Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I
would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to
the Sperm Whale’s hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over
one of the larger vertebræ, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer
convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should call
this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm
Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have
reason to know.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN.
The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,
Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and
Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide
intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with
their flag in the Pacific.
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.
While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a
boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the
bows instead of the stern.
“What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, pointing to something
wavingly held by the German. “Impossible!—a lamp-feeder!”
“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he’s
coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don’t you see that big
tin can there alongside of him?—that’s his boiling water. Oh! he’s all
right, is the Yarman.”
“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
He’s out of oil, and has come a-begging.”
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the
whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old
proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing
really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did
indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all
heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German
soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately
turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some
remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in
profound darkness—his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a
single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding
by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically
called a _clean_ one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name
of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his
ship’s side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the
mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that
without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed
round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the
Pequod’s keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their
danger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight before
the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in
harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling
a great wide parchment upon the sea.
Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well
as by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed
afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this
whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it
is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social.
Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water
must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad
muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile
currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth
with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds,
followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to
have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters behind
him to upbubble.
“Who’s got some paregoric?” said Stubb, “he has the stomach-ache, I’m
afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse
winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It’s the first foul
wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so
before? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.”
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck
load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her
way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly
turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious
wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost
that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were hard to say.
“Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for that wounded
arm,” cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. “Give way, or the
German will have him.”
With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this
one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most
valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were
going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit
for the time. At this juncture, the Pequod’s keel had shot by the
three German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had,
Derick’s boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his
foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being
already so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron
before they could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he
seemed quite confident that this would be the case, and occasionally
with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.
“The ungracious and ungrateful dog!” cried Starbuck; “he mocks and
dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes
ago!”—then in his old intense whisper—“give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!”
“I tell ye what it is, men”—cried Stubb to his crew—“It’s against
my religion to get mad; but I’d like to eat that villanous
Yarman—Pull—won’t ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye
love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why
don’t some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who’s that been dropping an
anchor overboard—we don’t budge an inch—we’re becalmed. Halloo, here’s
grass growing in the boat’s bottom—and by the Lord, the mast there’s
budding. This won’t do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long
of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?”
“Oh! see the suds he makes!” cried Flask, dancing up and down—“What
a hump—Oh, _do_ pile on the beef—lays like a log! Oh! my lads, _do_
spring—slap-jacks and quohogs for supper, you know, my lads—baked clams
and muffins—oh, _do, do,_ spring—he’s a hundred barreler—don’t lose
him now—don’t oh, _don’t!_—see that Yarman—Oh! won’t ye pull for your
duff, my lads—such a sog! such a sogger! Don’t ye love sperm? There
goes three thousand dollars, men!—a bank!—a whole bank! The bank of
England!—Oh, _do, do, do!_—What’s that Yarman about now?”
At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at
the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double
view of retarding his rivals’ way, and at the same time economically
accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.
“The unmannerly Dutch dogger!” cried Stubb. “Pull now, men, like fifty
thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d’ye say,
Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces
for the honor of old Gay-head? What d’ye say?”
“I say, pull like god-dam,”—cried the Indian.
Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod’s
three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,
momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of
the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up
proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating
cry of, “There she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze! Down
with the Yarman! Sail over him!”
But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all
their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not
a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the
blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to
free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick’s boat was nigh
to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;—that
was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they
took a mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German’s
quarter. An instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the
whale’s immediate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was
the foaming swell that he made.
It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was
now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual
tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of
fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering
flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank
in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So
have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted broken circles
in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird
has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the
fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted
in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his
spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while
still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there
was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod’s
boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick
chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long
dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.
But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all
three tigers—Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo—instinctively sprang to their
feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their
barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their
three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and
white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale’s headlong
rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force, that both Derick and
his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three
flying keels.
“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting a passing
glance upon them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently—all
right—I saw some sharks astern—St. Bernard’s dogs, you know—relieve
distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel
a sun-beam! Hurrah!—Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of
a mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a
tilbury on a plain—makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten
to him that way; and there’s danger of being pitched out too, when you
strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he’s going
to Davy Jones—all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this
whale carries the everlasting mail!”
But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he