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Table of Contents
Chapter 41
MOBY DICK
I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts
had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I
shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my
soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless
feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous
monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and
revenge. For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly frequented by
the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of his existence; only a
few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him; while the number who as
yet had actually and knowingly given battle to him, was small indeed. For,
owing to the large number of whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were
sprinkled over the entire watery circumference, many of them adventurously
pushing their quest along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a
whole twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling
sail of any sort; the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the
irregularity of the times of sailing from home; all these, with other
circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed ..
the spread through the whole world-wide
whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It
was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered,
at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of
uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to
his assailants, had completely escaped them; to some minds it was not an
unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no other
than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by
various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in
the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly
gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were
content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the
perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause. In
that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had
hitherto been popularly regarded. And as for those who, previously hearing of
the White Whale, by chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing
they had every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him,
as for any other whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did
ensue in these assaults --not restricted to sprained wrists and ancles, broken
limbs, or devouring amputations --but fatal to the last degree of fatality;
those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors
upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave
hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come. Nor did
wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the
true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors
naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events, --as
the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more
than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any
adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in
this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life,
in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the ..
rumors which sometimes circulate there.
For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and
superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by
all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly
astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels,
but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that
though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would
not come to any chiselled hearthstone, or aught hospitable beneath that part
of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as
he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy
pregnant with many a mighty birth. No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume
from the mere transit over the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of
the White Whale did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of
morbid hints, and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies,
which eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything
that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally
strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale,
few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw. But
there were still other and more vital practical influences at work. Not even
at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm Whale, as fearfully
distinguished from all other species of the leviathan, died out of the minds
of the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though
intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right
whale, would perhaps --either from professional inexperience, or incompetency,
or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are
plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under
the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but
whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster
primitively pursued in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will
hearken with a childish fire-side interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales
of ..
Southern whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent
tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended,
than on board of those prows which stem him. And as if the now tested reality
of his might had in former legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we
find some book naturalists --Olassen and Povelson --declaring the Sperm Whale
not only to be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to
be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor
even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were these or almost similar
impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron himself affirms
that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are struck with
the most lively terrors, and often in the precipitancy of their flight dash
themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous
death. And however the general experiences in the fishery may amend such
reports as these; yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty
item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of
their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters. So that overawed by the
rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in
reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it
was oftentimes hard to induce long practised Right whalemen to embark in the
perils of this new and daring warfare; such men protesting that although other
leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an
apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it,
would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. on this head, there are
some remarkable documents that may be consulted. Nevertheless, some there
were, who even in the face of these things were ready to give chase to Moby
Dick; and a still greater number who, chancing only to hear of him distantly
and vaguely, without the specific details of any certain calamity, and without
superstitious accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the
battle if offered. One of the wild suggestings referred to, as at last coming
to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously
inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ..
ubiquitous; that he had actually been
encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time. Nor,
credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit altogether without
some faint show of superstitious probability. For as the secrets of the
currents in the seas have never yet been divulged, even to the most erudite
research; so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale when beneath the surface
remain, in great part, unaccountable to his pursuers; and from time to time
have originated the most curious and contradictory speculations regarding
them, especially concerning the mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a
great depth, he transports himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely
distant points. It is a thing well known to both American and English
whale-ships, and as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by
Scoresby, that some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, in
whose bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland
seas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has been
declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could not have
exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been believed by some
whalemen, that the nor' west passage, so long a problem to man, was never a
problem to the whale. So that here, in the real living experience of living
men, the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in
Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of
ships floated up to the surface); and that still more wonderful story of the
Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from
the Holy Land by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost
fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman. Forced into familiarity,
then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing that after repeated, intrepid
assaults, the White Whale had escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of
surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions;
declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but
ubiquity in time); that though groves of spears should be planted in his
flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made
to spout thick ..
blood, such a sight would be but a
ghastly deception; for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues
away, his unsullied jet would once more be seen. But even stripped of these
supernatural surmisings, there was enough in the earthly make and
incontestable character of the monster to strike the imagination with unwonted
power. For, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished
him from other sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out --a peculiar
snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were
his prominent features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted
seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him. The
rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the same
shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive appellation of
the white Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect, when
seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of
creamy foam, all spangled with golden gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted
magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so
much invested the whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent
malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had over and over again
evinced in his assaults. More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more
of dismay than perhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting
pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been
known to turn around suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their
boats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship. Already
several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar disasters,
however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet,
in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of
ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly
regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent. Judge, then, to
what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the ..
minds of his more desperate hunters were
impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn
comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into
the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a
bridal. His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in
the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had
dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with
a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was
Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw
beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass
in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote
him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever
since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness
against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at
last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his
intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as
the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men
feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a
lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose
dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the
ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not
fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to
the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All
that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all
truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all
the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were
visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled
upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by
his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he
burst his hot heart's shell upon it. ..
It is not probable that this monomania
in him took its instant rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment.
Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a
sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that
tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing
more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long
months of days and weeks, ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape; then it
was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so
interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward voyage,
after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems all but
certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving
lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in
his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his
mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his
hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And,
when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails
spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old
man's delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he
bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once
again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even then,
Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and
most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured
into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly
contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly,
but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing
monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in
that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished.
That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious
trope may stand, his special lunacy ..
stormed his general sanity, and carried
it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far
from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a
thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any
one reasonable object. This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part
remains unhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is
profound. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de
Cluny where we here stand --however grand and wonderful, now quit it; --and
take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes;
where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root of
grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique buried
beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken throne, the
great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits,
upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down
there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A family
likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grim
sire only will the old State-secret come. Now, in his heart, Ahab had some
glimpse of this, namely: all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.
Yet without power to kill, or change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that
to mankind he did now long dissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing
of his dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will
determinate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that
when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him
otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the terrible
casualty which had overtaken him. The report of his undeniable delirium at sea
was likewise popularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added
moodiness which always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the pequod on
the present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that
far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on account of
such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent isle were inclined
to ..
harbor the conceit, that for those very
reasons he was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full
of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched
without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an
one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his
lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought
to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem
superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But
be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated
rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present
voyage with the one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale.
Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was
lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have
wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable
cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent
on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge. Here, then, was this
grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the
world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and
castaways, and cannibals --morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere
unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of
indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask.
Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal
fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so
aboundingly responded to the old man's ire --by what evil magic their souls
were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale
as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be --what the
White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in
some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the
seas of life, --all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can
go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither
leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not
feel the ..
irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow
of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to the
abandonment of the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter
the whale, could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill. ..
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