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Table of Contents
Chapter 48
THE FIRST
LOWERING
The phantoms, for so they
then seemed, were flitting on the other side of the deck, and, with a
noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which
swung there. This boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats, though
technically called the captain's, on account of its hanging from the starboard
quarter. The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one
white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese
jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of
the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning his ebonness was a glistening
white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon
his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of this figure were of that
vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of
the Manillas; --a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by
some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret
confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room
they suppose to be elsewhere. While yet the wondering ship's company were
gazing upon these strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at
their head, All ready there, Fedallah? Ready, was the half-hissed reply. Lower
away then; d'ye hear? shouting across the deck. Lower away there, I say. Such
was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the men sprang
over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with a wallow, the
three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous, off-handed daring,
unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling
ship's side into the tossed boats below. Hardly had they pulled out from under
the ship's lee, when ..
2 a fourth keel, coming
from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and showed the five
strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern, loudly hailed
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, so as to cover a
large expanse of water. but with all their eyes again riveted upon the swart
Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other boats obeyed not the command.
Captain Ahab?-- said Starbuck. Spread yourselves, cried Ahab; give way, all
four boats. Thou, Flask, pull out more to leeward! Aye, aye, sir, cheerily
cried little King-Post, sweeping round his great steering oar. Lay back!
addressing his crew. There! --there! --there again! There she blows right
ahead, boys! -- lay back! Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy. Oh, I don't
mind 'em, sir, said Archy; I knew it all before now. Didn't I hear 'em in the
hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What say ye, Cabaco? They are
stowaways, Mr. Flask. Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children;
pull, my little ones, drawingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some
of whom still showed signs of uneasiness. Why don't you break your backbones,
my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They are
only five more hands come to help us --never mind from where --the more the
merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone --devils are good
fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke for a thousand
pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup of
sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men --all hearts alive! Easy, easy; don't
be in a hurry --don't be in a hurry. Why don't you snap your oars, you
rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so, then; --softly, softly! That's
it -- that's it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch
ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers,
and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of
gudgeons and ginger-cakes don't ye pull? --pull and break something! pull, and
start your ..
3 eyes out! Here!
whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; every mother's son of ye draw
his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's it --that's it.
Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her --start her,
my silver-spoons! Start her, marling-spikes! Stubb's exordium to his crew is
given here at large, because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them
in general, and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must
not suppose from this specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into
downright passions with his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted
his chief peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a
tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so
calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer
invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the mere joke
of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy and indolent himself, so
loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so broadly gaped --open-mouthed at
times --that the mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of
contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those
odd sort of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as
to put all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them. In
obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across
Stubb's bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to
each other, Stubb hailed the mate. Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a
word with ye, sir, if ye please! Halloa! returned Starbuck, turning round not
a single inch as he spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew;
his face set like a flint from Stubb's. What think ye of those yellow boys,
sir! Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
boys! ) in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: A sad
business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind, Mr.
Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what will.
(Spring, my men, spring!) ..
4 There's hogsheads of
sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm,
sperm's the play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand! Aye,
aye, I thought as much, soliloquized Stubb, when the boats diverged, as soon
as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, and that's what he went into the
after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden down
there. The White Whale's at the bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be
helped! All right! Give way, men! It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way!
Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as the
lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort
of superstitious amazement in some of the ship's company; but Archy's fancied
discovery having some time previous got abroad among them, though indeed not
credited then, this had in some small measure prepared them for the event. It
took off the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and
Stubb's confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the
time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left
abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise
agency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the
mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim
Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable
Elijah. Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the
furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a
circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. those tiger yellow
creatures of his seemed all steel and whale-bone; like five trip-hammers they
rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which periodically started the
boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi
steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had
thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed his naked chest with the whole
part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating
depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab,
with one ..
5 arm, like a fencer's,
thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to
trip: Ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat
lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. All at once the out-stretched arm
gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed, while the boat's five oars
were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea.
Instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales
had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly
discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had
observed it. Every man look out along his oars! cried Starbuck. Thou, Queequeg,
stand up! Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the
savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the
spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern
of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale,
Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking
tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the
sea. Not very far distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still; its
commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of
post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern
platform. it is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its top is not
more spacious than the palm of a man's hand, and standing upon such a base as
that, Flask seemed perched at the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all
but her trucks. But little King-Post was small and short, and at the same time
little King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that this
loggerhead stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post. I can't see
three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that. Upon this,
Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way, swiftly slid aft,
and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal. ..
6 Good a mast-head as
any, sir. Will you mount? That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow;
only I wish you fifty feet taller. Whereupon planting his feet firmly against
two opposite planks of the boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little,
presented his flat palm to Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his
hearse-plumed head and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one
dexterous fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here
was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a
breast-band to lean against and steady himself by. At any time it is a strange
sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the
whaleman will maintain an erect posture in his boat, even when pitched about
by the most riotously perverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to
see him giddily perched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances.
But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more
curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of,
barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled
his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired flask seemed a snow-flake. The
bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous,
ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not
one added heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest. So have I
seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth
did not alter her tides and her seasons for that. Meanwhile Stubb, the third
mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one
of their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that
were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to
solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his
hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and
rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his
match across the rough sand-paper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer,
whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped
like light from his erect attitude to his seat, ..
7 crying out in a quick
phrensy of hurry, Down, down all, and give way! --there they are! To a
landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been visible at that
moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered
puffs of vapor hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like
the confused scud from white rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated
and tingled, as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron.
Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin
layer of water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the
other indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning
couriers and detached flying outriders. All four boats were now in keen
pursuit of that one spot of troubled water and air. But it bade far to
outstrip them; it flew on and on, as a mass of interblending bubbles borne
down a rapid stream from the hills. Pull, pull, my good boys, said Starbuck,
in the lowest possible but intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while
the sharp fixed glance from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost
seemed as two visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not
say much to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him. Only the
silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his
peculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with entreaty. How
different the loud little King-Post. Sing out and say something, my hearties.
Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys;
only do that for me, and I'll sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard
plantation, boys; including wife and children, boys. Lay me on --lay me on! O
Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad: See! see that white water! And
so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head, and stamped up and down on it;
then picking it up, flirted it far off upon the sea; and finally fell to
rearing and plunging in the boat's stern like a crazed colt from the prairie.
Look at that chap now, philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his unlighted
short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a short distance,
followed after -- He's got fits, that ..
8 Flask has. Fits? yes,
give him fits --that's the very word -- pitch fits into 'em. Merrily, merrily,
hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know; --merry's the word. Pull, babes
--pull, sucklings -- pull, all. But what the devil are you hurrying about?
Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing
more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your knives in two -- that's all.
Take it easy --why don't ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and
lungs! But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of
his --these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light
of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may
give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and
foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey. Meanwhile, all the boats tore on.
The repeated specific allusions of Flask to that whale, as he called the
fictitious monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's
bow with its tail --these allusions of his were at times so vivid and
life-like, that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a
fearful look over the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen
must put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage
pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but arms, in
these critical moments. It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast
swells of the omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they
rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless
bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an
instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed
threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens
and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite
hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side; --all these, with the
cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the
oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her
boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;
--all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his
wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man's ghost
encountering ..
9 the first unknown
phantom in the other world; --neither of these can feel stranger and stronger
emotions than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into
the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. The dancing white water
made by the chase was now becoming more and more visible, owing to the
increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of
vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales
seemed separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck
giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our sail was now set,
and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; the boat going with such
madness through the water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly
enough to escape being torn from the row-locks. Soon we were running through a
suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship nor boat to be seen. Give way, men,
whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet of his sail; there is
time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes. There's white water again!
--close to! Spring! Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of
us denoted that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard,
when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: Stand up! and
Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet. Though not one of the oarsmen
was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with
their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat,
they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous
wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the
boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around
us like the erected crests of enraged serpents. That's his hump. There, there,
give it to him! whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the
boat; it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion
came an invisible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on
a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a ..
10 gush of scalding
vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath
us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter
into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had
all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we
picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back
to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the water covering
every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft
seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean. The wind
increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together; the whole
squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire upon the
prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these jaws of
death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the live coals down
the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile
the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no
sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale
out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office
of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the water-proof match keg,
after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then
stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of
this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the
heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol
of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat, we
lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the sea,
the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly Queequeg
started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard a faint
creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm. The sound came
nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly parted by ..
11 a huge, vague form.
Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view,
bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it tossed
and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base of a cataract; and
then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up
weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it by the seas,
and were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came
close to, the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the
ship in good time. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply
it might light upon some token of our perishing, --an oar or a lance pole. ..
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