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THE WORKS OF
HERMAN MELVILLE
STANDARD EDITION
VOLUME
VII
MOBY- DICK
OR, THE WHALE
BY
HERMAN MELVILLE
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY
1922
Ps
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD
at the Edinburgh University Press
IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOB HIS GENIUS
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. LOOMINGS . 1
II. THE CARPET-BAG ...... 8
III.  THE COUNTERPANE . . . . . 31
V. BREAKFAST ...... 36
VI.   THE PULPIT ....... 46
IX. THE SERMON ...... 49
X. A BOSOM FRIEND ...... 60
XI. NIGHTGOWN 65
XII. BIOGRAPHICAL ...... 68
XIII.  NANTUCKET ....... 77
XV. CHOWDER ....... 80
XVI. THE SHIP . 84
XVII. THE RAMADAN ...... 102
XVHI. HIS MARK ....... 110
XIX.  ALL ASTIR ....... 119
XXI. GOING ABOARD ...... 122
XXII. MERRY CHRISTMAS . . . . .126
XXIII.    KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES . . . .141
XXVII. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES .... 145
XXVIII. AHAB ....... 151
vii
viii MOBY-DICK
CHAP. PAGE
XXIX. ENTER AHAB ; TO HIM, STUBB . . .156
XXX. THE PIPE ...... 160
XXXI. QUEEN MAB 161
XXXII.  THE SPECKS YNDER 180
XXXIV. THE CABIN -TABLE 184
XXXV. THE MAST-HEAD . . . . .191
XXXVI. THE QUARTER-DECK ..... 199
XXXVII.  DUSK 211
XXXIX. FIRST NIGHT-WATCH . . . . .213
XL. MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE . . . .214
XLI. MOBY-DICK ...... 222
XLII. THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE . . 234
XLIII. HARK! 245
XLIV. THE CHART ...... 247
XLV. THE AFFIDAVIT ...... 254
XLVI. SURMISES 265
XLVII. THE MAT-MAKER 269
XLVIII. THE FIRST LOWERING . . . . . 273
XLIX. THE HYENA ...... 286
L. AHAB'S BOAT AND CREW. FED ALLAH . . 289
LI. THE SPIRIT-SPOUT 293
MI. THE ALBATROSS ...... 298
Mil. THE GAM 301
LIV. THE TOWN-HO'S STORY 306
LV. OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES . 331
LVI. OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES 337
LVII. OF WHALES IN PAINT, IN TEETH, ETC. . 342
LVIII. BRIT 346
LIX. SQUID 350
LX. THE LINE . 353
MOBY-DICK
OR
THE WHALE
ETYMOLOGY
(SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO
A GBAMMAB SCHOOL)
THE pale Usher threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain ;
I see him now.
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.' Hakluyt.
1 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. W alien ; A.S. Walw-ian y to roll, to wallow.'
Richardson's Dictionary.
Hebrew.
Greek.
Latin,
Anglo-Saxon.
Danish.
Dutch.
Swedish.
Icelandic.
English.
in,
CETUS,
WHCEL,
HVALT,
WAL,
HWAL,
WHALE,
WHALE,
BALEINE,
BALLENA,
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE,
French.
Spanish.
Feegee.
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, pick-
ing 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 commen-
tator 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 forever 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!
xii
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.'
HollancFs Plutarch's Morals.
' The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes
that are : among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called
Balaene, 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.
xiii
xiv MOBY-DICK
' 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.
1 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 1 s Apology for Eaimond 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 cart-loads.'
Stowe's Annals.
1 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.
1 The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an in-
ward 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's Preface to Gondibert.
EXTRACTS xv
' What spermaceti! is, men might justly doubt, since the
learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly,
Nescio quid sit.'
Sir T. Browne's 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 Common-
wealth 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.
4 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 Leviathans to attend their prey,
And give no chace, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.'
Dry den'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 Purchas.
xvi MOBY-DICK
* 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. Herberts Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.
4 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.
4 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.
1 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.
EXTRACTS xvii
****** an( j ^e breath of the whale is fre-
quently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to
bring on a disorder of the brain.'
Ulloa's South America.
1 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's 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 en-
deavour 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 bold-
ness in the fishermen.'
Thomas Jefferson's Whale Memorial to the
French Minister in 1778.
1 And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it ? '
Edmund Burke's Reference in Parliament
to the Nantucket Whale Fishery.
VOL. I. b
xviii MOBY-DICK
' 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 pro-
tecting 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 pro-
perty of the king.' Blackstone.
c 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.
EXTRACTS xix
' In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, 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' '<$ World before the Flood.
' lo ! Paean ! lo ! 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.'
CJiarles 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.'
Eckermanris Conversations with Goethe.
xx MOBY-DICK
' " 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 Nan-
tucket, 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 alto-
gether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles. * * *
t 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.
1 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 every-
thing around him ; he rushes at the boats with his head ;
they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and some-
times utterly destroyed.
* * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the
consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a com-
mercial point of view, of 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 oppor-
tunities of witnessing their habitudes. 5
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 possess-
ing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body,
but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ
these weapons offensively, and in a manner at once so artful,
EXTRACTS xxi
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-o-s !
" Thunder and lightning ! so near ! Call all hands ! "
J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a
Whaling Cruise. 1846.
4 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.
c 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. 5
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.
xxii . MOBY-DICK
' The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him
in a moment.'
The Whale and his Captors, or the Whale-
man's Adventures and the Whale's Bio-
graphy, 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.
4 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.
4 It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean with-
out 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 a regular voyage.'
Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex.
1 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.
EXTRACTS xxiii
' 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.
1 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 WJialing 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 ' (Tierra
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.
MOBY-DICK
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 bring-
ing 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 toward 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
VOL. I. A
2 MOBY-DICK
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 after-
noon. 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
Vhe 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.  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
LOOMINGS 3
caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation andli
water are wedded forever.
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 hillside 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
4 MOBY-DICK
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. Be-
sides, 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 honourable respect-
able toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind what-
soever. 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 shipboard 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 respect-
fully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I
will. It is out of the idolatrous do tings 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,
LOOMINGS 5
like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this
sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's
sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old estab-
lished family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Ran-
dolphs, 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.
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 arch-
angel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that
particular instance ? Who ain/t 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
6 MOBY-DICK
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 com-
modore 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 surveil-
lance 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 Provi-
dence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more exten-
sive 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.
1 BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.'
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those
stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby
LOOMINGS 7
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 gortentous 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 for-
bidden 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, midmost of
them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in
the air.
CHAPTER II
THE CARPET-BAG
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked
it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the
Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly
arrived in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in
December. Much was I disappointed upon learning
that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed,
and that no way of reaching that place would offer, till
the following Monday.
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties
of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to
embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I 5
for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made
up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because
there was a fine, boisterous something about everything
connected with that famous old island, which amazingly
pleased me. Besides, though New Bedford has of late
been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and
though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much
behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original the
Tyre of this Carthage ; the place where the first dead
American whale was stranded. Where else but from
Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red Men,
first sally out in canoes to give chase to the leviathan ?
And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adven-
turous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobble-stones so goes the story to throw at the whales,
THE CARPET-BAG 9
in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk
a harpoon from the bowsprit ?
Now having a night, a day, and still another night
following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark
for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment
where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very
dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night,
bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place.
With anxious grapnelsJE had sounded my pocket, and only
brought up a few pieces of silver. So, wherever you go,
Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a
dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the
gloom toward the north with the darkness toward the
south wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to
lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire
the price, and don't be too particular.
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the
sign of 'The Crossed Harpoons ' but it looked too expen-
sive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red
windows of the ' Sword-Fish Inn,' there came such fer-
vent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow
and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the
congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic
pavement, rather weary for me, when I struck my foot
against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorse-
less service the soles of mv boots were in a most miserable
V
plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing
one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and
hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within.  So on I went. I now by instinct followed the
streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless,
were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
Such dreary streets ! blocks of blackness, not houses,
10 MOBY-DICK
on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle
moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of
the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved
all but deserted. But presently I carne to a smoky
light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of
which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as
if it were meant for the uses of the public ; so, entering,
the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in
the porch. Ha ! thought I, ha, as the flying particles
almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed
city, Gomorrah ? But ' The Cfossed Harpoons ' and
4 The Sword-Fish ' ? this, then, must needs be the sign
of ' The Trap. ' However, I picked myself up , and hearing
a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second,
interior door.
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet.
 It was a negro church ; and the preacher's
text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weep-
ing and wailing and teeth -gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael,
muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the
sign of ' The Trap ' !
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far
from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air ;
and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with
a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight
jet of misty spray, and these words underneath ' The
Spouter-Inn : Peter Coffin.'
Coffin ? Spouter ? Rather ominous in that particu-
lar connection, thought I. But it is a common name in
Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an
emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the
dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might
THE CARPET-BAG 11
have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt dis-
trict, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort
of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for
cheap lodgings, and the best of pea-coffee.
It was a queer sort of place a gable-ended old house,
one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It
stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous
wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it
did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, never-
theless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to anyone indoors,
with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. 4 In
judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,'
says an old writer of whose works I possess the only
copy extant ' it maketh a marvellous difference,
whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest
it from that Cashless window, where the frost is on both
sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.'
True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my
mind old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these
eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house.

But it 's too late to make any improvements now. The
universe is finished ; the cope-stone is on, and the chips
were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there,
chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow,
and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might
plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his
mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous
Euroclydon. Euroclydon ! says old Dives, in his red
silken wrapper (he had a redder one afterward) pooh,
pooh ! What a fine frosty night ; how Orion glitters ;
what northern lights ! Let them talk of their oriental
summer climes of everlasting conservatories ; give me
12 MOBY-DICK
the privilege of making my own summer with my own
coals.
But what thinks Lazarus ? Can he warm his blue
hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights ?
Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here ?
Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along
the line of the equator ; yea, ye gods ! go down to the
fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost ?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the
curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful
than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the
Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar
in an ice-palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president
of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of
orphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-
whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let
us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort
of a place this ' Spouter ' may be.
 On one side hung a very large oil-
painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced,
that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it,
it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic
visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbours, that
you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and
shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious
young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had
endeavoured to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
of much and earnest contemplation, and oft-repeated
ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little
window toward the back of the entry, you at last come
to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might
not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a
long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hover-
ing in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim,
perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.  Yet there was a sort of indefinite, half-
attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly
froze you to it, till you in voluntarily, took an oath with
yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant.
is
14 MOBY-DICK
Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would
dart you through. It 's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.
It 's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.
It 's a blasted heath. It 's a Hyperborean winter scene.
It 's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time.
But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous
something in the picture's midst. That once found out,
and all the rest were plain. But stop ; does it not bear
a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish ? even the great
leviathan himself ?
In fact, the artist's design seemed this : a final theory
of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions
of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the
subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great
hurricane ; the half-foundered ship weltering there with
its three dismantled masts alone visible ; and an exasper-
ated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is
in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three
mast-heads.
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with
a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some
were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory
saws ; others were tufted with knots of human hair ; and
one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round
like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-
armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and
wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could
ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,
horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty
old whaling-lances and harpoons all broken and deformed.
Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance,
now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain
kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And
that harpoon so like a corkscrew now was flung in
Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years after-
THE SPOUTER-INN 15
ward slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron
entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning
in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last
was found imbedded in the hump.
Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-
arched way cut through what in old times must have
been a great central chimney with fire-places all round
you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this,
with such low ponderous beams above, and such old
wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy
you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a
howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked
so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like
table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty
rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks.
Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a
dark-looking den the bar a rude attempt at a right
whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast
arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might
almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves,
ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks ; and in
those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah
(by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little
withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the
sailors deliriums and death.
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his
poison. Though true cylinders without within, the
villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered down-
ward to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely
pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets.
Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny ; to this
a penny more ; and so on to the full glass the Cape
Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.
Upon entering the place I found a number of young
seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light
16 MOBY-DICK
divers speiimens of skrimshander. I sought the land-
lord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with
a room, received for answer that his house was full not
a bed unoccupied. ' But avast, 5 he added, tapping his
forehead, ' you hain't no objections to sharin* a har-
pooneer 's blanket, have ye ? I s'pose you are goin' a-
whalin 5 , so you 'd better get used to that sort of thing. 5
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed ; that
if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the
harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really
had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not
decidedly objectionable, why, rather than wander further
about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put
up with the half of any decent man 5 s blanket.
' I thought so. All right ; take a seat. Supper ?
you want supper ? Supper 5 11 be ready directly. 5
I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like
a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar
was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping
over and diligently working away at the space between
his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail,
but he didn't make much headway, I thought.
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our
meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland
no fire at all the landlord said he couldn't afford it.
Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding
sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey-jackets,
and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half-
frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial
kind not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings ; good
heavens ! dumplings for supper ! One young fellow in
a green box-coat addressed himself to these dumplings
hi a most direful manner.
' My boy,' said the landlord, ' you '11 have the night-
mare to a dead sartainty.'
THE SPOUTER-INN 17
'Landlord,' I whispered, w that ain't the harpooneer,
is it ? '
1 Oh, no/ said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny,
4 the harpooneer is a dark - complexioned chap.
' The devil he does, ' says I. ' Where is that harpooneer ?
Is he here ? '
' He '11 be here afore long,' was the answer.
I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of
this ' dark-complexioned ' harpooneer. At any rate, I
made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should
sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before
I did.
Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room,
when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved
to spend the rest of the evening as a looker-on.
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting
up, the landlord cried, ' That 's the Grampus's crew. I
seed her reported in the offing this morning ; a three
years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys ; now we '11
have the latest news from the Feegees.'
A tramping of sea-boots was heard in the entry ; the
door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners
enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch-coats, and
with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all be-
darned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles,
they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They
had just landed from their boat, and this was the first
house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made
a straight wake for the whale's mouth the bar when
the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon
poured them out brimmers all round. One complained
of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed
him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he
VOL. I. B
18 MOBY-DICK
swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs
whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether
caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather-side
of an ice -island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it
generally does even with the arrantest topers newly
landed from sea, and they began capering about most
obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat
aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the
hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon
the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the
rest. This man interested me at once ; and since the sea-
gods had ordained that he should soon become my ship-
mate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this
narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little
description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with
noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have
seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply
brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the
contrast ; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated
some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much
joy. His voice at once announced that he was a
Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must
be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian
Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions
had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unob-
served, and I saw no more of him till he became my
comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was
missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some
reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of
' Bulkington ! Bulkington ! where 5 s Bulkington ? ' and
darted out of the house in pursuit of him.
It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming
almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began
THE SPOUTER-INN 19
to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred
to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you
would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother.
I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when
they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with
an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town,
and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections
indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason
why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than
anybody else ; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at
sea, than bachelor kings do ashore. To be sure, they
all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your
own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket,
and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I
abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was
fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or
woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest,
certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer
ought to be home and going bedward. Suppose now,
he should tumble in upon me at midnight how could I
tell from what vile hole he had been coming ?
' Landlord ! I Ve changed my mind about that
harpooneer. I shan't sleep with him. I '11 try the bench
here.'
' Just as you please ; I 'm sorry I can't spare ye a
tablecloth for a mattress, and it 's a plaguy rough board
here ' feeling of the knots and notches. ' But wait
a bit, Skrimshander ; I Ve got a carpenter's plane there
in the bar wait, I say, and I '11 make ye snug enough.'
So saying he procured the plane ; and with his old silk
handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to
planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape.
20 MOBY-DICK
The shavings flew right and left ; till at last the plane-
iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The
landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for
heaven's sake to quit the bed was soft enough to suit
me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world
could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering
up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them
into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went
about his business, and left me in a brown study.
I now took the measure of the bench, and found that
it was a foot too short ; but that could be mended with
a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other
bench in the room was about four inches higher than the
planed one so there was no yoking them. I then placed
the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space
against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my
back to settle down in. But I soon found that there
came such a draught of cold air over me from under the
sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all,
especially as another current from the rickety door met
the one from the window, and both together formed a
series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the
spot where I had thought to spend the night.
The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop,
couldn't I steal a march on him bolt his door inside, and
jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent
knockings ? It seemed no bad idea ; but upon second
thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what
the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room,
the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready
to knock me down !
Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible
chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other
person's bed, I began to think that after all I might be
cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown
THE SPOQTER-INN 21
harpooneer. Thinks I, I '11 wait awhile ; he must be
dropping in before long. 1 11 have a good look at him
then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows
after all there 's no telling.
But though the other boarders kept coming in by
ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of
my harpooneer.
4 Landlord ! ' said I, ' what sort of a chap is he does
he always keep such late hours ? ' It was now hard
upon twelve o'clock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle,
and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond
my comprehension. ' No,' he answered, ' generally he 5 s
an early bird airley to bed and airley to rise yes, he 's
the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he
went out a-peddling, you see, and I don't see what
on airth keeps him so late, unless, maybe, he can't sell
his head.'
' Can't sell his head ? What sort of a bamboozingly
story is this you are telling me ? ' getting into a tower-
ing rage. ' Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this
harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday
night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head
around this town ? '
' That 's precisely it,' said the landlord, ' and I told
him he couldn't sell it here, the market 's overstocked.'
' With what ? ' shouted I.
' With heads, to be sure ; ain't there too many heads
in the world ? '
' I tell you what it is, landlord,' said I, quite calmly,
' you 'd better stop spinning that yarn to me I 'm not
green.'
6 Maybe not, ' taking out a stick and whittling a tooth-
pick, ' but I rayther guess you '11 be done brown if that
'ere harpooneer hears you a-slanderin' his head.'
22 MOBY-DICK
' I '11 break it for him/ said I, now flying into a passion
again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.
' It 's broke a 'ready,' said he.
' Broke/ said I ' broke, do you mean ? '
' Sartain, and that 's the very reason he can't sell it,
I guess.'
' Landlord/ said I, going up to him as cool as Mt.
Hecla in a snow-storm, 'landlord, stop whittling. You
and I must understand one another, and that too without
delay.  And about this har-
pooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling
me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending
to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling toward the man
whom you design for my bedfellow* a sort of connection,
landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and
tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I
shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him.
And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that
story about selling his head, which if true I take to be
good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I 've
no idea of sleeping with a madman ; and you, sir, you
I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do
so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a
criminal prosecution.'
' Wall/ said the landlord, fetching a long breath, 'that 's
a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and
then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have
been tellin' you of has just arrived from the South Seas,
where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads
(great curios, you know), and he 's sold all on 'em but
one, and that one he 's tryin' to sell to-night, cause to-
morrow 's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin'
THE SPOUTER-INN 23
human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to
churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him
just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung
on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.'
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable
mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had
no idea of fooling me but at the same time what could
I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday
night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a
cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolaters ?
' Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a danger-
ous man.'
' He pays reg'lar, 5 was the rejoinder. ' But come,
it 's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning
flukes it 's a nice bed : Sail and me slept in that 'ere
bed the night we were spliced. There 's plenty room for
two to kick about in that bed ; it 's an almighty big bed
that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam
and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a-dreaming
and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got
pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.
Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here,
I '11 give ye a glim in a jiffy ' ; and so saying he lighted a
candle and held it toward me, offering to lead the way.
But I stood irresolute ; when looking at a clock in the
corner, he exclaimed, ' I vum it 's Sunday you won't
see that harpooneer to-night ; he 's come to anchor some-
where come along then ; do come ; won't ye come ? '
I considered the matter a moment, and then upstairs
we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a
clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed,
almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to
sleep abreast.
' There,' said the landlord, placing the candle on a
crazy old sea-chest that did double duty as a wash-stand
24 MOBY-DICK
and centre table ; ' there, make yourself comfortable
now, and good night to ye.' I turned round from eyeing
the bed, but he had disappeared.
Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed.
Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny
tolerably well. I then glanced round the room ; and
besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other
furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four
walls, and a papered fire-board representing a man striking
a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room,
there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the
floor in one corner ; also a large seaman's bag, containing
the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk.
Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish-hooks
on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon stand-
ing at the head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest ? I took it up, and held
it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried
every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory con-
clusion concerning it.  There was a hole or slit in
the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South
American ponchos. But could it be possible that any
sober harpooneer would get into a door-mat, and parade
the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise ?
I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper,
being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a
little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had
been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit
of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a
sight in my life.
I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced
THE SPOUTER-INN 25
thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his
door-mat. After thinking some time on the bedside, I
got up and took off my monkey-jacket, and then stood
in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my
coat, and thought a little more in my shirt -sleeves. But
beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was,
and remembering what the landlord said about the har-
pooneer 's not coming home at all that night, it being so
very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my
pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light
tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of
heaven.
Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or
broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a
good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last
I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a
good offing toward the land of Nod, when I heard a
heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light
come into the room from under the door.
Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer,
the infemal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and
resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a
light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head
in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without
looking toward the bed, placed his candle a good way
off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began
working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I
before spoke of as being in the room. I was all eagerness
to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while
employed in unlacing the bag 's mouth . This accomplished,
however, he turned round when, good heavens ! what a
sight !  It was of a dark, purplish, yellow
colour, here and there stuck over with large, blackish-
looking squares. Yes, it 's just as I thought, he 's a
terrible bedfellow ; he 's been in a fight, got dreadfully
26 MOBY-DICK
cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that
moment he chanced to turn his face so toward the light,
that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at
all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were stains
of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make
of this ; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me.
I remembered a story of a white man a whaleman too
who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by
them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of
his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adven-
ture. And what is it, thought I, after all ! It 's only
his outside ; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.
But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion,
that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely
independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it
might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning ;
but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into
a purplish-yellow one. However, I had never been in
the South Seas ; and perhaps the sun there produced
these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while
all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,
this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some
difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling
in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and
a sealskin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the
old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New
Zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it
down into the bag. He now took off his hat a new
beaver hat when I came nigh singing out with fresh
surprise. There was no hair on his head none to speak
of, at least nothing but a small scalp -knot twisted up on
his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for
all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the^stranger
stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out
of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
THE SPOUTER-INN 27
Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out
of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am
no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple
rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance,
js^the parent^QJJear, and being completely nonplussed
and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now
as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who
had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In
fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough
just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory
answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.
Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing,
and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these
covered parts of him were checkered with the same
squares as his face ; his back, too, was all over the same
dark squares ; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years'
War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.
Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of
dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young
palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some
abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whale-
man in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian
country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too
perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take
a fancy to mine heavens ! look at that tomahawk !
But there was no time for shuddering, for now the
savage went about something that completely fascinated
my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be
a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or
dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair,
he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a
curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back,
and exactly the colour of a three-days-old Congo baby.
Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost
thought that this black manikin was a real baby pre-
28 MOBY-DICK
served in some similar manner. But seeing that it was
not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like
polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but
a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be.  The chimney
jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that
I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little
shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard toward the half-hidden
image, feeling but ill at ease meantime to see what was
next to follow. First he takes about a double handful
of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them
carefully before the idol ; then laying a bit of ship -biscuit
on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled
revail upon Queequeg to take a chair ; but in vain.
There he sat ; and all he could do for all my polite
arts and blandishments he would not move a peg, nor
say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my
presence in any the slightest way.
106 MOBY-DICK
I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his
Ramadan ; do they fast on their hams that way in his
native island ? It must be so ; yes, it 's part of his
creed, I suppose ; well, then, let him rest ; he '11 get up
sooner or later, no doubt. It can't last for ever, thank
God, and his Ramadan only comes once a year ; and I
don't believe it 's very punctual then.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time
listening to the long stories of some sailors who had just
come from a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it (that
is, a short whaling voyage in a schooner or brig, confined
to the north of the Line, in the Atlantic Ocean only) ; after
listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven
o'clock, I went upstairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure
by this time Queequeg must certainly have brought his
Ramadan to a termination. But no ; there he was just
where I had left him ; he had not stirred an inch. I began
to grow vexed with him ; it seemed so downright sense-
less and insane to be sitting there all day and half the
night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood
on his head.
' For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake your-
self ; get up and have some supper.  But not a word did he
reply.
Despairing of him, therefore, I deter mined to go to bed
and to sleep ; and no doubt, before a great while, he
would follow me. But previous to turning in, I took my
heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it
promised to be a very cold night ; and he had nothing
but his ordinary round jacket on. For some time, do
all I would, I could not get into the faintest doze. I had
blown out the candle ; and the mere thought of Queequeg
not four feet off sitting there in that uneasy position,
stark alone in the cold and dark ; this made me really
THE RAMADAN 107
wretched. Think of it ; sleeping all night in the same
room with a wide-awake pagan on his hams in this dreary,
unaccountable Ramadan !
But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing
more till break of day ; when, looking over the bedside,
there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down
to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun
entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating
joints, but with a cheerful look ; limped toward me where
I lay ; pressed his forehead again against mine ; and said
his Ramadan was over.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any
person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person
does not kill or insult any other person, because that other
person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion
becomes really frantic ; when it is a positive torment to
him ; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncom-
fortable inn to lodge in ; then I think it high time to take
that individual aside and argue the point with him.
And just so I now did with Queequeg. ' Queequeg,'
said I, ' get into bed now, and lie and listen to me.' I
then went on, beginning with the rise and progress of
the primitive religions, and coming down to the various
religions of the present time, during which time I laboured
to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and
prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were
stark nonsense ; bad for the health ; useless for the soul ;
opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of hygiene and
common-sense.
Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in ; hence
the spirit caves in ; and all thoughts born of a fast must
necessarily be half -starved. This is the reason why most
108 MOBY-DICK
dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions
about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I,
rather digressively ; hell is an idea first born on an un-
digested apple-dumpling ; and since then perpetuated
through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Bamadans.
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever
troubled with dyspepsia ; expressing the idea very plainly,
so that he could take it in. He said no ; only upon one
memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given
by his father the King, on the gaming of a great battle
wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two
o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that
very evening.
4 No more, Queequeg,' said I, shuddering ; 'that will
do ' ; for I knew the inferences without his further hint-
ing them. I had seen a sailor who had visited that very
island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a
great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the
slain in the yard or garden of the victor ; and then, one
by one, they were placed in great wooden trenchers, and
garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoa-
nuts ; and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent
round with the victor's compliments to all his friends,
just as though these presents were so many Christmas
turkeys.
After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion
made much impression upon Queequeg. Because, in
the first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on
that important subject, unless considered from his own
point of view ; and, in the second place, he did not more
than one-third understand me, couch my ideas simply as
I would ; and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a
good deal more about the true religion than I did. He
looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and
compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such
THE RAMADAN 109
a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to
evangelical pagan piety.
At last we rose and dressed ; and Queequeg, taking a
prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so
that the landlady should not make much profit by reason
of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod,
sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut
bones.
CHAPTER XVIII
HIS MARK
As we were walking down the end of the wharf toward
the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg
in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying
he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and
furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on
board that craft, unless they previously produced their
papers.
' What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg ? ' said I,
now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade
standing on the wharf.
' I mean,' he replied, ' he must show his papers.'
' Yea,' said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking
his head from behind Peleg 's, out of the wigwam. ' He
must show that he 's converted. Son of darkness/ he
added, turning to Queequeg, c art thou at present in
communion with any Christian church ? '
' Why/ said I, ' he 's a member of the First Congrega-
tional Church/ Here be it said, that many tattooed
savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be
converted into the churches.
' First Congregational Church/ cried Bildad, ' what !
that worships in Deacon Deuteronomy Cole man's meeting-
house ? ' and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed
them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and
putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam,
and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long
look at Queequeg.
IIP
HIS MARK 111
* How long hath he been a member ? ' he then said,
turning to me ; ' not very long, I rather guess, young
man.'
4 No/ said Peleg, ' and he hasn't been baptized right
either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue
off his face.'
' Do tell, now/ cried Bildad, ' is this Philistine a
regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting ?
I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's
day.'
' I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy
or his meeting/ said I, ' all I know is, that Queequeg here
is a born member of the First Congregational Church.
He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is.'
' Young man/ said Bildad sternly, ' thou art skylarking
with me explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What
church dost thee mean ? answer me.'
Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied, ' I mean, sir,
the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I,
and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of
us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong ; the
great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole
worshipping world ; we all belong to that ; only some of
us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the
grand belief ; in that we all join hands/
' Splice, thou mean'st splice hands/ cried Peleg, draw-
ing nearer. ' Young man, you 'd better ship for a mis-
sionary, instead of a foremast hand ; I never heard a
better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy why Father
Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he 's reckoned some-
thing. Come aboard, come aboard ; never mind about
the papers. I say, tell Quohog there what 's that you
call him ? tell Quohog to step along. By the great
anchor, what a harpoon he 's got there ! looks like good
stuff that ; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog,
112 MOBY-DICK
or whatever your name is, did you ever stand in the head
of a whale-boat ? did you ever strike a fish ? '
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of
way, jumped upon the bulwarks, from thence into the
bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the side ; and
then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried
out in some such way as this :
' Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere ?
You see him ? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den ! '
and taking sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over
old Bildad's broad brim, clean across the ship's decks,
and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight/
' Now, 5 said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line,
* spos-ee him whale-e eye ; why, dad whale dead.'
' Quick, Bildad,' said Peleg to his partner, who, aghast
at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated
toward the cabin gangway. ' Quick, I say, you, Bildad,
and get the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog
there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye,
Quohog, we '11 give ye the ninetieth lay, and that 's
more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of
Nantucket.'
So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy
Queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship's
company to which I myself belonged.
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got
everything ready for signing, he turned to me and said,
' I guess, Quohog there don't know how to write, does he ?
I say, Quohog, blast ye ! dost thou sign thy name or
make thy mark ? '
But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or
thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked
no ways abashed ; but taking the offered pen, copied
upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart
of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm ;
HIS MARK 113
so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touch-
ing his appellative, it stood something like this :
Quohog.
his >J< mark.
Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and stead-
fastly eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and
fumbling in the huge pockets of his broad-skirted drab
coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled
' The Latter Day Coming ; or No Time to Lose,' placed
it in Queequeg 's hands, and then grasping them and the
book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and
said, ' Son of darkness, I must do my duty by thee ; I am
part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the souls of
all its crew ; if thou still clingest to thy pagan ways, which
I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial
bondsman.  '
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's
language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and
domestic phrases.
' Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling
our harpooneer,' cried Peleg. ' Pious harpooneers never
make good voyagers it takes the shark out of 'em ; no
harpooneer is worth a straw who ain't pretty sharkish.
There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-
header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard ; he joined
the meeting, and never came to good. He got so
frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and
sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case
he got stove and went to Davy Jones.'
c Peleg ! Peleg ! ' said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands,
'thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous
time ; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of
VOL. I. H
114 MOBY-DICK
death ; how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise.
Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this
same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that
typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went
mate with Captain Ahab, didst thou not think of Death
and the Judgment then ? '
' Hear him, hear him now, ' cried Peleg, marching across
the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his
pockets, ' hear him, all of ye. Think of that ! When
every moment we thought the ship would sink ! Death
and the Judgment then ? What ? With all three masts
making such an everlasting thundering against the side ;
and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of
Death and the Judgment then ? No ! no time to think
about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I
was thinking of ; and how to save all hands how to rig
jury-masts how to get into the nearest port ; that was
what I was thinking of. }
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked
on deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very
quietly overlooking some sail-makers who were mending
a topsail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick
up a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted.
CHAPTER XIX
THE PEOPHET
' SHIPMATES, have ye shipped in that ship ? '
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were
sauntering away from the water, for the moment each
occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words
were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,
levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question.
He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and
patched trowsers ; a rag of a black handkerchief investing
his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions
flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed
bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been
dried up.
4 Have ye shipped in her ? ' he repeated.
4 You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,' said I, trying
to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
' Ay, the Pequod that ship there/ he said, drawing
back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight
out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed
finger darted full at the object.
' Yes,' said I, ' we have just signed the articles.'
' Anything down there about your souls ? '
' About what ? '
' Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any,' he said quickly.
No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got
ly, good luck to 'em ; and they are all the better off for
it. A soul 's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.'
' What are you jabbering about, shipmate ? ' said I.
115
!
116 MOBY-DICK
' He 's got enough, though, to make up for all de-
ficiencies of that sort in other chaps,' abruptly said the
stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he.
' Queequeg,' said I, ' let 's go ; this fellow has broken
loose from somewhere ; he 's talking about something
and somebody we don't know.'
' Stop ! ' cried the stranger. ' Ye said true ye
hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, have ye ? '
' Who 's Old Thunder ? ' said I, again riveted with the
insane earnestness of his manner.
' Captain Ahab.'
' What ! the captain of our ship, the Pequod ? '
' Ay, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by
that name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye ? '
' No, we hav'n't. He 's sick, they say, but is getting
better, and will be all right again before long.'
4 All right again before long ! ' laughed the stranger,
with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. ' Look ye ; when
Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will
be all right ; not before.'
i What do you know about him ? '
' What did they tell you about him ? Say that ! '
' They didn't tell much of anything about him ; only
I 've heard that he 's a good whale -hunter, and a good
captain to his crew.'
' That 's true, that 's true yes, both true enough.
But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and
growl ; growl and go that 's the word with Captain
Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to
him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for
three days and nights ; nothing about that deadly scrim-
mage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa ? heard
nothing about that, eh ? Nothing about the silver cala-
bash he spat into ? And nothing about his losing his
leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye
THE PROPHET 117
hear a word about them matters and something more, eh ?
No, I don't think ye did ; how could ye ? Who knows
it ? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, may-
hap, ye Ve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it ;
ay> ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that
every one knows a 'most I mean they know he 's only
one leg ; and that a parmacetti took the other off.'
4 My friend/ said I, ' what all this gibberish of yours is
about, I don't know, and I don't much care ; for it seems
to me that you must be a little damaged in the head.
But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab of that ship there,
the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about
the loss of his leg.'
' All about it, eh sure you do ? all ? '
* Pretty sure.'
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the
beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled
re very ; then starting a little, turned and said, ' Ye Ve
shipped, have ye ? Names down on the papers ? Well,
well, what 's signed, is signed ; and what 's to be, will be ;
and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all. Anyhow,
it's all fixed and arranged a 'ready ; and some sailors
or other must go with him, I suppose ; as well these as
any other men, God pity 'em ! Morning to ye, shipmates,
morning ; the ineffable heavens bless ye ; I 'm sorry I
stopped ye.'
' Look here, friend,' said I, 'if you have anything im-
portant to tell us, out with it ; but if you are only trying
to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game ; that 's
all I have to say.'
' And it 's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk
up that way ; you are just the man for him the likes of
ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning ! Oh ! when ye get
there, tell 'em I Ve concluded not to make one of 'em.'
 It is the easiest thing in the world for a man
to look as if he had a great secret in him.'
' Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.'
' Morning it is,' said I. ' Come along, Queequeg, let 's
leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will
you?'
^Elijah/
Elijah ! thought I, and we walked away, both comment-
ing, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor ;
and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to
be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a
hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and look-
ing back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah follow-
ing us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him
struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being
behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see
whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we
did. He did ; and then it seemed to me that he was
dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life
of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his
ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of
talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments
and half -apprehensions, and all connected with the
Pequod ; and Captain Ahab ; and the leg he had lost ;
and the Cape Horn fit ; and the silver calabash ; and what
Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the
day previous ; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig ;
and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail ; and a
hundred other shadowy things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah
was really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed
the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our
steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice
us. This relieved me ; and once more, and finally as it
seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.
CHAPTER XX
ALL ASTIR
A DAY or two passed, and there was great activity aboard
the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended,
but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas,
and coils of rigging ; in short, everything betokened that
the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain
Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam
keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands : Bildad did all
the purchasing and providing at the stores ; and the men
employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till
long after night-fall.
On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles,
word was given at all the inns where the ship's company were
stopping, that their chests must be on board before night,
for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing.
So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, how-
ever, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always
give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not
sail for several days. But no wonder ; there was a good
deal to be done, and there is no telling how many things
to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped.
 Just so with whaling, which
necessitates a three -years' housekeeping upon the wide
ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers,
and bankers . And though this also holds true of merchant
120 MOBY-DICK
vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with
whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling
voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution
of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at
the remote harbours usually frequented, it must be
remembered, that of all ships, whaling-vessels are the most
exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the
destruction and loss of the very things upon which the
success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare
boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare
everythings, almost, but a spare captain and duplicate
ship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest
storage of the Pequod had been almost completed ; com-
prising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and
staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a
continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds
and ends of things, both large and small.
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying
was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most
determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kind-
hearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it,
nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after
once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come
on board with a jar of pickles for the steward's pantry ;
another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate's
desk, where he kept his log ; a third time with a roll of
flannel for the small of some one's rheumatic back. Never
did any woman better deserve her name, which was
Charity Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And
like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity
bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand
and heart to anything that promised to yield safety,
comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which
her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in
ALL ASTIR 121
which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved
dollars.
But it was startling to see this excellent-hearted
Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with
a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling-
lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain
Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about
with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every
fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article
upon the paper. Every once and a while Peleg came
hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men
down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the
mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his
wigwam.
During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often
visited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain
Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on
board his ship. To these questions they would answer,
that he was getting better and better, and was expected
aboard every day ; meantime, the two captains, Peleg
and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the
vessel for the voyage.  But when a man
suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be
already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to
cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much
this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to
think nothing.
At last it was given out that some time next day the
ship would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg
and I took a very early start.
CHAPTER XXI
GOING ABOARD
IT was nearly six o'clock, but only gray imperfect misty
dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf.
' There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see
right/ said I to Queequeg, ' it can't be shadows ; she 's off
by sunrise, I guess ; come on ! '
' Avast ! ' cried a voice, whose owner at the same time
coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our
shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood
stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight,
strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was
Elijah.
c Going aboard ? '
' Hands off, will you,' said I.
' Lookee here,' said Queequeg, shaking himself, ' go
'way ! '
' Ain't going aboard, then ? '
' Yes, we are,' said I, ' but what business is that of
yours ?  '
' No, no, no ; I wasn't aware of that,' said Elijah,
slowly and wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg,
with the most unaccountable glances.
' Elijah,' said I, ' you will oblige my friend and me by
withdrawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific
Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained.'
c Ye be, be ye ? Coming back afore breakfast ? '
' He 's cracked, Queequeg,' said I ; ' come on.'
122
GOING ABOARD 123
' Halloa ! ' cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we
had removed a few paces.
' Never mind him/ said I ; ' Queequeg, come on. 5
But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his
hand on my shoulder, said, ' Did ye see anything looking
like men going toward that ship a while ago ? '
Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered,
saying, ' Yes, I thought I did see four or five men ; but it
was too dim to be sure.'
' Very dim, very dim,' said Elijah. ' Morning to ye.'
Once more we quitted him ; but once more he came
softly after us ; and touching my shoulder again, said,
4 See if you can find 'em now, will ye ? '
' Find who ? '
* Morning to ye ! morning to ye ! ' he rejoined, again
moving off. ' Oh ! I was going to warn ye against
but never mind, never mind it 's all one, all in the
family too ; sharp frost this morning, ain't it ? Good-
bye to ye. Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess ; unless
it 's before the Grand Jury.' And with these cracked
words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in
no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.
At last, stepping on board the Peqiiod, we found every-
thing in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin
entrance was locked within ; the hatches were all on, and
lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the
forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing
a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there,
wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at
whole length upon two chests, his face downward and
enclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber
slept upon him.
' Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have
gone to ? ' said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But
it seemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had not at
124 MOBY-DICK
all noticed what I now alluded to ; hence I would have
thought myself to have been optically deceived in that
matter, were it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable
question. But I beat the thing down ; and again mark-
ing the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps
we had best sit up with the body ; telling him to estab-
lish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the
sleeper's rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough ; and
then, without more ado, sat quietly down there.
' Gracious !
   I wonder he don't wake.'
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of
the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk-pipe. I sat at the
feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from
one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in
his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand
that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas
of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally,
were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders
for ottomans ; and to furnish a house comfortably in that
respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows,
and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides,
it was very convenient on an excursion ; much better
than those garden-chairs which are convertible into
walking-sticks ; upon occasion, a chief calling his attend-
ant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself
under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy
place.
While narrating these things, every time Queequeg
GOING ABOARD 125
received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet -
side of it over the sleeper's head.
' What 's that for, Queequeg ? '
' Perry easy, kill-e ; oh ! perry easy ! '
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about
his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses
both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were
directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong
vapour now completely filling the contracted hole, it began
to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness ;
then seemed troubled in the nose ; then revolved over
once or twice ; then sat up and rubbed his eyes.
4 Halloa ! ' he breathed at last, ' who be ye smokers ? '
' Shipped men/ answered I. c When does she sail ? '
' Ay, ay, ye are going in her, be ye ? She sails to-
day. The captain came aboard last night.'
' What captain ? Ahab ? '
' Who but him indeed ? '
I was going to ask him some further questions concern-
ing Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck.
' Halloa ! Starbuck 's astir,' said the rigger. ' He 's
a lively chief mate, that ; .good man, and a pious ; but
all alive now, I must turn to.' And so saying he went on
deck, and we followed.
It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board
in twos and threes ; the riggers bestirred themselves ; the
mates were actively engaged ; and several of the shore
people were busy in bringing various last things on board.
Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined
within his cabin.
CHAPTER XXII
MERRY CHRISTMAS
AT length, toward noon, upon the final dismissal of the
ship's riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out
from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity
had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift a night-
cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and
a spare Bible for the steward after all this, the two
captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and
turning to the chief mate, Peleg said :
' Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right ?
Captain Ahab is all ready just spoke to him nothing
more to be got from shore, eh ? Well, call all hands,
then. Muster 'em aft here blast 'em ! '
' No need of profane words, however great the hurry,
Peleg,' said Bildad, ' but away with thee, friend Starbuck,
and do our bidding.'
How now ! Here upon the very point of starting for
the voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going
it with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if they
were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all
appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign
of him was yet to be seen ; only, they said he was in the
cabin. But then, the idea was, that his presence was by
no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and
steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at
all his proper business, but the pilot's ; and as he was not
yet completely recovered so they said therefore, Cap-
tain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural
126
MEKRY CHRISTMAS 127
enough ; especially as in the merchant service many
captains never show themselves on deck for a consider-
able time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over
the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with
their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good
with the pilot.
But there was not much chance to think over the
matter, for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to
do most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad.
' Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,' he cried, as the sailors
lingered at the mainmast. ' Mr. Starbuck, drive 'em
aft.'
' Strike the tent there ! ' was the next order. As I
hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched
except in port ; and on board the Pequod, for thirty years,
the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next
thing to heaving up the anchor.
' Man the capstan ! Blood and thunder ! jump ! '
was the next command, and the crew sprang for the
handspikes.
Now, in getting under weigh, the station generally
occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship.
And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addi-
tion to his other offices, was one of the licensed pilots of
the port he being suspected to have got himself made a
pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot -fee to all the
ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other
craft Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged
in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor,
and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of
psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared
forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley,
with hearty goodwill. Nevertheless, not three days
previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs
would be allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in
128 MOBY-DICK
getting under weigh ; and Charity, his sister, had placed
a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman's berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain
Peleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful
manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship before
the anchor could be got up ; involuntarily I paused on my
handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking
of the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with
such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, how-
ever, with the thought that in pious Bildad might be
found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and
seventy-seventh lay ; when I felt a sudden sharp poke
in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the
apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing
his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first
kick.
' Is that the way they heave in the marchant service ? '
he roared. ' Spring, thou sheep-head ; spring, and break
thy backbone ! Why don't ye spring, I say, all of ye
spring ! Quohag ! spring, thou chap with the red
whiskers ; spring there, Scotch-cap ; spring, thou green
pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out ! '
And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and
there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad
kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain
Peleg must have been drinking something to-day.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off
we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas ; and as the
short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves
almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray
cased us in ice, as in polished armour. The long rows of
teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight ; and
like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast
curving icicles depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever
MERRY CHRISTMAS 129
and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas,
and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds
howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were
heard,
* Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.'
Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me
than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite
of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic,
spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it
then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store ; and
meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot
up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at
midsummer.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots
were needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had
accompanied us began ranging alongside.
It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad
were affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad.
For loath to depart, yet ; very loath to leave, for good,
a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage beyond
both stormy Capes ; a ship in which some thousands of
his hard-earned dollars were invested ; a ship, in which
an old shipmate sailed as captain ; a man almost as old
as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of
the pitiless jaw ; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every
way brimful of every interest to him, poor old Bildad
lingered long ; paced the deck with anxious strides ; ran
down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there ;
again came on deck, and looked to windward ; looked
toward the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the
* r-off unseen Eastern Continents ; looked toward the
VOL. I. I
130 MOBY-DICK
land ; looked aloft ; looked right and left ; looked every-
where and nowhere ; and at last, mechanically coiling
a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg
by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood
gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, * Never-
theless, friend Peleg, I can stand it ; yes, I can.'
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher ;
but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in
his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too,
did not a little run from cabin to deck now a word
below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate.
But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort
of look about him, 4 Captain Bildad come, old ship-
mate, we must go. Back the main-yard there ! Boat
ahoy ! Stand by to come close alongside, now ! Careful,
careful ! come, Bildad, boy say your last. Luck to ye,
Starbuck luck to ye, Mr. Stubb luck to ye, Mr. Flask
good-bye, and good luck to ye all and this day three
years I '11 have a hot supper smoking for ye in old
Nantucket. Hurrah and away ! '
' God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men/
murmured old Bildad, almost incoherently. ' I hope
ye '11 have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may
soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun is all he needs,
and ye '11 have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go.
Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats
needlessly, ye harpooneers ; good white cedar plank is
raised full three per cent, within the year. Don't forget
your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper
don't waste the spare staves. Oh ! the sail-needles are
in the green locker ! Don't whale it too much a Lord's
days, men ; but don't miss a fair chance either, that 's
rejecting Heaven's good gifts. Have an eye to the
molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb ; it was a little leaky, I thought.
If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornica-
MERRY CHRISTMAS 131
tion. Good-bye, good-bye ! Don't keep that cheese too
long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck ; it '11 spoil. Be
careful with the butter twenty cents the pound it was,
and mind ye, if
' Come, come, Captain Bildad ; stop palavering,
away ! ' and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side,
and both dropped into the boat.
Ship and boat diverged ; the cold, damp night breeze
blew between ; a screaming gull flew overhead ; the two
hulls wildly rolled ; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers,
and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE LEE SHORE
SOME chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,
new-landed mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the
inn.
When on that shivering winter's night the Pequod
thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves,
who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington !
I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the
man, who in mid- winter just landed from a four years'
dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again
for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed
scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the
unmentionable ; deep memories yield no epitaphs ; this
six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let
me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed
ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The
port would fain give succour ; the port is pitiful ; in the
port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm
blankets, friends, all that 's kind to our mortalities. But
in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst
jeopardy ; she must fly all hospitality ; one touch of land,
though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder
through and through. With all her might she crowds all
sail off shore ; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds
that fain would blow her homeward ; seeks all the lashed
sea's landlessness again ; for refuge's sake forlornly
rushing into peril ; her only friend her bitterest foe !
Know ye, now, Bulkington ? Glimpses do ye seem to
132
THE LEE SHORE 133
see of that mortally intolerable truth ; that all deep,
earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to
keep the open independence of her sea ; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the
treacherous, slavish shore ?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth,
shoreless, indefinite as God so, better is it to perish in
that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon
the lee, even if that were safety ! For worm-like, then,
oh ! who would craven crawl to land ! Terrors of the
terrible ! is all this agony so vain ? Take heart, take
heart, Bulkington ! Bear thee grimly, demigod ! Up
from the spray of thy ocean-perishing straight up,
leaps thy apotheosis !
CHAPTER XXIV
THE ADVOCATE
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this busi-
ness of whaling ; and as this business of whaling has some-
how come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather
unpoetical and disreputable pursuit ; therefore, I am all
anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice
hereby done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous
to establish the fact, that among people at large, the
business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what
are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were
introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,
it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his
merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer,
say ; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should
append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to
his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-
eminently presuming and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines
honouring us whalemen is this : they think that, at best,
our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business ;
and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded
by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is
true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest
badge, have been all Martial Commanders whom the world
invariably delights to honour. And as for the matter of
the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon
be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally
134
THE ADVOCATE 185
unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly
plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest
things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge
in question to be true ; what disordered slippery decks
of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion
of those battlefields from which so many soldiers return
to drink in all ladies' plaudits ? And if the idea of peril
so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's
profession ; let me assure ye that many a veteran who
has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil
at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning
into eddies the air over his head. For what are the
comprehensible terrors of man compared with the inter- i
linked terrors and wonders of God !
But, though the world scouts at us whale-hunters, yet
does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage ; yea,
an all-abounding adoration ! for almost all the tapers,
lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn,
as before so many shrines, to our glory !
But look at this matter in other lights ; weigh it in all
sorts of scales ; see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals
of their whaling-fleets ? Why did Louis xvi. of France,
at his own personal expense, fit out whaling-ships from
Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or
two of families from our own island of Nantucket ? Why
did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her
whalemen in bounties upward of 1,000,000 ? And
lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now\
outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen hi the \
world ; sail a navy of upward of seven hundred vessels ;
manned by eighteen thousand men ; yearly consuming
4,000,000 of dollars ; the ships worth, at the time of
sailing, $20,000,000 ; and every year importing into our
harbours a well-reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How
136 MOBY-DICK
comes all this, if there be not something puissant in
whaling ?
But this is not the half ; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot,
for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which
within the last sixty years has operated more potentially
upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than
the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and
another, it has begotten events so remarkable in them-
selves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential
f issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian
/ mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her
womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue
all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years
\ past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out
the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has
explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart,
where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If Ameri-
can and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once
savage harbours, let them fire salutes to the honour and
the glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them
the way, and first interpreted between them and the
savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes
of exploring expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusen-
sterns ; but I say that scores of anonymous captains
have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and
greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in
their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathen-
ish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded,
javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors
that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not
willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of
in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the
lifetime commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers.
Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three
THE ADVOCATE 137
chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set
down in the ship's common log. Ah, the world ! Oh,
the world !
Until the whale-fishery rounded Cape Horn, no com-
merce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial,
was carried on between Europe and the long line of the
opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was
the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy
of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies ; and, if
space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from
those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru,
Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the
establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere,
Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the
whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by a
Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as
pestiferously barbarous ; but the whale -ship touched
there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now
mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first
Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times
saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the
whale -ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same
truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that
cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and
in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their
first destinations. If that double -bolted land, Japan,
is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone
to whom the credit will be due ; for already she is on the
threshold.

The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous
chronicler ? Who wrote the first account of our levia-
than ? Who but mighty Job ! And who composed the
first narrative of a whaling voyage ? Who, but no less
a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal
pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian
whale -hunter of those times ! And who pronounced our
glowing eulogy in Parliament ? Who, but Edmund
Burke !
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor
devils ; they have no good blood in their veins.
No good blood in their veins ? They have something
better than royal blood there. The grandmother of
Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel ; afterward, by
marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket ?
and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and har-
pooneers all kith and kin to noble Benjamin this day
darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to
the other.
Good again ; but then all confess that somehow whal-
ing is not respectable.
Whaling not respectable ? Whaling is imperial ! By old
English statutory law, the whale is declared 'a royal fish.' l
Oh, that 's only nominal ! The whale himself has never
figured in any grand imposing way.
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way ?
In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general
upon his entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale,
brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most
conspicuous object in the cymballed procession. 1
Grant it, since you cite it ; but, say what you will,
there is no real dignity in whaling.
1 See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
THE ADVOCATE 139
No dignity in whaling ? The dignity of our calling the
very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the south !
No more ! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar,
and take it off to Queequeg ! No more ! I know a man
that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty
whales. I account that man more honourable than that
great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many
walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as
yet undiscovered prime thing in me ; if I shall ever
deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed
world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ;
if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole,
a man might rather have done than to have left undone ;
if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my
creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here
I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to
whaling ; for a whale -ship was my Yale College and my
Harvard.
CHAPTER XXV
POSTSCRIPT
IN behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance
naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his
facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not
unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his
cause such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy ?
It is well known that at the coronation of kings and
queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of
seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There
is a salt-cellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor
of state. How they use the salt, precisely who knows ?
Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly
oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it
be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making
its interior run well, as they anoint machinery ? Much
might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity
of this regal process, because in common life we esteem
but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his
hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a
mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that
man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.
But the only thing to be considered here, is this what
kind of oil is used at coronations ? Certainly it cannot
be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil,
nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly
be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted
state, the sweetest of all oils ?
Think of that, ye loyal Britons ! we whalemen supply
your kings and queens with coronation stuff !
140
CHAPTER XXVI
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES
THE chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of
Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long,
earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed
well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard
as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his
live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have
been born in some time of general drought and famine,
or upon one of those fast days for which his state is
famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen ;
those summers had dried up all his physical superfluous-
ness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more
the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed
the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the
condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-look-
ing ; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an
excellent fit ; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed
with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian,
this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages
to come, and to endure always, as now ; for be it Polar
snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior
vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Look-
ing into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering
images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly con-
fronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life
for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and
not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy
>briety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in
141
142 MOBY-DICK
him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well-
nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly con-
scientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural
reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did there-
fore strongly incline him to superstition ; but to that
sort of superstition, which in some organisations seems
rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from
ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments
were his. And if at times these things bent the welded
iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic
memories of his young Cape wife and child tend to bend
him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature,
and open him still further to those latent influences which,
in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-
devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more
perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. ' I will have no man
in my boat/ said Starbuck, ' who is not afraid of a whale.'
By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most
reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the
fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an
utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than
a coward.
' Ay, ay/ said Stubb, the second mate, ' Starbuck,
there, is as careful a man as you '11 find anywhere in this
fishery.' But we shall ere long see what that word
' careful ' precisely means when used by a man like Stubb,
or almost any other whale-hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils ; in him courage
was not a sentiment ; but a thing simply useful to him,
and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions.
Besides, he thought, perhaps, that hi this business of
whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the
ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly
wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for
whales after sundown ; nor for persisting in fighting a
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 143
fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought
Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales
for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs ;