Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
feet should be marshalled among WHALES—a word, which, in the popular
sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set
down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my
definition of what a whale is—i. e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal
tail.
BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER I. (_Huzza Porpoise_).—This is the
common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my
own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and
something must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because
he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep
tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd.
Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner.
Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to
windward. They are the lads that always live before the wind. They are
accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at
beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of
godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will
yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid
extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among
jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise
meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that
a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very
readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him;
and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.
BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER II. (_Algerine Porpoise_).—A pirate.
Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat
larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make.
Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many
times, but never yet saw him captured.
BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER III. (_Mealy-mouthed Porpoise_).—The
largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as
it is known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been
designated, is that of the fishers—Right-Whale Porpoise, from the
circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio.
In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being
of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and
gentlemanlike figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises
have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel
hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his
side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark
in a ship’s hull, called the “bright waist,” that line streaks him from
stem to stern, with two separate colors, black above and white below.
The white comprises part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which
makes him look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a
meal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of
the common porpoise.
* * * * *
Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the
Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the
Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by
reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their
forecastle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If
any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked,
then he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to his
Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:—The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk
Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the
Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale;
the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic,
Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists
of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I
omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them
for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be
here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have
kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the
crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small
erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true
ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever
completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the
draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE SPECKSNYDER.
Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place
as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising
from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown
of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is evinced
by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in
the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an
officer called the Specksnyder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter;
usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In
those days, the captain’s authority was restricted to the navigation
and general management of the vessel: while over the whale-hunting
department and all its concerns, the Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer
reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted
title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained,
but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply
as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain’s more
inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the
harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since
in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the
boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling
ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore the grand
political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart
from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as
their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is
this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in
the captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with
it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest
of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it,
and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom,
high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon
their common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity,
and hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget
a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never
mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in
some primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious
externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed,
and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in
which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated
grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as
much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the
shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only
homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though
he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping
upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to
peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed,
he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or
_in terrorem_, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means
unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind
those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;
incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than
they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of
his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested;
through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an
irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority
what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy
over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and
entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base.
This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from
the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air
can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite
inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than
through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.
Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political
superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot
imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of
Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles
an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the
tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would
depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing,
ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one
now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it
must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CABIN-TABLE.
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale
loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord
and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking
an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on
the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose
on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to
the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial.
But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself
to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr.
Starbuck,” disappears into the cabin.
When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and Starbuck,