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Table of Contents
Chapter 26
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.
2 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 superfluousness. 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-looking; 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. Looking into
his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those
thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted 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 sobriety and fortitude, there
were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases
seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a
seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness
of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that
sort of superstition, which in some organizations 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. ..
3 Aye, aye, said Stubb,
the second mate, Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you'll 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 in 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 sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a 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;
and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was
his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs
of his brother? With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a
certain superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck
which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that
these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which,
under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn
all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery
chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in
the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational
horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more
spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of
an enraged and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any
instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I
have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to
expose the fall of valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint
stock-companies and nations; knaves, ..
4 fools, and murderers
there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so
noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any
ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest
robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us,
that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with
keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety
itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against
the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity
of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture.
Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike;
that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God;
Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all
democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality! If, then, to meanest
mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high
qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most
mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift
himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some
ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun;
then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of
equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!
Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the
swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with
doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old
Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst
hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou
who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest
champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God! ..
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