Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 26

  Knights and Squires

  The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket,and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man,and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endurehot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit.Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil likebottled ale. He must have been born in some time of generaldrought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which hisstate is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen;those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness.But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the tokenof wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indicationof any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man.He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary.His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrappedup in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength,like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed preparedto endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now;for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer,his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates.Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingeringimages of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confrontedthrough life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the mostpart was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapterof sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude,there were certain qualities in him which at times affected,and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest.Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deepnatural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life didtherefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sortof superstition, which in some organizations seems ratherto spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance.Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul,much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Capewife and child, tend to bend him still more from the originalruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latentinfluences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gushof dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the moreperilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no manin my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliableand useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimationof the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless manis a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

  "Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there,is as careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery."But we shall ere long see what that word "careful" precisely meanswhen used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.

  Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment;but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortallypractical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this businessof whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship,like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted.Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down;nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted infighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical oceanto kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs;and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew.What doom was his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps,could he find the torn limbs of his brother?

  With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certainsuperstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck,which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme.But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized,and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had;it was not in nature that these things should fail in latentlyengendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances,would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up.And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly,visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firmin the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinaryirrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific,because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you fromthe concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.

  But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance,the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce mightI have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful,nay shocking, to expose the fall of valor in the soul.Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations;knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean andmeagre faces; but, man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling,such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemishin him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us,that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone;bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of avalor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars.But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kingsand robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture.Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick ordrives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands,radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute!The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence,our divine equality!

  If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways,I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark;weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful,perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lifthimself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman'sarm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbowover his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortalcritics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality,which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst notrefuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl;Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold,the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didstpick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl himupon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne!Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullestThy selectest champions from the kingly commoners; bear meout in it, O God!