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof
that a man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in
that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for
all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth, pleasing writers
that know their powers. Without malice, but to speak the plain fact,
they but furnish an appendix to Goldsmith, and other English authors.
And we want no American Goldsmiths, nay, we want no American Miltons.
It were the vilest thing you could say of a true American author, that
he were an American Tompkins. Call him an American and have done, for
you cannot say a nobler thing of him. But it is not meant that all
American writers should studiously cleave to nationality in their
writings; only this, no American writer should write like an Englishman
or a Frenchman; let him write like a man, for then he will be sure
to write like an American.
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”
And here be it said, that whenever
it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these
dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson,
expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous
lexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a
lexicon to be used by a whale author like me.
One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,
though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of
this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an
inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my
thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their
outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole
circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and
mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas
of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding
its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and
liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you
must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be
written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my
credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I
have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and
wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by
way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the
earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now
almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are
called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate
intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose
remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil
Whales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the
last preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them
precisely answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet
sufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking
ranks as Cetacean fossils.
“To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hells heart, I stab at thee; For hates sake, I spit my last breath at thee”
"The ship! The hearse!—the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat;
"its wood could only be American!"
Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its
keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far
off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a
time, he lay quiescent.
"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! Let me hear thy
hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel;
and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and
Pole-pointed prow,—death—glorious ship! must ye then perish, and
without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest
shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel
my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your
furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone
life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll,
thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with
thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last
breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!
and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still
chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up
the spear!"
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting
velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to
clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the
neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was
shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the
heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty
tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its
depths.
For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The
ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering
mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata
Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by
infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the
pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking look-outs on the sea.
“..fiery yearnings their own phantom-futures make, and deem it present. So, after all these fearful, fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained - - yet, in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps, than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.”
Those who boldly launch, cast off
all cables; and turning from the common breeze, that’s fair for all,
with their own breath, fill their own sails. Hug the shore, naught new
is seen; and “Land ho!” at last was sung, when a new world was sought.
That voyager steered his bark through seas, untracked before; ploughed
his own path mid jeers; though with a heart that oft was heavy with the
thought, that he might only be too bold, and grope where land was none.
So I.
And though essaying but a sportive sail, I was driven from my course,
by a blast resistless; and ill-provided, young, and bowed to the brunt
of things before my prime, still fly before the gale;—hard have I
striven to keep stout heart.
And if it harder be, than e’er before, to find new climes, when now our
seas have oft been circled by ten thousand prows,—much more the glory!
But this new world here sought, is stranger far than his, who stretched
his vans from Palos. It is the world of mind; wherein the wanderer may
gaze round, with more of wonder than Balboa’s band roving through the
golden Aztec glades.
But fiery yearnings their own phantom-future make, and deem it present.
So, if after all these fearful, fainting trances, the verdict be, the
golden haven was not gained;—yet, in bold quest thereof, better to sink
in boundless deeps, than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods,
an utter wreck, if wreck I do.
CHAPTER LXVI.
A Flight Of Nightingales From Yoomy’s Mouth
By noon, down came a calm.
“Oh Neeva! good Neeva! kind Neeva! thy sweet breath, dear Neeva!”
So from his shark’s-mouth prayed little Vee-Vee to the god of Fair
Breezes. And along they swept; till the three prows neighed to the
blast; and pranced on their path, like steeds of Crusaders.
Now, that this fine wind had sprung up; the sun riding joyously in the
heavens; and the Lagoon all tossed with white, flying manes; Media
called upon Yoomy to ransack his whole assortment of songs:—warlike,
amorous, and sentimental,—and regale us with something inspiring for
too long the company had been gloomy.
“Thy best,” he cried.
Then will I e’en sing you a song, my lord, which is a song-full of
songs. I composed it long, long since, when Yillah yet bowered in Odo.
Ere now, some fragments have been heard. Ah, Taji! in this my lay, live
over again your happy hours. Some joys have thousand lives; can never
die; for when they droop, sweet memories bind them up.
Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras.
The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two
plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large
puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most
delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is
quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young
bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by
and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to
tell a calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires
uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with
an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the
saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at
him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with
abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration
before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of
the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man
that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was
hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would
have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the
meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds
staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight
take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a
cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that
salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it
will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of
judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who
nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy
pate-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my
civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what is
that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox
you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring
that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill
did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to
Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month
or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but
steel pens.
CHAPTER 66
The Shark Massacre
When in the Southern Fishery a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general
thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting
him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very
soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it.
So, when on one side you hoist in Lockes head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kants and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.
‘Clarel, a Poem and Pilgrimage
in the Holy Land’ (1876), is a long mystical poem requiring, as some one
has said, a dictionary, a cyclopaedia, and a copy of the Bible for its
elucidation. In the two privately printed volumes, the arrangement of
which occupied Mr. Melville during his last illness, there are several
fine lyrics. The titles of these books are, ‘John Marr and Other
Sailors’ (1888), and ‘Timoleon’ (1891).
There is no question that Mr. Melville’s absorption in philosophical
studies was quite as responsible as the failure of his later books for
his cessation from literary productiveness. That he sometimes realised
the situation will be seen by a passage in ‘Moby Dick’:--
‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ said Flask. ‘Yes, you’ll soon see this right
whale’s head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti’s.’
‘In good time Flask’s saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply
leaned over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the counterpoise of
both heads, she regained her own keel, though sorely strained, you may
well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go
over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s and you
come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds forever keep
trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunderheads overboard,
and then you will float right and light.’
Mr. Melville would have been more than mortal if he had been indifferent
to his loss of popularity. Yet he seemed contented to preserve an
entirely independent attitude, and to trust to the verdict of the
future. The smallest amount of activity would have kept him before the
public; but his reserve would not permit this. That reinstatement of his
reputation cannot be doubted.
In the editing of this reissue of ‘Melville’s Works,’ I have been
much indebted to the scholarly aid of Dr. Titus Munson Coan, whose
familiarity with the languages of the Pacific has enabled me to
harmonise the spelling of foreign words in ‘Typee’ and ‘Omoo,’ though
without changing the phonetic method of printing adopted by Mr.
Melville. Dr. Coan has also been most helpful with suggestions in other
directions. Finally, the delicate fancy of La Fargehas supplemented the
immortal pen-portrait of the Typee maiden with a speaking impersonation
of her beauty.
New York, June, 1892.
TYPEE
CHAPTER ONE
THE SEA--LONGINGS FOR SHORE--A LAND-SICK SHIP--DESTINATION OF THE
VOYAGERS--THE MARQUESAS--ADVENTURE OF A MISSIONARY’S WIFE AMONG THE
SAVAGES--CHARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE OF THE QUEEN OF NUKUHEVA
Six months at sea!
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hares? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschels great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to enlarge your mind? Subtilize it
It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an
entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for
hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf
whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so
wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With
respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed
between the sperm whale and the right. While the ears of the former has
an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered
over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear
which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens
of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of
cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of
hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind?
Subtilize it.
Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant
over the sperm whale's head, so, that it may lie bottom up; then,
ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and
were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with a
lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his
stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where
we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to
ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane,
glossy as bridal satins.
But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems
like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one
end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead,
and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such,
alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these
spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold,
when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there
suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging
straight down at right-angles with his body; for all the world like a
ship's jibboom.
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me,
even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy
then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's policy of
insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential
comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.
With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the
Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue
hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to
far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;
and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He
gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of
his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar
with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story
such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.
CHAPTER 12
Biographical
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down on any map; true places never are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a
grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong
desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or
two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and
on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of
unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal
stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he
nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of
seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a
low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into
the water.
But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.
And, when
running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails
spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances,
the old man's delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn
swells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed light and
air; even then, when he bore that firm, collected front, however pale,
and issued his calm orders once again; and his mates thanked God the
direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self,
raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing.
When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some
still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly
contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows
narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his
narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been
left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural
intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living
instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy
stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its
concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost
his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold
more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one
reasonable object.
This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.
But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding
far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where
we here stand—however grand and wonderful, now quit it;— and take your
way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes;
where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root
of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique
buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken
throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he
patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of
ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that
proud, sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young
exiled royalties; and from your grim sire only will the old
State-secret come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely; all my means
are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill, or
change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did now
long dissemble; in some sort, did still.
The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No;
he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,
and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip
very quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations
towards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always
manifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances
not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so
called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to
military navies and armies.
But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and
Stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent
upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him
miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;
but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such,
at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body
up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.
Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of
the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;
and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the
joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,
God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters
heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the
loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So
man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason,
man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is
absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,
indifferent as his God.
For the rest blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what
like abandonment befell myself.
CHAPTER 94
A Squeeze of the Hand
That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the
Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of
the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in
dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and
when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated
ere going to the try-works, of which anon.
It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I
found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about
in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back
into fluid.
Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.
The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this
earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With
books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the
truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered
steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold
of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and
jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of
operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils
all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais
as passing wise, and therefore jolly;—not that man is fitted to sit
down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably
wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the
congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it
invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom
that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a
Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest
gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny
spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is
in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle
is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
CHAPTER 97
The Lamp
Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's
forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single
moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay
in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a
score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in
darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he
seeks the food of light, so he lives in light.
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; / Man marks the earth with ruin - his control / Stops with the shore.”
“Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight is said to be the only truth”
“Art is the objectification of feeling.”
“Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity”
