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_ (ENTER AHAB: THEN, ALL)
It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one
morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the
cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at
that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few
turns in the garden.
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his
old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all
over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his
walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow;
there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints
of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of
his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at
the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that
thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so
completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward
mould of every outer movement.
"D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's in him
pecks the shell. 'Twill soon be out."
The hours wore on;--Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing
the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the
bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and
with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send
everybody aft.
"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mast-heads, there! come down!"
When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and
not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not
unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after
rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among
the crew, started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were
nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and
half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering
whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask,
that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing
a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing,
he cried:--
"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"
"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of
clubbed voices.
"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so
magnetically thrown them.
"And what do ye next, men?"
"Lower away, and after him!"
"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"
"A dead whale or a stove boat!"
More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began
to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that
they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless
questions.
But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in
his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly,
almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:--
"All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a
white whale. Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?"--holding
up a broad bright coin to the sun--"it is a sixteen dollar piece,
men. D'ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul."
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was
slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if
to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile
lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and
inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of
his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the
main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold
with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever
of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a
crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with
three holes punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whosoever of
ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my
boys!"
"Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they
hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.
"It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw down the
topmaul: "a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out."
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even
more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
separately touched by some specific recollection.
"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same
that some call Moby Dick."
"Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab. "Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?"
"Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?" said
the Gay-Header deliberately.
"And has he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for
a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?"
"And he have one, two, three--oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like
him--him--" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round
and round as though uncorking a bottle--"like him--him--"
"Corkscrew!" cried Ahab, "aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted
and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a
whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after
the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like
a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye
have seen--Moby Dick--Moby Dick!"
"Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus
far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last
seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder.
"Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick--but it was not Moby Dick
that took off thy leg?"
"Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye,
my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick
that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he
shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a
heart-stricken moose; "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale
that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!"
Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted
out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the
Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames
before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to
chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of
earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye,
men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave."
"Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for
Moby Dick!"
"God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout. "God bless ye,
men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what's this
long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale?
art not game for Moby Dick?"
"I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too,
Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we
follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance.
How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest
it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket
market."
"Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest
a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then,
let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!"
"He smites his chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it
rings most vast, but hollow."
"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee
from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing,
Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."
"Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects,
man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living
act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning
thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the
unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How
can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I
think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps
me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice
sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be
the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak
that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the
sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do
the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy
presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that
fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine
eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So,
so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow.
But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays
itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I
meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish
cheeks of spotted tawn--living, breathing pictures painted by the
sun. The Pagan leopards--the unrecking and unworshipping things,
that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they
feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab,
in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder
Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general
hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it?
Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for
Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best
lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every
foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize
thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!--Aye, aye! thy
silence, then, THAT voices thee. (ASIDE) Something shot from my
dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is
mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion."
"God keep me!--keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab
did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from
the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the
cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as
for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast
eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh
died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved
and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye
not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye
shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications
of the foregoing things within. For with little external to
constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still
drive us on.
"The measure! the measure!" cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he
ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him
near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three
mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's
company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant
searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met
his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of
their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the
bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
"Drink and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman. "The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round!
Short draughts--long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So,
so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went,
this way it comes. Hand it me--here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the
years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!
"Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan;
and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand
there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may
in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before
me. O men, you will yet see that--Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies
come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming
again, were't not thou St. Vitus' imp--away, thou ague!
"Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done!
Let me touch the axis." So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the
three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so
doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing
intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as
though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have
shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the
Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before
his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked
sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.
"In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but
once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, THAT
had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have
dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now,
ye mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen
there--yon three most honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant
harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the
feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals!
your own condescension, THAT shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye;
ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held,
barbs up, before him.
"Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know
ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye
cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!"
Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed
the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.
"Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league.
Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to
sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man
the deathful whaleboat's bow--Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all,
if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel
goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white
whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss.
Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally,
the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when,
waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired
within his cabin. _
Read next: CHAPTER 37 Sunset.
Read previous: CHAPTER 35 The Mast-Head.
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