Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
form the white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered
at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual
sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks.
No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial
to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes
were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and
much lee-way adown the dim ages.
Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter
was at once commanded to do Queequeg’s bidding, whatever it might
include. There was some heathenish, coffin-colored old lumber aboard,
which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal
groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin
was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of
the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent
promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took
Queequeg’s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s
person as he shifted the rule.
“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Island
sailor.
Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general
reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the
coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two
notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his
tools, and to work.
When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted,
he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring
whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people
on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s
consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought
to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals,
some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will
shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be
indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an
attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock
drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along
with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also,
biscuits were then ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh
water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped
up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up
for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed,
that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without
moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out
his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo
between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed
over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there
lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance
in view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and
signed to be replaced in his hammock.
But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all
this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took
him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.
“Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where
go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where
the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little
errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who’s now been missing long: I think
he’s in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he
must be very sad; for look! he’s left his tambourine behind;—I found
it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I’ll beat ye your
dying march.”
“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that in
violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their
wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken
in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor
Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers
of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?—Hark! he
speaks again: but more wildly now.”
“Form two and two! Let’s make a General of him! Ho, where’s his
harpoon? Lay it across here.—Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game
cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!—mind ye
that; Queequeg dies game!—take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies
game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward;
died all a’shiver;—out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the
Antilles he’s a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he
jumped from a whale-boat! I’d never beat my tambourine over base Pip,
and hail him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame
upon all cowards—shame upon them! Let ’em go drown like Pip, that
jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!”
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip
was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now
that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon
there seemed no need of the carpenter’s box: and thereupon, when some
expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the
cause of his sudden convalescence was this;—at a critical moment, he
had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone;
and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet,
he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter
of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a
word, it was Queequeg’s conceit, that if a man made up his mind to
live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale,
or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing,
generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day.
So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after
sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a
vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out arms and
legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then
springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon,
pronounced himself fit for a fight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.
Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of
grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was
striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on
his body. And this tattooing, had been the work of a departed prophet
and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written
out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a
mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in
his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one
volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his
own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore
destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon
they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought
it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of
his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg—“Oh,
devilish tantalization of the gods!”
CHAPTER CXI.
THE PACIFIC.
When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my
dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of
my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a
thousand leagues of blue.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently
awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those
fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St.
John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery
prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should
rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of
mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all
that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing
like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by
their restlessness.
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must
ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of
the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same
waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday
planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still
gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between
float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown
Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine
Pacific zones the world’s whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay
to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal
swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain, as standing like an iron
statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one
nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles
(in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other
consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in
which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at
length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese
cruising-ground, the old man’s purpose intensified itself. His firm
lips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead’s veins
swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran
through the vaulted hull, “Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick
blood!”
CHAPTER CXII.
THE BLACKSMITH.
Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned
in these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active
pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old
blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after
concluding his contributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it
on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost
incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to
do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping
their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded
by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades,
pike-heads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every
sooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man’s was a
patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no
petulence did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over
still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil
were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating
of his heart. And so it was.—Most miserable!
A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing
yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the