Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
Page 93
CHAPTER 93
The Castaway
It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a mostsignificant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew;an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimesmadly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanyingprophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats.Some few hands are reserved called shipkeepers, whose province itis to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale.As a general thing, these shipkeepers are as hardy fellowsas the men comprising the boats' crews. But if there happento be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship,that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequodwith the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation.Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourineon that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black ponyand a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar color,driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by naturedull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted,was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightnesspeculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidaysand festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race.For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three hundredand sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days. Nor smile so,while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness hasits brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets.But Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable securities; so thatthe panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountablybecome entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness; though, as erelong will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him,in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires,that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustrewith which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had onceenlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and at melodiouseven-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon intoone star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air of day,suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop willhealthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamondin its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground,and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases.Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then theevil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies,looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But letus to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsmanchanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed;and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale;and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubbobserving him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish hiscourageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.
Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale;and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap,which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat.The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap,paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slackwhale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him,so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water.That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the lineswiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming upto the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line,which had taken several turns around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt.He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath,he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb,exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked faceplainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash.In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lostand Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailedby yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permittingthese irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain,business-like, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially;and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice.The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except--but allthe rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is.Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling;but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better.Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he should give undilutedconscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a marginto jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice,and concluded with a peremptory command "Stick to the boat, Pip,or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that.We can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sellfor thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind,and don't jump any more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted,that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal,which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again.It was under very similar circumstances to the first performance;but this time he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whalestarted to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurriedtraveller's trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word.It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day! the spangled sea calmand cool, and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon,like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing upand down in that sea, Pip's ebon head showed like a head of cloves.No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern.Stubb's inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged.In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was betweenPip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turnedhis crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway,though the loftiest and the brightest.
Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easyto the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore.But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentrationof self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who cantell it? Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea--mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negroto his fate? No; he did not mean to, at least.Because there were two boats in his wake, and he supposed,no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly,and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towardsoarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is notalways manifested by the hunters in all similar instances;and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariablyin the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the sameruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies.
But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip,suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned,and gave chase; and Stubb's boat was now so far away,and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip'sringed horizon began to expand around him miserably.By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot;such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kepthis finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down aliveto wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarpedprimal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps;and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities,Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects,that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs.He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it;and therefore his sh
ipmates called him mad. So man's insanityis heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason,man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason,is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,indifferent as his God.
For the rest blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is commonin that fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will thenbe seen what like abandonment befell myself.
CHAPTER 94
A Squeeze of the Hand