Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
Page 99
CHAPTER 99
The Doubloon
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck,taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast;but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration ithas not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when mostplunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot,and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before him.When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened onthe pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelinwith the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his walkhe again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glancefastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the sameaspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing,if not hopefulness.
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newlyattracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it,as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himselfin some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them.And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all thingsare little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher,except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston,to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.
Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhereout of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west,over golden sands, the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows.And though now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron boltsand the verdigris of copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculateto any foulness, it still preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placedamongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands,and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darknesswhich might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless everysunrise found the doubloon where the sunset last left it last.For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end;and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all,the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman.Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night,wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would everlive to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sunand tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's disksand stars, ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving,are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seemsalmost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories,by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthyexample of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a countryplanted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator,and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes,in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those lettersyou saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame;a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while archingover all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs allmarked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun enteringthe equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others,was now pausing.
"There's something ever egotistical in mountain-topsand towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here,--three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab;the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted,and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab;and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turnbut mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains,small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannotsolve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face;but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox!and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinoxat Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes,'t is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs!So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on.So be it, then."
"No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil'sclaws must have left their mouldings there since yesterday,"murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning against the bulwarks."The old man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing.I have never marked the coin inspectingly. He goes below; let me read.A dark valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks,that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint earthly symbol.So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom,the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope.If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer.Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we wouldfain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me.I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely."
"There now's the old Mogul," soliloquized Stubb by the try-works,"he's been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same,and both with faces which I should say might be somewherewithin nine fathoms long. And all from looking at a pieceof gold, which did I have it now on Negro Hill or inCorlaer's Hook, I'd not look at it very long ere spending it.Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I regard this as queer.I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your doubloonsof old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili,your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan;with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes,and half joes, and quarter joes. What then should there bein this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful?By Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa! here's signs andwonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitomecalls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto.I'll get the almanack; and as I have heard devils can be raisedwith Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try my hand at raising a meaningout of these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar.Here's the book. Let's see now. Signs and wonders;and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem; here they are--here they go--all alive: Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bulland Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sunhe wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossingthe threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring.Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places.You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we comein to supply the thoughts. That's my small experience,so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch's navigator,and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if thereis nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders!There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it!Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in oneround chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book.Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue,when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here,going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw;we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love;we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra,or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while weare very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio,or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound,when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer,is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside!here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt,he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius,or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us;and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes throughit every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty.Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so,alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye!Adieu, Doubloon! But stop; here comes little King-Post;dodge round the try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll haveto say. There; he's before it; he'll out with somethin
g presently.So, so; he's beginning."
"I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raisesa certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's allthis staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true;and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars.I won't smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's ninehundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out."
"Shall I call that Wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it hasa foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sortof wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman--the oldhearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea.He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the otherside of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side;and now he's back again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering--voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!"
"If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day,when the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs,and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago,by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be?The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold.And what's the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign--the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakesto think of thee."
"There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of menin one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg--all tattooing--looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What saysthe Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels,I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country.And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh--I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't know what to makeof the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiledout of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual.What does he say, with that look of his? Ah, only makes a signto the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the coin--fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip--poor boy! would he had died, or I; he's half horrible to me.He too has been watching all of these interpreters myself included--and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthly idiot face.Stand away again and hear him. Hark!"
"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
"Upon my soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his mind,poor fellow! But what's that he says now--hist!"
"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
"Why, he's getting it by heart--hist! again."
"I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
"Well, that's funny."
"And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats;and I'm a crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pinetree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow?And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuckinto a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleevesof an old jacket."
"Wonder if he means me?--complimentary--poor lad!--I could gohang myself. Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity.I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's toocrazy-witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering."
"Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all one fireto unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence?Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught'snailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate.Ha! ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is a pine tree.My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and founda silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring.How did it get there? And so they'll say in the resurrection,when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it,with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious,precious gold!--the green miser'll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish!God goes 'mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us!Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"
CHAPTER 100
Leg and Arm
The Pequod of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London