Zomby Dick, or the Undead Whale

by Jd Livingstone

  How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. I then told Queequeg much of what you shall learn herein, but not all, for there are limits to shared heartache, even if the one to whom you talk understands but little; still, Queequeg listened and though he likely knew only one word in twenty, he thereby unjudgingly consoled me as I wept and wailed the parts of my tale I could then recall.

  Once the vast bulk of that pent-up grief and loss had been vomited from me and my shame laid bare, if only to myself, I slowly recovered for the nonce. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair. We lay in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.

  Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors, a chill to stall the swiftest zomby; indeed it was chilly out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold save your heart, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

  We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed. Because no one can ever feel their own identity aright except one’s eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion, for in every dark crevice lurked some horrid thing, that, should my guard waver, would come for me.

  And so I did not at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of pungent smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.

  That undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes, and he now spoke of his native island; and, eager to hear his history, and mayhap give return payment for the attentive ear he gave my own grief, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.

  Chapter

  Queequeg

  Kokovoko was Queequeg’s home, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His mother, as was the strange custom of his people, was a High Chief, a Queen; his aunt a High Priestess; and on the paternal side he boasted both father and uncles who were unconquerable warrior-consorts. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth. How strange, thought I, to feel no small love for this cannibal of living flesh, so very different from that other shambling cannibal with its upraised arms; the life and mind within is the thing.

  A Sag Harbor ship had visited his mother’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage on it to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the Queen his mother’s influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe among these thickets with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.

  In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a Queen and a Warrior, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin. They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his mother’s heathen subjects. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, and then learning of the pestilence abroad in this land, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians and none more so than this plaguey land of whites; I’ll die a pagan.

  By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, finding a queen of his own and having a coronation; since he might now consider his mother dead and gone, she being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending to the royalty of the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan consorts of Queens before him. But by and by, he said he would re
turn, as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of the warrior’s scepter now.

  I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his own vocation. He seemed to know but hearsay regarding the zomby plague, for he had been longer at sea than on land these ten years past, and when I spoke to him of zombies he either little understood or but little believed me. Deciding it was vain to attempt further explanation, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket. He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was no stranger to killing, yet was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen.

  His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping and for the second night in as many years, what dreams I had remained submerged in the blesséd forgetting depths of the little death that reaps us anew each night.

  Chapter

  Backspatter

  Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber for a wig stand, I settled my own and my comrade’s bill; using, however, Queequeg’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with.

  We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor rucksack and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to “the Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much—for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales and, being long and stout and sharp, of great use against zombies, or so he thought. In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’ meadows either to reap or defend their families armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to furnish them—even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.[1]

  [1]A sharp harpoon might make a decent razor but it is frightfully inefficient gainst the zomby. Indeed, a harpoon would be a great handicap, for its barby purpose is to hold fast, whereas the efficient zomby weapon deals its damage, is swiftly retrieved so as to deal that damage anon with alacrity, till all zombies are down and done in. Heed me well, ye many tyro whalemen in the zomby battle; however storied and ennobled is the harpoon, there are better weapons than this for zomby slaughter, as you shall soon learn.

  Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story. The people of his island of Kokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at Kokovoko, and its commander—from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain—this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honour, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the Queen, Queequeg’s mother. Grace being said,—for those people have their grace as well as we—though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts—Grace, I say, being said, the High Priestess opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping her consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priestess, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself—being a man and Captain of a ship—as having plain precedence over a mere island Priestess, even in the Queen’s own house—the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;—taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said Queequeg, “what you tink now?—Didn’t our people laugh?”

  Before I could chuckle my affirmation, my eye beheld a motion just beyond Queequeg, a means of moving I would fain forget, that awful shuffling lumber of the shamble-man, silent but for his dragging feet; now surprisingly close, it hissingly moaned its vile hunger, reaching out with pale hands.

  Against all training, I froze, for Queequeg’s presence had lulled me into a state of relaxed happiness I had not experienced for more than two years. Queequeg however, hesitated only a fraction of an eyeblink before hurling his harpoon at the monster. The barb, with a horrible meaty chunking sound, entered the thing’s chest, just right of center, and only I knew the blow to be imperfect; for that foul heart did not beat. I saw Queequeg relax, thinking the matter closed, but the zomby staggered back two steps then staggered forward, driven in part by the harpoon’s heft, canting him forward. It was only steps away. Believing the creature killed after he sent his harpoon through it’s heart, Queequeg’s unknowing would be his doom. It was this that goaded me to action.

  I let forth a hot curse, finally unfreezing, and in one long-practiced motion, advanced three quick steps, simultaneously snatching my axe from my back and bringing it to bear, all in one fluid maneuver.

  Queequeg would have been grasped and bitten had I not darted past him. The thing groaned and grimaced; I cursed my lapse even as I swung, for had I not been so keenly absorbed in Queequeg’s story and our new friendship, I would have heard the Satan-spawn sooner. In fact, one or both of our lives would have been forfeit had the weather been warmer, for the frozen air did slow the creature somewhat.

  But all these are hindsight words; then there was no thought but movement, the axe-head arcing downward to bring the blunt smashing butt against the monster’s skull-bones; my grasp on the haft sliding smooth and strong to the haft’s end as I brought the axe to its full extension. With a crunch and a sickening splatter of gore, the zomby crumpled. It was what we in the Militia called a soloist, as it acted alone. I was conscious of my unprotected state, and so, one eyeblink before the poll connected, my eyes and mouth snapped shut, fast as a bothered clam; for without the cinder goggles and the protective cloth mask commonly used for such work, risk of contracting the vile plague was a grave danger, so to speak. I could only hope no ichor had spattered my new friend in the eye or mouth. All was now still, the street quiet as death, and snow began to silently fall.

  Queequeg stood as one struck dumb and looked with widened eyes first to me, and then my axe, and then rested long on the crumpled gray-faced form, smartly dressed, oozing black blood and pale brains upon the cobbles. Finally Queequeg jerked like one started from sleep to waking; he came to me and laying his
brown tattooed hands on my shaking arms, he gently made me to lower my axe and, taking it, wiped the ichor from its poll on the zomby’s tailored suit before handing it back to me and retrieving his harpoon.

  When Big Blackie was sheathed once more on my back, Queequeg took my shoulders, looked me long in the eye and wordless touched his forehead to mine, his eyes locked to my eyes the while. Soon my enraged shaking stilled. Queequeg, waving me off the wheelbarrow, pantomimed for me to watch our backsides, and so we continued on towards the wharf, my every sense now alert and singing and that aching fury, a passion I desired so vehemently to quench and quit, and yet here it hotly throbbed unabated, and I ground my teeth and vowed anew to get me to sea in all haste. We spoke no more, for all laughter had left us.

  At last, we arrived at the wharf, Queequeg marveling at the fit of his fine new calfskin boots, taken from the zomby’s corpse. We completed the distasteful and shockingly indiscreet screening procedure—for the isle of Nantucket is as clean a refuge as conscientious Quakers can make it—passage paid and luggage safely stowed, we at last, somewhat more rumpled than before, stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.