Zomby Dick, or the Undead Whale

by Jd Livingstone

  “My captain—you must have ere this perceived, respected sir,” said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab, “—is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But I may as well say—en passant, as the French remark—that I myself—that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy—am a strict total abstinence man; I never drink—“

  “Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s a sort of fits to him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on—go on with the arm story.”

  “Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon, coolly. “I was about observing, sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against all rule”—pointing at it with the marlingspike—“that is the captain’s work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one’s brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir”—removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound—“Well, the captain there will tell you how that came here; he knows.”

  “No, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you—you Bunger! was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.”

  “What became of the White Whale?” now cried Ahab, who thus far had been impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.

  “Oh!” cried the one-armed captain, “oh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we didn’t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I didn’t then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick—as some call him—and then I knew it was he.”

  “Did’st thou cross his wake again?”

  “Twice.”

  “But could not fasten?”

  “Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he swallows.”

  “Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left arm for bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest even a man’s arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d’ye see. No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another chance at you shortly, that’s all.”

  “No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?”—glancing at the ivory leg.

  “He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet! How long since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”

  “Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; “this man’s blood—bring the thermometer!—it’s at the boiling point!—his pulse makes these planks beat!—sir!”—taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing near to Ahab’s arm.

  “Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks—“Man the boat! Which way heading?”

  “Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put. “What’s the matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain crazy?” whispering this last to silent Fedallah.

  But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take the boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle towards him, commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.

  In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to the British ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.

  The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it was, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly enough); then, the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench, that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.

  And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not been very long prior to the Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured, or so it was rumoured.

  Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft cymballing round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themsel
ves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

  Unwittingly here, one part of a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more properly have been disclosed before. With many other particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some, why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead.

  Captain Peleg’s rumored reason for this thing appeared by no means adequate; in fact, he knew not the deeper significance behind Ahab’s shuttered privacy; indeed, as touching all Ahab’s deeper part, every revelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the end, all the less damning details came out. That direful mishap was at the bottom of Ahab’s temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore, who, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned approach to him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty—remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested itself with terrors not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had all conspired to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it was that, not till a considerable interval had elapsed, was part of that truth known upon the Pequod’s decks, and even then, only Fedallah ever knew the whole of the mishap.

  But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures;—he called the carpenter.

  Ahab’s Log: Chapter

  Unhealing Wounds

  Ahab’s Log: November 22, 1851

  Blast this accursed whalebone leg! Another and a stronger must be built posthaste. Utter folly it is to chance yet another unhealing wound such as that Ahab didst receive in Nantucket; it still gapes there ‘neath its binding, with unbleeding gray smacking lips, jabbing Ahab to wakefulness with its unremitting stab of agony; were Promethean pain welded to Damoclean dread, to be finally suffused with Ixion’s doom; then, then would such a thing touch the outermost edges of the torment this wound dost dredge forth from thee. And Fedallah’s own unhealing wound is yet more grievous, fairly oozing the mystery of its occurrence!

  There is no mystery to thy grievous injury. Learning of thy role in the undead plague even now threatening the Union, ye wept with the guilt of it, and as a child did ye succumb to a frightful tantrum and flee Fedallah’s presence. And whence did ye flee? Where else but to the bottle, and to that tender ear of him who wieldest it. Staggering homeward, did ye come upon one of Fedallah’s crewmen and, flying into such a passionate rage, ye knocked him down and killed him dead with frantic stampings of thy whalebone leg, thereby shivering it from under ye to drunkenly fall upon its splintered sharpness. And yet, most queer circumstance of that whole affair, that man thus killed was in some wise replaced ere the closing of the following day, even as thy unbleeding wound set thee writhing there in thy marriage bed. Fedallah said naught regarding that underling’s demise, nor his replacement, as though it were no more concern to him than the changing of his shirt.

  Were the crew to see thy unblooded gaping gash, and thereby divine that which thou hast become, thy fate would be summed in one word: mutiny; aye, and that hempen rope Fedallah prophesied would soon find thy neck, old man; and there would they leave ye to swing from that noose cast round the yardarm, thine eyes dined upon by sea fowl as thy corpse dangled in the breeze. Aye, Ahab, the extent of thy wound must be kept bound in all senses of that word.

  What ye learned from that gash! Fedallah it was who found thee on those cold Nantucket cobbles, after thy unspeakable so-called accident; ivory leg shattered and spearing thee with a gash nigh thy centermost rudder. Oh, penance of the gods! The ragged rent in this flesh, not less than four inches in length, wet but frightfully bloodless; and thou aghast more at the bloodlessness than the searing pain.

  Then didst Fedallah warn thee yet again of thy risk, Ahab; then didst thou learn more of thy curse, and of Fedallah’s besides; then did Fedallah unwrap that snowy turban from round his brown head and show thou his own frightful unhealing wound. Under that turbaned binding, his skullbone shone brightest white from beneath the patch of missing scalp, wee stitches of the skullbone joint stark there against the white. That gleaming white didst fade to dullest ivory, as of weathered whalebone, to disappear under a final bandage—looking to be some sort of toughened leather—that lay in the midmost part of that already horrible wound. This final bandage Fedallah lifted off his forehead, and there, in the very center was a hole, near identical twin to thy pivot hole in the deck above, as though a carpenter’s augur had burrowed wormlike into Fedallah’s skull (and could that be the source of his augury?); and there beneath that clean hole—as a hole to Hell—there lay his black pulsing brain!

  That hole was also twin to the holes thou has seen drilled twice before in a zomby skull. Identical. What means this? Did the fiend Fedallah in some way escape some similar fate? He would not speak of it, but did portentously hint—as he covered and then rebound that hideous wound—that the injury was older than many men’s lifetimes. This last the Parsee bespoke with a tightness to his words, and a restraint to his tone, as though holding back a great rage.

  Upon winding the turns in his turban, Fedallah’s voice rose and rose as did his rage, until it towered, consuming the very air in the room; aye, mounting up to the heavens and down to the depths of Hell to rattle Satan’s cage, and all the while screaming at Ahab. At Ahab! for Ahab’s part in putting Fedallah in such a place as a whaleboat, where none are safe and men grievous wounded and struck stone dead as a matter of course. Such a ranting unholy rage he did vent!, full of guttural utterances in his throaty mother tongue; a weeping, ranting, panting rage to strike no small emotion in thy own stony breast. Never again did such emotion spill from the Parsee, and from thence he seemed resigned to his fate as thy pilot, or so he cryptically hinted.

  Does the onus for Fedallah’s risk truly belong to Ahab? Fedallah’s signs and augurs have told of this for nigh upon ten score years if he is to be believed. Where is will; where decision in this span of ages? How hast such a thing been foreseen, and how is it that naught can be done to shift this ghastly tide? Hast Ahab no power whatsoever that he must meekly do the bidding such that he is but time’s dumb marionette, woodenly manipulated by unseen strings, jerked about by hands from above? For what purpose? Is Ahab but slave to fate?

  I say nay! Ten thousand times nay! Let Ahab tend to Ahab, for no prophecy controls Ahab, it is Ahab who controls prophecy; for those bone-shakers, those card-layers, those readers of entrails, they but tap into the passion Ahab wields like fire, like a burning sigil seen from afar; such a passion Ahab holds as has been read centuries prior and as will be sung centuries hence!, for it is Ahab’s lust for the black blood of Moby Dick they do sense, no more, and aye, no less, for it is vast as all creation! They do but read of Ahab’s rage and determination in goat guts spilled in sacred huts under hot foreign suns, for Ahab’s rage spans oceans! Ahab’s rage spans the globe, yea and out to suns unglimpsed; Ahab’s rage spans the very arch of time! It is a towering infernal terror to all who deign to glimpse beyond the veil of both past and future Nows; all signs seen by witches in their rude shacks or jaguar shamans in steam-soaked jungles: all do but portend of Ahab’s rage and thy final apotheosis in the slaying of Moby Dick!

  Gather thyself, Old Thunder. Had ye not thy own rage both equal to and master of any other, any lesser man might have trembled before Fedallah’s passion, but Ahab is well accustomed to rages—of his own and other stout men, aye and some terrible rages of women, too—and hast not Ahab faced down undaunted the prodigious rag
e of countless forty-barrel bulls? and so, though the passion of the Parsee was terrible to behold and did kindle no small sympathy for him in Ahab’s breast, Ahab did not quaver like a craven cur before a thunderstorm, all a-tremble and frantic for some hiding place. Stonelike thou faced down Fedallah’s rage, as looking ever to windward in the bitterest Typhoon, for Ahab is Ahab and so didst thou remain unmoved at thy inmost core.

  Naught will sway thee from thy purpose. And for this purpose, thou must have thy new leg, the better to steady thee for the darting of that barb through the heart of Moby Dick; the better to guard ‘gainst the crew seeing another unbleeding wound and staving Ahab’s skull for what he is. Light fire close under the blacksmith’s arse, Ahab, and light one under that blathering carpenter and get thy new leg under thee before the fate of the Jeroboam becomes thine own, old man. Belay this frantic scratching and to it!

  Chapter

  Ahab and

  the Carpenter

  The carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent and without respect, for to him all human things held no special lofty properties. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;—yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah’s ark.