At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice that seemed to me a little diminished,—“Up helm! Keep her off round the world!”
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those dear loves that I left behind in the earth’s embrace—and by these very hands!—they were all the time before me.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, or the secret land of the Fey, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
Chapter
The Gam
Of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies on Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other’s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious shamefaced hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is—“How many skulls?”—the same way that whalers hail—“How many barrels?” And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don’t like to see overmuch of each other’s villainous likenesses.
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a “gam,” a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,” and suchlike pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War’s men, and even the vile slave-ship sailors cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer.
But what is a gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. Let me learnedly define it:
gam. noun—A social meeting of two (or more) whaleships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’ crews; the two captains remaining, for the time on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.
There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so has the whale fishery. In a pirate or man-of-war, when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all, using instead the long steering oar reserved for that position. High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat’s crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a lone pine tree.
Being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his eely legs. Nor is this any easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the aftermost-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up.
It would never do, in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers’ pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say—to seize hold of the nearest oarsman’s hair, and hold on there like grim death.
Chapter
Aloft & Alone
Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts in the Southern Indian Ocean, the Pequod fell in with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow animalcules upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.
On the second day, I mounted to the cross-trees for my two-hours watch just as a goodly number of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip.
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the wheat-colored sea.
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock set in fields of undulating wheat than anything else.
How is it that those myriad, ephemeral ghosts we deem memories, suffused with such concepts as past and time and Heaven—how marvelous and how terrible that such ghosts as these haunting the houses of our skulls can be so evoked in the very thingness of the world? How is it that that barnacled whale I saw below me could so evoke another ground-bound boulder at my back, the brit so like a field of wheat undulating in that chill fall breeze? St
anding there on high, mesmerized, I felt that rock, hard and cool against my back; saw that waving field of wheat; and so, my mind dissolved backwards into that foregone moment.
The stone was cool, rough against my back, poking me as my chest heaved in ragged gasps. Some unaccountable woe lay heavy on my breast; so heavy did it feel, I looked down to discern whether some great weight were suckingly fastened there. Glancing down, my mind reeled, aghast at the red spattering there all across my chest and down my body.
That red spattering. I had been bound somewhere—and was in some great haste, or so it seemed. I had been to visit someone, I knew that much; but where had I been bound? Then, in a moment so abhorrent it nearly pitched me unknowing from the masthead, I gasped anew and remembered. The Walker’s home; I had been to the Walker’s home! Harriet and Jacob and their boy Johnny, not six months younger than my own Gennie.
Upon hearing those names in my mind’s ear, my whole body shuddered, remembering within the remembrance, as it were. I had been in some sort of rage, and had fairly run at the door to pound on it and demand Jacob’s presence, but then saw the Walker’s door stood slightly ajar; and, hearing what I thought to be voices from within, in a passion of rage I did not stop, but stiff-armed the door open, slamming it back against the wall as I rushed over the threshold. Curses were already spilling from my lips as I stormed into their parlor, though for the life of me I could not then remember the circumstance sending me into such a towering rage, enough to crash unbidden into their sumptuous home.
There in the parlour, Jacob appeared to be getting to his feet from the floor, slowly, and with what seemed some confusion. A stench as of a birthing room was in the air: blood and feces and anguish. As I began to yell at Jacob, he turned and I saw that something was terribly awry with his portly face: his eyes were of a cataract hue, and his face slack as if in sleep, his neck at an odd angle and what looked to be a terrible wound there, on his shoulder; and then he hissed, and moaned, and lurched toward me.
As he approached, I continued my invective, caring not how ill the man might be, for I had something to say to him, something important, it seemed. While yelling all the louder at his relentless approach, I made some violent gesture with my hand and felt there, warm in my grasp, the small kindling hatchet that usually resided nigh the hearth at home. This puzzled me, and I stood dumbly staring at it when Jacob lunged the final distance with startling speed and was upon me, slavering, moaning, spitting, grappling.
All I knew then was rage, for here, here I knew lay the source of that rage, though I still knew not the details; all felt as in a dream. The thing that had once been Jacob Walker bore me to the ground, both of us screaming, it grasping at my throat, striving to pull my head to its mouth, but when we landed and rolled, I chanced to be in the upper position. All rage in me was suddenly extinguished by gut-wrenching fear; out of instinct alone did I bring the hatchet down on his skull, and with a horrible wet crunching sound the hatchet blade sunk deep in Jacob’s skull and became irretrievably lodged there in the bone; stuck fast and useless now.
Before I could even attempt to wrench the hatchet free, aye, before even one breath could be drawn by me, another lesser weight crashed into me from the side, and I twisted away, scrabbling frantically to my feet and backing rapidly towards the dead fireplace. It was the boy! Johnny!
Horribly hissing, his teeth gnashed at me; he had a grip on my shirt but he was younger than my Gennie—Gennie!—and therefore slight, and so I easily dashed his hands from me and kicked him to the floor, retreating toward the fireplace, to place my back against the wall. A rattling clash startled me; in my haste I had knocked over the coal scuttle and the fireplace tools stored therein clattered to the floor. The boy silently advanced, clearly bent on taking my life. I retrieved the heavy poker at my feet and, to my horror, easily did what had to be done.
Home! I remembered thinking then, I must return home! My entire body was spattered with gore; and in revulsion, I threw the heavy poker on the small corpse (foolish man!) and fled the house, clinging to the hope that my family was yet safe; if only I could get there fast enough. I ran, striving with all my might to husband my rapidly waning faith in the goodness of the world. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and from these dead beliefs she gathers her most vital hope.
Grimly did I stand the rest of the watch there at the mast head, seething and confused. The Pequod rolled on through the vast patches of brit and the huge black backs of the right whales mowed through the golden food, reaping hither and yon, fearless of the Pequod. The sea undulated there around us all in her subtle profundities.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried unmoving beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; who can say for sure that their beloved is truly gone beyond; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms without that knowledge. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections of the Holy sort to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave or been burned to stave off contamination or worse yet, infected and, love or no, lurch off all unknowing.
Consider all this, for just as this appalling ocean surrounds that once-verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!
Chapter
The Kraken
Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.
But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.
In the distance, an impossibly prodigious white mass lazily rose to the surface, and rising higher and higher, disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the African yelled out—“There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead! The White Whale, the White Whale!”
Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering.
The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to
mankind. A vast pulpy mass, no less than four furlongs in length and at least one in breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of gigantic anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. The creature seemed stricken, as though struggling under some hemorrhagic hurt—writhing there on the billows, an unearthly, chance-like apparition of life that, had it been whole and hale, could have easily pulled the Peqoud down to its dark lair, there to feed upon it.
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again below, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild tremulous voice exclaimed—“Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”
“What was it, Sir?” said Flask.
“The greatest of squid, known by some as Kraken which, legends say, few ships ever beheld and returned to their ports to tell of it. Never have I heard that any crew of any ship ever truly saw such a thing. Had I not seen it with these eyes, never would I have thought it real. Surely the legends must be mistaken,” saying this last half-question and darting his gaze to Ahab.
Zomby Dick, or the Undead Whale Page 22