Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the shipJungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.

  At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutchand Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wideintervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meetwith their flag in the Pacific.

  For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and droppinga boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standingin the bows instead of the stern.

  "What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to somethingwavingly held by the German. "Impossible!--a lamp-feeder!"

  "Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;he's coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you seethat big tin can there alongside of him?--that's his boiling water.Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."

  "Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."

  However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowingoil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedlycontradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle,yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the presentcase Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feederas Flask did declare.

  As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without atall heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo,the German soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale;immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can,with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock atnight in profound darkness--his last drop of Bremen oil being gone,and not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency;concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fisheryis technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), welldeserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.

  His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gainedhis ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised fromthe mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick,that without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard,he slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.

  Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German boatsthat soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod's keels.There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger,they were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind,rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness.They left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a greatwide parchment upon the sea.

  Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress,as well as by the unusual yellowish incrustations over-growing him,seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity.Whether this whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable;for it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be atall social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed theirback water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swellat his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when twohostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious;coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itselfin torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him,which seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity,causing the waters behind him to upbubble.

  "Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache,I'm afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache!Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys.It's the first foul wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look,did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he's lost his tiller."

  As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deckload of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows onher way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and thenpartly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the causeof his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it,it were hard to say.

  "Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for thatwounded arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.

  "Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way,or the German will have him."

  With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointedfor this one fish, because not only was he the largest,and therefore the most valuable whale, but he was nearest to them,and the other whales were going with such great velocity, moreover,as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At this juncture,the Pequod's keels had shot by the three German boats last lowered;but from the great start he had had, Derick's boat still ledthe chase, though every moment neared by his foreign rivals.The only thing they feared, was, that from being alreadyso nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his ironbefore they could completely overtake and pass him.As for Derick, he seemed quite confident that this would be the case,and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feederat the other boats.

  "The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and daresme with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!"--Then in his old intense whisper--"give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!"

  "I tell ye what it is, men"--cried Stubb to his crew--It's against myreligion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous Yarman--Pull--won't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love brandy?A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don't some of yeburst a blood-vessel? Who's that been dropping an anchor overboard--we don't budge an inch--we're becalmed. Halloo, here's grass growingin the boat's bottom--and by the Lord, the mast there's budding.This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long ofit is, men, will ye spit fire or not?"

  "Oh! see the suds he makes!" cried Flask, dancing up and down--"Whata hump--Oh, do pile on the beef--lays like a log! Oh! my lads,do spring--slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads--baked clams and muffins--oh, do, do, spring,--he's a hundred barreler--don't lose him now--don't oh, don't!--see that Yarman--Oh, won't ye pullfor your duff, my lads--such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love sperm?There goes three thousand dollars, men!--a bank!--a whole bank!The bank of England!--Oh, do, do, do!--What's that Yarman about now?"

  At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feederat the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the doubleview of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time economicallyaccelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.

  "The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men,like fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils.What d'ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine intwo-and-twenty pieces for the honor of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?"

  "I say, pull like god-dam,"--cried the Indian.

  Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod'sthree boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitudeof the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stoodup proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilaratingcry of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze!Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!"

  But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spiteof all their gallantry, he would have proved the victorin this race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon himin a crab which caught the blade of his midship oarsman.While this clumsy lubber was striving to free his white-ash,and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was nigh to capsizing,and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;--that wasa good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout,they took a mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged upon the German's quarter. An instant more, and all four boatswere diagonically in the whale's immediate wake, while stretchingfrom them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.

  It was a terrific, most pit
iable, and maddening sight.The whale was now going head out, and sending his spoutbefore him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poorfin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand,now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still atevery billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea,or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin.So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted brokencircles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks.But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will makeknown her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea,was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice,save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and thismade the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still,in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail,there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.

  Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod'sboats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game,Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusuallylong dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.

  But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than allthree tigers--Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo--instinctively sprangto their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointedtheir barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer,their three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vaporsof foam and white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of thewhale's headlong rush, bumped the German's aside with such force,that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out,and sailed over by the three flying keels.

  "Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passingglance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up presently--all right--I saw some sharks astern--St. Bernard's dogs, you know--relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now.Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!--Here we go like three tinkettles at the tail of a mad cougar! This puts me in mindof fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain--makes the wheelspokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way;and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a hill.Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he's goingto Davy Jones--all a rush down an endless inclined plane!Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!"

  But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp,he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew roundthe loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them;while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid soundingwould soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might,they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on;till at last--owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-linedchocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straightdown into the blue--the gunwales of the bows were almost evenwith the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air.And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time theyremained in that attitude, fearful of expending more line,though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats havebeen taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this "holding on,"as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his liveflesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathaninto soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes.Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubtedwhether this course is always the best; for it is but reasonableto presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays under water,the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous surface of him--in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet--the pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishingatmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here,above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean!It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whalemanhas estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships,with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.

  As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea,gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groanor cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubblecame up from its depths; what landsman would have thought,that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmostmonster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the greatLeviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock.Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is thisthe creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said--"Canst thoufill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears?The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear,the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw;the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble;he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This the creature?this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the prophets.For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail,Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea,to hide him from the Pequod's fishspears!

  In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sentdown beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enoughto shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the woundedwhale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!

  "Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenlyvibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them,as by magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale,so that every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment,relieved in a great part from the downward strain at the bows,the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will,when a dense herd of white bears are scared from it into the sea.

  "Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising."

  The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand'sbreadth could have been gained, were now in long quick coilsflung back all dripping into the boats, and soon the whalebroke water within two ship's length of the hunters.

  His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion.In most land animals there are certain valves or flood-gatesin many of their veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is insome degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions.Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it is,to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels,so that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon,a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system;and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressureof water at a great distance below the surface, his lifemay be said to pour from him in incessant streams.Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distantand numerous its interior fountains, that he will keepthus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period;even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source isin the well-springs of far-off and indiscernible hills.Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilouslydrew over his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him,they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound,which kept continually playing, while the natural spout-holein his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending itsaffrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no bloodyet came, because no vital part of him had thus far been struck.His life, as they significantly call it, was untouched.

  As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of hisform, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed.His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld.As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblestoaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes hadonce occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see.But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm,and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered,in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men,and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditionalinoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at lasthe partially disclosed a strangely discolored bunch or protuberance,the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.

  "A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick h
im there once."

  "Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"

  But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dartan ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by itinto more than sufferable anguish, the whale now spoutingthick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft,bespattering them and their glorying crews all over withshowers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and marring the bows.It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by lossof blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made;lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin,then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world;turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log,and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout.As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn offfrom some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholygurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground--so the last long dying spout of the whale.

  Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship,the body showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled.Immediately, by Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it atdifferent points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunkenwhale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords.By very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale wastransferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffestfluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially upheld,the body would at once sink to the bottom.

  It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade,the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbeddedin his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described.But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the deadbodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healedaround them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place;therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown reasonin the present case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to.But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone beingfound in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectlyfirm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when?It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long beforeAmerica was discovered.

  What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous cabinetthere is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries,by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea,owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to itto the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at lengththe ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in lockingarms with the body; then, when the command was given to break clearfrom it, such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to whichthe fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossibleto cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant.To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking upthe steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped.Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were startedfrom their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikesand crows were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to prythem adrift from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settledthat the submerged ends could not be at all approached, while everymoment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk,and the ship seemed on the point of going over.

  "Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the body,"don't be in such a devil of a hurry to sink!By thunder, men, we must do something or go for it.No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes,and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cutthe big chains."

  "Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter'sheavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron,began slashing at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes,full of sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest.With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted,the carcase sank.

  Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killedSperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yetadequately accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whalefloats with great buoyancy, with its side or belly considerablyelevated above the surface. If the only whales that thus sankwere old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their padsof lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic;then you might with some reason assert that this sinking iscaused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking,consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him.But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health,and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut offin the warm flush and May of life, with all their panting lardabout them! even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.

  Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far lessliable to this accident than any other species.Where one of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do.This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no smalldegree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale;his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton;from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But thereare instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days,the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life.But the reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him;he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon.A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then.In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand,when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoysto him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone down,they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.

  It was not long after the sinking of the body that a crywas heard from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that theJungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only spoutin sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species ofuncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming.Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's,that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it.And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiantchase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail,made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappearedfar to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

  Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.

  CHAPTER 82

  The Honor and Glory of Whaling