In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel,and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Oceanor Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot.I am sure that I did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied outupon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear,sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in myshaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my wayagainst the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scatteredcongregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffledsilence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm.Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other,as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islandsof men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets,with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit.Three of them ran something like the following, but I do notpretend to quote:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats' crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August 3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seatedmyself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to seeQueequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there wasa wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance.This savage was the only person present who seemed to noticemy entrance; because he was the only one who could not read,and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall.Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose namesappeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not;but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery,and so plainly did several women present wear the countenanceif not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel surethat here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealinghearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically causedthe old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass;who standing among flowers can say--here, here lies my beloved;ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these.What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which coverno ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions!What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the linesthat seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrectionsto the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave.As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales,though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands! how it isthat to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefixso significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him,if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth;why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals;in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance,yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago;how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who wenevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss;why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore butthe rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.All these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even fromthese dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eveof a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets,and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day readthe fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael,the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again.Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion,it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet.Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a speechlesslyquick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then?Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Lifeand Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earthis my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual,we are too much like oysters observing the sun throughthe water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being.In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stoveboat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul,Jove himself cannot.
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale Page 8