"Shall I call that Wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman--the old hea.r.s.e-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other side of the mast; why, there"s a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now he"s back again; what does that mean? Hark! he"s muttering-- voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. p.r.i.c.k ears, and listen!"
"If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. I"ve studied signs, and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen.Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what"s the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign-- the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee."
"There"s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg-- all tattooing--looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he"s comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon"s Astronomy in the back country. And by Jove, he"s found something there in the vicinity of his thigh-- I guess it"s Sagittarius, or the Archer.
No: he don"t know what to make of the doubloon; he takes it for an old b.u.t.ton off some king"s trowsers. But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oak.u.m in the toes of his pumps as usual.
What does he say, with that look of his? Ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the coin-- fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more.
This way comes Pip-- poor boy! would he had died, or I; he"s half horrible to me. He too has been watching all of these interpreters myself included-- and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!""I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
"Upon my soul, he"s been studying Murray"s Grammar!
Improving his mind, poor fellow! But what"s that he says now--hist!"
"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
"Why, he"s getting it by heart--hist! again."
"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
"Well, that"s funny."
"And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I"m a crow, especially when I stand a"top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain"t I a crow? And where"s the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of an old jacket."
"Wonder if he means me?--complimentary--poor lad!--I could go hang myself. Any way, for the present, I"ll quit Pip"s vicinity. I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he"s too crazy-witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering.""Here"s the ship"s navel, this doubloon here, and they are all one fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what"s the consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught"s nailed to the mast it"s a sign that things grow desperate. Ha! ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he"ll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey"s wedding ring.
How did it get there? And so they"ll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the s.h.a.ggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious gold!--the green miser"ll h.o.a.rd ye soon! Hish! hish! G.o.d goes "mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny!
hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"
CHAPTER 100.
Leg and Arm.
The Pequod of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London "Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?"
So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colors, bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-deck, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat"s bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, goodnatured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a s.p.a.cious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a huzzar"s surcoat.
"Hast seen the White Whale!"
"See you this?" and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet.
"Man my boat!" cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near him--"Stand by to lower!"In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment"s warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody-- except those who are almost hourly used to it, like whalemen-- to clamber up a ship"s side from a boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.
It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circ.u.mstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they didnot seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, "I see, I see!-- avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle."
As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the ma.s.sive curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, "Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!--an arm and a leg!-- an arm that never can shrink, d"ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where did"st thou see the White Whale?--how long ago?""The White Whale," said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a telescope; There I saw him, on the Line, last season."
"And he took that arm off, did he?" asked Ahab, now sliding down from the capstan, and resting on the Englishman"s shoulder, as he did so.
"Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?"
"Spin me the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?"
"It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line," began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling round so that my boat"s crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows" feet and wrinkles."
"It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended breath."And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin. Aye, aye-- they were mine--my irons," cried Ahab, exultingly--"but on!"
"Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly. "Well, this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!
"Aye, I see!--wanted to part it; free the fast-fish--an old trick-- I know him."
"How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "I do not know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow; but we didn"t know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale"s; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and what a n.o.ble great whale it was-- the n.o.blest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life--I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat"s crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped into my first mate"s boat--Mr.
Mounttop"s here (by the way, Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);-- as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop"s boat, which, d"ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and s.n.a.t.c.hing the first harpoon,let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir--hearts and souls alive, man--the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both eyes out--all befogged and bedeadened with black foam--the whale"s tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it overboard--down comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here" (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); "yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to h.e.l.l"s flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good G.o.d, the barb ript its way along the flesh-- clear along the whole length of my arm--came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;--and that gentleman there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain--Dr. Bunger, ship"s surgeon: Bunger, my lad,-- the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn."The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other, occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his superior"s introduction of him to Ahab, he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain"s bidding.
"It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-surgeon; "and, taking my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy-"
"Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship," interrupted the one-armed captain, addressing Ahab; "go on, boy."
"Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use--I did all I could; sat up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet-"
"Oh, very severe!" chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn"t see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three o"clockin the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don"t ye? You know you"re a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I"d rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man."
"My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"-- said the imperturbable G.o.dly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab--"is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But I may as well say--en pa.s.sant, as the French remark--that I myself--that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy--am a strict total abstinence man; I never drink-"
"Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it"s a sort of fits to him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on--go on with the arm story."
"Yes, I may as well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about observing, sir, before Captain Boomer"s facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against all rule"-- pointingat it with the marlingspike--"that is the captain"s work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one"s brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical pa.s.sions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir"--removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound-- "Well, the captain there will tell you how that came there; he knows."
"No, I don"t," said the captain, "but his mother did; he was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you--you Bunger! was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world?
Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal."
"What became of the White Whale?" now cried Ahab, who thus far had been impatiently listening to this byeplay between the two Englishmen.
"Oh!" cried the one-armed captain, Oh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we didn"t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I didn"t then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby d.i.c.k--as some call him--and then I knew it was he.""Did"st thou cross his wake again?"
"Twice."
"But could not fasten?"
"Didn"t want to try to; ain"t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I"m thinking Moby d.i.c.k doesn"t bite so much as he swallows."
"Well, then," interrupted Bunger, "give him your left arm for bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen"--very gravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession--"Do you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest even a man"s arm? And he knows it too.
So that what you take for the White Whale"s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d"ye see?
No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a mindto p.a.w.n one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why, in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another chance at you shortly, that"s all."
"No, thank you, Bunger," said the English Captain, "he"s welcome to the arm he has, since I can"t help it, and didn"t know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I"ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he"s best let alone; don"t you think so, Captain?"--glancing at the ivory leg.
"He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He"s all a magnet! How long since thou saw"st him last? Which way heading?"
"Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend"s," cried Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; "this man"s blood--bring the thermometer!--it"s at the boiling point!-- his pulse makes these planks beat!--sir!"--taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing near to Ahab"s arm.
"Avast!" roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks--"Man the boat! Which way heading?""Good G.o.d!" cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put. "What"s the matter? He was heading east, I think.--Is your Captain crazy?" whispering Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take the boat"s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle towards him commanded the ship"s sailors to stand by to lower.
In a moment he was standing in the boat"s stern, and the Manilla men were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.
CHAPTER 101.
The Decanter.
Ere the English ship fades from sight be it set down here, that she hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of enderby and sons; a house which in my poor whaleman"s opinion, comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fish-doc.u.ments do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued the Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the whole globe who so harpooned him.
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great SouthSea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, the Amelia"s example was soon followed by other ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons--how many, their mother only knows--and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of j.a.pan. That ship-- well called the "Syren"--made a n.o.ble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great j.a.panese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer.
All honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.
The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast sailer and a n.o.ble craft every way. I boarded heronce at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps--every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine gam I had-- long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivory heel-- it minds me of the n.o.ble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it"s squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands-- visitors and all--were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pa.s.s the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it for my taste.
The beef was fine--tough, but with body in it. They said it was bullbeef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitchingout of you like billiard-b.a.l.l.s. The bread-- but that couldn"t be helped; besides, it was an anti-s...o...b..tic, in short, the bread contained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook"s boilers, including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band.
But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other English whalers I know of--not all though--were such famous, hospitable ships; that pa.s.sed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normaland natural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some special origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated.
During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers.
The t.i.tle was, "Dan Coopman," wherefore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one "Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and St. Potts, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble--this same Dr.
Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, a.s.sured me that "Dan Coopman" did not mean "The Cooper," but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed, "Smeer,"
or "Fat," that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:0084400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork.
150,000 lbs. of stock fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of b.u.t.ter. 20,000 lbs. of Texel and Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer.
Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quant.i.ty of stock-fish, &c., consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of b.u.t.ter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in b.u.mpers of train oil.The quant.i.ty of the beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels.
Now, as those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks" allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat"s head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the const.i.tution; upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.
But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the decanter.
CHAPTER 102.
A Bower in the Arsacides.
Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behoves me now to unb.u.t.ton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.
But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windla.s.s, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael.
Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of leviathan; and belike of thetallow-vats, dairy-rooms, b.u.t.teries, and cheeseries in his bowels.
I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young cub?
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.
Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent; chieflycarved woods of wonderful devices, chiselled sh.e.l.ls, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his sh.o.r.es.
Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped of its fathomdeep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.
The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.
It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver"s loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof theground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and gra.s.ses; the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active.
Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!-- whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!-- but one single word with thee! Nay--the shuttle flies-- the figures float from forth the loom; the fresher-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-G.o.d, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened cas.e.m.e.nts. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world"s loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all wovenover with the vines; every month a.s.suming greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim G.o.d wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.
Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertu.
He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this skeleton-- brushed the vines aside--broke through the ribs--and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbors. But soon my line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the alt.i.tude of the final rib, "How now!" they shouted; "Dar"st thou measure this our G.o.d! That"s for us." "Aye, priests--well, how long do ye make him, then?" But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each other"s sconces with their yard-sticks-- the great skull echoed--and seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concludedmy own admeasurements.
These admeasurements I now propose to set before you.
But first, be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied measurements I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call "the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United States." Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo"s.
In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford"s whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities--spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan-- and swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon someof his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.