MOBY-DICK;
OR,
THE WHALE.
BY
HERMAN MELVILLE,
AUTHOR OF
“TYPEE,” “OMOO,” “REDBURN,” “MARDI,” “WHITE-JACKET.”
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY.
1851.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
HERMAN MELVILLE,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District
of New York.
IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS,
This Book is Inscribed
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
CONTENTS.
_Chap._
I.—Loomings
II.—The Carpet Bag
III.—The Spouter-Inn
IV.—The Counterpane
V.—Breakfast
VI.—The Street
VII.—The Chapel
VIII.—The Pulpit
IX.—The Sermon
X.—A Bosom Friend
XI.—Nightgown
XII.—Biographical
XIII.—Wheelbarrow
XIV.—Nantucket
XV.—Chowder
XVI.—The Ship
XVII.—The Ramadan
XVIII.—His Mark
XIX.—The Prophet
XX.—All Astir
XXI.—Going Aboard
XXII.—Merry Christmas
XXIII.—The Lee Shore
XXIV.—The Advocate
XXV.—Postscript
XXVI.—Knights and Squires
XXVII.—Knights and Squires
XXVIII.—Ahab
XXIX.—Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb
XXX.—The Pipe
XXXI.—Queen Mab
XXXII.—Cetology
XXXIII.—The Specksnyder
XXXIV.—The Cabin Table
XXXV.—The Mast-Head
XXXVI.—The Quarter-Deck. Ahab and all
XXXVII.—Sunset
XXXVIII.—Dusk
XXXIX.—First Night-Watch
XL.—Forecastle—Midnight
XLI.—Moby Dick
XLII.—The Whiteness of the Whale
XLIII.—Hark!
XLIV.—The Chart
XLV.—The Affidavit
XLVI.—Surmises
XLVII.—The Mat-Maker
XLVIII.—The First Lowering
XLIX.—The Hyena
L.—Ahab’s Boat and Crew—Fedallah
LI.—The Spirit-Spout
LII.—The Pequod meets the Albatross
LIII.—The Gam
LIV.—The Town-Ho’s Story
LV.—Monstrous Pictures of Whales
LVI.—Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales
LVII.—Of Whales in Paint, in Teeth, &c.
LVIII.—Brit
LIX.—Squid
LX.—The Line
LXI.—Stubb Kills a Whale
LXII.—The Dart
LXIII.—The Crotch
LXIV.—Stubb’s Supper
LXV.—The Whale as a Dish
LXVI.—The Shark Massacre
LXVII.—Cutting In
LXVIII.—The Blanket
LXIX.—The Funeral
LXX.—The Sphynx
LXXI.—The Pequod meets the Jeroboam. Her Story
LXXII.—The Monkey-rope
LXXIII.—Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale
LXXIV.—The Sperm Whale’s Head
LXXV.—The Right Whale’s Head
LXXVI.—The Battering Ram
LXXVII.—The Great Heidelburgh Tun
LXXVIII.—Cistern and Buckets
LXXIX.—The Praire
LXXX.—The Nut
LXXXI.—The Pequod meets the Virgin
LXXXII.—The Honor and Glory of Whaling
LXXXIII.—Jonah Historically Regarded
LXXXIV.—Pitchpoling
LXXXV.—The Fountain
LXXXVI.—The Tail
LXXXVII.—The Grand Armada
LXXXVIII.—Schools & Schoolmasters
LXXXIX.—Fast Fish and Loose Fish
XC.—Heads or Tails
XCI.—The Pequod meets the Rose-Bud
XCII.—Ambergris
XCIII.—The Castaway
XCIV.—A Squeeze of the Hand
XCV.—The Cassock
XCVI.—The Try-Works
XCVII.—The Lamp
XCVIII.—Stowing Down and Clearing Up
XCIX.—The Doubloon
C.—The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London
CI.—The Decanter
CII.—A Bower in the Arsacides
CIII.—Measurement of the Whale’s Skeleton
CIV.—The Fossil Whale
CV.—Does the Whale Diminish?
CVI.—Ahab’s Leg
CVII.—The Carpenter
CVIII.—The Deck. Ahab and the Carpenter
CIX.—The Cabin. Ahab and Starbuck
CX.—Queequeg in his Coffin
CXI.—The Pacific
CXII.—The Blacksmith
CXIII.—The Forge
CXIV.—The Gilder
CXV.—The Pequod meets the Bachelor
CXVI.—The Dying Whale
CXVII.—The Whale-Watch
CXVIII.—The Quadrant
CXIX.—The Candles
CXX.—The Deck
CXXI.—Midnight, on the Forecastle
CXXII.—Midnight, Aloft
CXXIII.—The Musket
CXXIV.—The Needle
CXXV.—The Log and Line
CXXVI.—The Life-Buoy
CXXVII.—Ahab and the Carpenter
CXXVIII.—The Pequod meets the Rachel
CXXIX.—The Cabin. Ahab and Pip
CXXXI.—The Hat
CXXXII.—The Pequod meets the Delight
CXXXIII.—The Symphony
CXXXIV.—The Chase. First Day
CXXXV.—The Chase. Second Day
CXXXVI.—The Chase. Third Day
EPILOGUE
MOBY-DICK;
OR,
THE WHALE.
ETYMOLOGY.
(SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO A
GRAMMAR SCHOOL.)
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him
now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer
handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the
known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it
somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
ETYMOLOGY
“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what
name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through
ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification
of the word, you deliver that which is not true.”
_Hackluyt._
“WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. _hval_. This animal is named from roundness
or rolling; for in Dan. _hvalt_ is arched or vaulted.”
_Webster’s Dictionary._
“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. _Wallen_;
A.S. _Walw-ian_, to roll, to wallow.”
_Richardson’s Dictionary._
חו, _Hebrew_.
ϰητος, _Greek_.
CETUS, _Latin_.
WHŒL, _Anglo-Saxon_.
HVALT, _Danish_.
WAL, _Dutch_.
HWAL, _Swedish_.
HVALUR, _Icelandic_.
WHALE, _English_.
BALEINE, _French_.
BALLENA, _Spanish_.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Fegee_.
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Erromangoan_.
EXTRACTS.
(Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian.)
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm
of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take
the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these
extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the
ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these
extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing
bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our
own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I
am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of
this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be
too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains
ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go
thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries
for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast
with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing
out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered
Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike
but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable
glasses!
EXTRACTS.
“And God created great whales.”
_Genesis._
“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him;
One would think the deep to be hoary.”
_Job._
“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
_Jonah._
“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to
play therein.”
_Psalms._
“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
_Isaiah._
“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch.”
_Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals._
“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balæne, take up as much
in length as four acres or arpens of land.”
_Holland’s Pliny._
“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
former, one was of a most monstrous size. * * This came towards us,
open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea
before him into a foam.”
_Tooke’s Lucian._
“_The True History._”
“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he
brought some to the king. * * * The best whales were catched in his own
country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said
that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.”
_Other or Octher’s verbal narrative taken down
from his mouth by King Alfred, A. D._ 890.
“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in
great security, and there sleeps.”
MONTAIGNE.—_Apology for Raimond Sebond._
“Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.”
_Rabelais._
“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.”
_Stowe’s Annals._
“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.”
_Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms._
“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible
quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.”
_Ibid._ “_History of Life and Death._”
“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.”
_King Henry._
“Very like a whale.”
_Hamlet._
“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine.”
_The Fairie Queen._
“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
calm trouble the ocean till it boil.”
_Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert._
“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, _Nescio quid
sit_.”
_Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the
Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E._
“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
* * * * *
Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.”
_Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands._
“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.”
_Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan._
“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat
in the mouth of a whale.”
_Pilgrim’s Progress._
“That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.”
_Paradise Lost._
————“There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.”
_Ibid._
“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil
swimming in them.”
_Fuller’s Profane and Holy State._
“So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.”
_Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis._
“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his
head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it
will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.”
_Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchass._
“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
nature has placed on their shoulders.”
_Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa.
Harris Coll._
“Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their
ship upon them.”
_Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation._
“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N. E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * *
Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable. * * *
They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale,
for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * *
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of
herrings in his belly. * * *
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in
Spitzbergen that was white all over.”
_A Voyage to Greenland, A. D._ 1671.
_Harris Coll._
“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.”
_Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross._
“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was
killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.”
_Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas.
Phil. Trans. A. D._ 1668.
“Whales in the sea
God’s voice obey.”
_N. E. Primer._
“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the
northward of us.”
_Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, A. D._ 1729.
* * * * * “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such
an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”
_Ulloa’s South America._
“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”
_Rape of the Lock._
“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that
take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation.”
_Goldsmith, Nat. Hist._
“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
speak like great whales.”
_Goldsmith to Johnson._
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then
towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the
whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.”
_Cook’s Voyages._
“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so
great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to
mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to
terrify and prevent their too near approach.”
_Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and
Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.
“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.”
_Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the
French minister in_ 1778.
“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?”
_Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament
to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery._
“Spain——a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.”
_Edmund Burke._ (_somewhere._)
“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from
pirates and robbers, is the right to _royal_ fish, which are whale
and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the
coast, are the property of the king.”
_Blackstone._
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.”
_Falconer’s Shipwreck._
“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven.
“So fire with water to compare,
The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
To express unwieldy joy.”
_Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London._
“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a
stroke, with immense velocity.”
_John Hunter’s account of the dissection
of a whale._ (_A small sized one._)
“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
gushing from the whale’s heart.”
_Paley’s Theology._
“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.”
_Baron Cuvier._
“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any
till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.”
_Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of
Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery._
“In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”
_Montgomery’s World before the Flood._
“Io! Pæan! Io! sing.
To the finny people’s king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.”
_Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale._
“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s
grand-children will go for bread.”
_Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket._
“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form
of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.”
_Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales._
“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed
by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.”
_Ibid._
“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his spout; he threw
up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at.
He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!”
_Cooper’s Pilot._
“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that
whales had been introduced on the stage there.”
_Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe._
“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been
stove by a whale.”
_“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship
Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and
finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale
in the Pacific Ocean. By Owen Chace of
Nantucket, first mate of said vessel.” New
York_. 1821.
“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea.”
_Elizabeth Oakes Smith._
“The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged in
the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or
nearly six English miles. * * *
“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.”
_Scoresby._
“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head,
and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes
at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with vast
swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.
* * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of
the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so
important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely
neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the
numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years must
have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities
of witnessing their habitudes.”
_Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale_, 1839.
“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than the True
Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a formidable weapon
at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once
so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as
the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale
tribe.”
_Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling
Voyage Round the Globe_, 1840.
October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”
“Steady, sir.”
“Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”
“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she
breaches!”
“Sing out! sing out every time!”
“Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—_thar_ she
blows—bowes—bo-o-os!”
“How far off?”
“Two miles and a half.”
“Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands!”
_J. Ross Browne’s Etchings
of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.
“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
Nantucket.”
“_Narrative of the Globe Mutiny_,” _by
Lay and Hussey survivors. A. D._ 1828.
“Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the
assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length
rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by
leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.”
_Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett._
“Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and peculiar
portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or
nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year
to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.”
_Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the
U. S. Senate, on the application for the
Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket._
1828.
“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.”
_“The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’s
Adventures and the Whale’s Biography, gathered
on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore
Preble.” By Rev. Henry T. Cheever._
“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send
you to hell.”
_Life of Samuel Comstock (the mutineer), by his
brother, William Comstock. Another Version
of the whale-ship Globe narrative._
“The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order,
if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they
failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale.”
_McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary._
“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward
again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen
seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic
North-West Passage.”
_From “Something” unpublished._
“It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being
struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with
look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around
them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regular voyage.”
_Currents and Whaling. U. S. Ex. Ex._
“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form
arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps
have been told that these were the ribs of whales.”
_Tales of a Whale Voyager
to the Arctic Ocean._
“It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages
enrolled among the crew.”
_Newspaper Account of the Taking and
Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack._
“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they
departed.”
_Cruise in a Whale Boat._
“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.”
_Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman._
“The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied
to the root of his tail.”
_A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks._
“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male
and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a
stone’s throw of the shore” (Terra Del Fuego), “over which the beech
tree extended its branches.”
_Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist._
“‘Stern all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the
distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat,
threatening it with instant destruction;—‘Stern all, for your lives!’”
_Wharton the Whale Killer._
“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!”
_Nantucket Song._
“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea.”
_Whale Song._
CHAPTER I.
LOOMINGS
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me
on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery
part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever
my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time
to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and
ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword;
I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If
they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,
cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her
surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves,
and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to
counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
the green fields gone? What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of
them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of
all those ships attract them thither?
Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in
a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic
in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this
experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for
ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley
of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his
trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were
within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up
from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands
winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed
in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced,
and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon
this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye
were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies
in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among
Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop
of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel
your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon
suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy
him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian
trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a
robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a
mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely
all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that
story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild
image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that
same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image
of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of
my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers
get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy
themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger;
nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,
without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory
in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow,
I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously
buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort
of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor,
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand
in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off
in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the
archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly
and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who
aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains
may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have
the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else
is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical
or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves
must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying
and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being
paid_,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign
ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world,
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.
But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me
in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else.
And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the
grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It
came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive
performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
something like this:
“_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._
“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short
and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though
I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with
all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,
helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things
would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with
an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas,
and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let
me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of
the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.