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Table of Contents
Chapter 34
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, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then
Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and,
after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness,
Dinner, Mr. Stubb, and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the
rigging ..
awhile, and then
slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it be all right with that
important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid Dinner,
Mr. Flask, follows after his predecessors. But the third emir, now seeing
himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some
curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of
directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless
squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a
dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes
down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,
reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere
stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether,
and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in
the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is not the least among the strange
things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the
open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves
boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let
those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that
same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say
deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table;
this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A
problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have
been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have
been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and
intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited
guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for
the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar
was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it
is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no
withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official
supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of
that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned. ..
Over his ivory-inlaid
table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach,
surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn,
each officer waited to be served. They were as little children before Ahab;
and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With
one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he
carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they
would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even upon so
neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his knife and fork,
between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's
plate towards him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and
cut it tenderly; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against
the plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without
circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the
German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these
cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at
table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a
relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold
below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this
weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have
been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this must
have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had he helped
himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have been able to hold
his head up in this honest world; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never
forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so
much as noticed it. Least of all, did flask presume to help himself to butter.
Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its
clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a
voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was
not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, ..
and Flask is the first
man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly jammed in point of time.
Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they also have the
privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than
Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of
concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more
than three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to
precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in
private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that
moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or
less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal
in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my
stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned
beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There's the
fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of
life! Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge
against Flask in Flask's official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in
order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep
at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before
awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first
table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted
order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored
to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers
were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a sort
of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty cabin. In strange contrast
to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the
captain's table, was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic
democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the
mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the
harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report to
it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day
loading with spices. Such portentous ..
appetites had Queequeg
and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast,
often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk,
seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if
he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an
ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,
harpoonwise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's
memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty
wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle
preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort
of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker
and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black
terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three
savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after
seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he would
escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully
peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was over. It was a
sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth
to the Indian's: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench
would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion
of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an
African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro
was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that
by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused
through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble
savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through
his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or
by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal,
barbaric smack of the lip in eating --an ugly sound enough --so much so, that
the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked
in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to
produce himself, ..
that his bones might be
picked, the simple-witted Steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round
him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone
which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other
weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously
sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize
poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for
one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial
indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon
cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. in good
time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and
depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones
jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards. But,
though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived there; still,
being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely ever in it
except at meal-times, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed through
it to their own peculiar quarters. In this one matter, Ahab seemed no
exception to most American whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to
the opinion that by rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by
courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in
real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be
said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it
was something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a moment,
only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the
open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no companionship;
socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of
Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last
of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer
had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a
tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement,
howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there
fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom! ..
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