Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  In Token

  Of My Admiration and Affection

  This Book Is Inscribed

  To

  John C. Morrison

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Extracts

  1 A Mild Blue Day

  2 The Dirge

  3 The Crossing

  4 Reverie

  5 The Window

  6 The Steamboat

  7 The Paddlewheel

  8 The Island

  9 A Difficult Farewell

  10 The Giant

  11 Winters, Summers

  12 New Bedford

  13 Boston

  14 The Petrel

  15 A Storm at Night

  16 The Brightness of Brightness

  17 A Rose

  18 Our Lady of the Rocks

  19 The Return of the Petrel, with Three Letters

  20 A Comb

  21 The Fourth Letter

  22 The Camel

  23 The Sea-Fancy Inn

  24 The Sussex

  25 The Cabin Boy

  26 The Companion

  27 Captain Coffin’s Story—Secondhand

  28 A Whaleboat by Moonlight

  29 Captain Morrell’s Story—Thirdhand

  30 Captain Ahab’s Story—My First Acquaintance with Him

  31 Aloft

  32 “Pardon Me”

  33 Reunion

  34 Revelation

  35 Sea Storms

  36 The Frost Wind

  37 Collision

  38 The Course

  39 The Distance of the Stars

  40 The Sentence

  41 What Do You Fetch for Your Mouth?

  42 The Beginning of the Debate

  43 Father and Son

  44 The Human Animal

  45 The Alba Albatross

  46 Ganglion

  47 Postscript on the Above

  48 Soaring

  49 Portrait of a Virgin Listening

  50 Icarus

  51 The Test

  52 The Funeral

  53 The Contest

  54 I Am Married

  55 Aboard the Pequod

  56 The Hurricane House

  57 Ahab’s Jottings

  58 Kit’s Ruminations

  59 Starbuck Introduces Himself

  60 Ahab Overheard

  61 A Letter to the Lighthouse

  62 Poor Kit’s a-Cold

  63 Arctic

  64 Ahab in His Cabin

  65 Aloft, the Pequod

  66 Starbuck: Ship’s Log

  67 Starbuck Communes with Mary, His Wife

  68 In the Steward's Pantry

  69 Ahab’s Comfort

  70 Nantucket—the Faraway Isle

  71 Ahab Prepares for the Next Voyage

  72 Breakfast

  73 Shame

  74 B’twixt

  75 Enter: The Gaoler and the Judge

  76 On the Moor

  77 A Slow Spring

  78 Churches

  79 Baptismal

  80 Fire

  81 Ahab Addresses the Flames

  82 Ahab’s Wife

  83 A Sky Full of Angels

  84 Resurrection

  85 The Purpose of Art

  86 The Office of a Friend

  87 Childhood as an Island

  88 The World of Rebekkah Swain

  89 Kentucky Seasons

  90 A Winter Tale

  91 The Burden

  92 The Lantern

  93 Shakespeare and Company

  94 The Guide

  95 Getting Started

  96 Forest Murmurs

  97 In the Cupola

  98 To Summer

  99 Wife

  100 The Mitchells

  101 Vestal Street

  102 Ahab

  103 From Cupola to Wharf

  104 Idyll

  105 The Comet

  106 Frannie’s Letter from an Inland Lighthouse

  107 An Angry Letter from Aunt Agatha

  108 Letter to an Inland Lighthouse

  109 The Minister in the Woods

  110 The History of Snow and Restlessness

  111 Altar Rock

  112 Mothering

  113 Chowder Swirls

  114 The Birthing Room

  115 The Leg

  116 Christmas Eve

  117 A Last Glimpse of the Pequod: Christmas Day

  118 The Jeroboam Returns

  119 The First Part of Ahab’s Third Voyage After His Marriage

  120 Moon Watch

  121 Letter from Susan

  122 The Samuel Enderby of London Puts in for Repairs at Nantucket

  123 The Distress of Justice

  124 To Siasconset

  125 The Hedge

  126 Journey Toward the Starry Sky, in Present Tense

  127 ’Sconset Morning

  128 More of Morning: T ashtego’s Feather Makes the Letter S

  129 The Neighbor Beyond the Hedge

  130 The Roar of Guilt

  131 The Return of the Delight

  132 The Perseid

  133 The Woolsack

  134 Letter from Margaret Fuller, from England

  135 Letter from David Poland, Virginia

  136 Letter to Beloved Kin

  137 Letter from Margaret Fuller, from Italy

  138 The Judge’s Invitation

  139 Mrs. Maynard’s Note

  140 Preparations

  141 Frannie

  142 Liberty and the Dolphins

  143 A Suitable Marriage

  144 What Has Proved to Be a Last Visit

  145 A Song

  146 A Squeeze of the Hand

  147 Una Preaches to the Waves

  148 The Great Fire: June 1846

  149 ReRections on a Wreck

  150 During the Pleasure Party

  151 Celestial

  152 A New Friend

  153 A Sermon Overheard

  154 Plans

  155 Recitation by Beach Fire

  156 Letter from Susan, Forwarded

  157 The Roof Walk

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  E-Book Extras

  An Interview with Sena Jeter Naslund: “The Ship of My Book”

  Author’s Note: The Surprise and Pleasure of It

  Reading Group Guide: Discussion Points

  About Ahab’s Wife or, The Star Gazer

  Praise for Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife or, The Star-Gazer

  About the Author

  By Sena Jeter Naslund

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Illustrations

  Frontispiece

  “The Crossing”

  “The eagle was a flurry of feathers…”

  The Harbor of New Bedford

  “Aloft”

  “He rose in the vertical, jaw agape…”

  “All around us in the sea and the sky, there is a black glory we do not share.”

  The Hold

  “Ahab Addresses the flames”

  “Forest Murmurs”

  “The Comet”

  The Roof Walk and the Starry Sky

  The Woodcarver’s Studio

  “You want me to kill ’em?”

  Extracts

  Let them be sea-captains—if they will!

  —MARGARET FULLER, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

  It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent; great cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and from in the turbid water…. The huge green fragment of ice on which [Eliza] alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leap
ed to another and still another cake:—stumbling—leaping—slipping—springing upwards again!

  “Yer a brave gal, now, whoever year!”

  —HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851)

  “My God! Mr. Chase, what is the matter?!”

  I answered, “We have been stove by a whale.”

  —OWEN CHASE, Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket (1821)

  "Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ’mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales…. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody—desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it’s better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one….

  Besides, my boy, he has a wife—not three voyages wedded—a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man had a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!”

  —CAPTAIN PELEG TO ISHMAEL, “The Ship,” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

  [Starbuck, First Mate of the Pequod:] “Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish!…—this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.”

  [Ahab:] “They have, they have. I have seen them—some summer days in the morning. About this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance him again.”

  [Starbuck:] “…my Mary…promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father’s sail!…Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy’s face from the window! the boy’s hand on the hill!”

  But Ahab’s glance was averted…. “What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it: what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time…? By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike…. But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay.”

  —STARBUCK AND AHAB, “The Symphony,” Moby-Dick

  I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye!…Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes!…I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs…Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye.

  —AHAB, “The Symphony,” Molly-Dick

  “There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”

  —AHAB, “The Chase—First Day,” Moby-Dick

  CHAPTER 1: A Mild Blue Day

  CAPTAIN AHAB WAS neither my first husband nor my last. Yet, looking up—into the clouds—I conjure him there: his gray-white hair; his gathered brow; and the zaggy mark (I saw it when lying with him by candlelight and, also, taking our bliss on the sunny moor among curly-cup gumweed and lamb’s ear). And I see a zaggy shadow now in the rifting clouds. That mark started like lightning at Ahab’s temple and ran not all the way to his heel (as some thought) but ended at Ahab’s heart.

  That pull of cloud—tapered and blunt at one end and frayed at the other—seems the cottony representation of his ivory leg. But I will not see him all dismembered and scattered in heaven’s blue—that would be no kind, reconstructive vision;no, intact, lofty and sailing, though his shape is changeable. Yesterday, when I tilted my face to the sky, I imaged not the full figure but only his cloudy head, a portrait, glancing back at me over his shoulder.

  What weather is in Ahab’s face?

  For me, now, as it ever was in life, at least when he was looking at me alone and had no other person in view, his visage is mild—with a brightness in it, even be it a wild, white, blown-about brightness. Now, as I look at those billowed clouds, I see the Pequod. I half raise my hand to bid good-bye, as it was that last day from the eastmost edge of Nantucket Island, when, with a wave and then a steadfast, longing look, till the sails were only a white dot, and then a blankness of ocean—then a glitter—I wished his ship and him Godspeed.