Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering
it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called
of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had
attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea,
where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish,
seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store,
or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white,
and unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky;
still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be
descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything
above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but
passively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew
become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its
accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab
for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very
eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part
of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to
guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened
belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned
by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift
madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness
of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence
the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the
blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not
seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old
man’s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the
barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his
floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from
which he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the
unremoved hat and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of
those charts of tides and currents which have previously been spoken
of. His lantern swung from his tightly clenched hand. Though the body
was erect, the head was thrown back so that the closed eyes were
pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in
the ceiling.[8]
[8] The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without
going to the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can
inform himself of the course of the ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
CHAPTER LII.
THE ALBATROSS.
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good
cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney
(Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at
the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a
tyro in the far ocean fisheries—a whaler at sea, and long absent from
home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral
appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all
her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred
over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it
was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They
seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment
that had survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops
nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and
though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men
in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped
from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those
forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not
one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being
heard from below.
“Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in
the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his
hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to
make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing
the distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the
Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the
first mere mention of the White Whale’s name to another ship, Ahab for
a moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a
boat to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But
taking advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet,
and knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer
and shortly bound home, he loudly hailed—“Ahoy there! This is the
Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters
to the Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if I am not at home,
tell them to address them to——”
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then,
in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish,
that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side,
darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves
fore and aft with the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course of his
continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a similar
sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously
carry meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water.
There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of
deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced.
But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship
in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion
voice,—“Up helm! Keep her off round the world!”
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings;
but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through
numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that
we left behind secure, were all the time before us.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for
ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange
than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise
in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in
tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims
before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they
either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
CHAPTER LIII.
THE GAM.
The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we
had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had
this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded
her—judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions—if so it had
been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer
to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not
to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he
could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought. But
all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not something said
here of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each other
in foreign seas, and especially on a common cruising-ground.
If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering
each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life
of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a
moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a
while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon
the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two
whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth—off
lone Fanning’s Island, or the far away King’s Mills; how much more
natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not
only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly
and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter
of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose
captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to
talk about.
For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers
of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and
thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound
ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the
cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost
importance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning
whaling vessels crossing each other’s track on the cruising-ground
itself, even though they are equally long absent from home. For one
of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and
now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people
of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling
news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with
all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar
congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared
privations and perils.
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number
of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when
they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them;
for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not
fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English
whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the
American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his
nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this
superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be
hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill
more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this
is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the
Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows
that he has a few foibles himself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas, some
merchant ships crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will
oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,
mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies
in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism
upon each other’s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet
at sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and