Here he turned to the third figure on our stage, a bit-part player of no real distinction, whose role consisted in sitting there, without distraction to the leads (and in that he did well, did well). “Am I correct, Captain Anderson?”
And here yer “Captain Anderson,” knowing well that this was his Moment, the lime lights upon him, here did he show in his countenance the wrack and dilemma of a weak man, a pitiful man, a man whose integrity had been up for sale, then purchased. It were the task of this actor to show his bravery be o’ertaken by his cowardice. Thus did the character “Captain Anderson” cast downward his eyes, in such a way that no observer could read anything other than assent, and obeisance, and the moral failing that would, in longer run, condemn his soul to the fire.
“I give ye both one hour,” said Ahab, commanding the stage, “in which to re-consider.” And with that he strode, by boot and Aaron’s rod, offstage, to applause thunderous, while the curtain were lowered, legg hitting the stage with deep low thump, making manifest the end of Act One.
And as the audience in Ahab’s Theatre took their break, and drank their drinks, lit their tobaccos; and as Ahab in his dressing room breathed deep, preparing for the ardors of the Second Act; while all this transpired within, here, without, on the chilly North Atlantic, under lowering skies, did Ahab’s chaloupe approach yer Valparaiso, on whose decks even now the ropes were being lowered in anticipation of Captain Returned. Thus did Ahab, the applause of the Audience still echoing within his head, look up to see the faces—expectant, grateful, solemn, profound—of his men. Of his boatsteerers and binnacle men, swabber and cook, his chips and yes, his chanteyman.
THIRTY-FIVE
AS THE ROPES were lowered, fastened to the cleats of the chaloupe, raised up again— As the men of the Valparaiso pulled the ropes and pulled again— As Ahab ascended from sea to deck, rising up, as if from the terrestrial to the heavenly— The Valparaiso‘s remaining hands gathered to welcome, more, to await news. For Ahab had to the iron boat been summoned, Ahab had been told, and now they wanted Ahab to relay to them the news. Conveyed not by pulses through wire but from mouth to ear, the way news has always been conveyed, and always should be, and amen. Thus when all were on deck, and quieted by the solemnity of the occasion (notwithstanding their jubilation at their captain’s return), Ahab did look from one to the next, meeting their gazes and returning same. He mounted the foredeck that all could equally hear and from that perch did issue his report.
“The cable hath been severed. The Great Eastern‘s Captain Anderson, having neither mind nor motive of his own, doth in this matter as in all else defer to capital, in the person of Mr. Field, who speaks for the monied consortium. The investors, hence Mr. Field, hence Captain Anderson, sees only cost and benefit, the ink black and the ink red. From that perspective they weigh and decide. And what they have decided is to spend the days as needed, up to ten of those days, in lowering and lifting the grapnel, to retrieve the cable from the ocean floor, some two thousand fathoms deep.”
The crew they were silent but in their countenances Ahab he could hear their boos, and their hisses, fully as loud as the boos and hisses he had heard, moments ago, in the Theater of Ahab. “Be the grappling successful they plan to splice, repack, re-lay, then continue ‘cross the Atlantic, paying out the cable as if no thing had transpired. But should the grappling take too long—which is to say, should its cost exceed the cost of failure—why then they plan to return to Foilhummerum, hat in hand, and there beg the moneymen to back yet another try.
“In this they did not take into account, let alone heed, the observations and recommendations of yer Captain. On this deck, with ears more open to logic and the truth, let me lay out for ye what yer Ahab hath seen; what, having seen, he knows. And what, having known, he does. That the cable it were severed by the jaw of the Leviathan, so mighty it could us swallow, should it wish, Valparaiso in a single bite. It could drown us by malice, it could, or with neither thought nor intention, by a wave of its fluke. We’d all be interred en masse in the North Atlantic. Ye, holystoner! What wouldst they know of ye in Nantucket? None but that ye went to sea, and were presumed there to have died. And if ye have a wife—do ye, holystoner?—she’d be the Widow Uncertain, mourning thy death without the comfort of laying thee to rest, each step of her life haunted by the possibility that ye might wash up one day, ragged and transformed, upon the doorstep. I want now each of ye to think of yer connection on land, the piece of yer heart ye left behind— And what would become of it should we meet our end here at the hand of Leviathan.
“For all the obfuscations of power, the truth of our situation be dead simple. Should we follow the command of capital, come down from the consortium, as conveyed through its satraps and plenipotentiaries, through Mr. Field, to Captains such as Anderson— We would sit here, bobbing like discarded wine cork, until Leviathan wake and we sailors drown.
“But should we instead follow the command of common sense we should pursue Leviathan, and slay it, that it harm neither us nor others, nevermore. Until it belch plumes of blood so thick as to be beyond the reach of the capacity of yer human to imagine. As it descends slow inexorable to its grave, near two thousand fathoms below.
“Are ye with me?”
There was nary a voice raised in dissent. Did they share the desire to fight, or share it in the measure that their Ahab was by that urge possessed? This we do not know. But we do know this: that none among them wished to die.
And so, having been dismissed, they returned to their sea-borne tasks while Ahab went belowdecks and, accompanied only by his chanteyman, did think, and plan. For the work at hand best be done in full darkness. The moon tonight would be near-new, less orb than scimitar, and thus would cast scant illumination. This was, to yer Ahab, a sign that his intentions had been blessed by fortuity.
THIRTY-SIX
IF YE GAZE up at the moon under the clearest skies, on a night when said moon be full, ye might notice a place bluer than the rest, above the moon’s equator, nearer to the pole, and a hairsbreadth to the right of central longitude. That be yer Mare Serenitatis, sea of serenity: and that be yer Ahab. And to the right and below, another patch shifted a jot toward the blue: Mare Tranquillitatis. That be yer sea of tranquility, and that be yer Ahab, too. A temperament as sunny as the moon. As he walks, serene and tranquil, from the stern of his ship, past mizzenmast, all the way to prow. With a smile on his—
No, lads. Yer Ahab doth not smile. Yet he can radiate a calm, he can, and when he doth so, the days that emanate from his soul spread out 360 degrees, becalming all within range, ‘til the crew entire, and yes, the rats in the hold, and yes, the maggots in the meat, all creatures aship be as content as the babe just woken from dreams of womb and pleasure, eyes still closed in that instant before acknowledging the day.
And so I caution ye, do not think ye know yer captain. He can be a Mare Serenitatis, yes, and a Mare Tranquillitatis, yes— But neither friend nor foe would think to call him Mare Cognitum: sea that has become known.
I say this to thee, lest thou Jumpest to Conclusion— Lest ye think that Ahab care naught about all save Leviathan— Know that the course of action he was about to undertake were undertook for reasons calm and beneficent. And that his temperament, as he embarked upon those actions soon to be revealed, that temperament be as pacific and as tranquil as pale blue seas on the lambent moon.
And so when clouds hid both that moon and most of yer stars surrounding, when the largest number of the crew of yer Grand Excrescence would be in dreamland, save those on watch or cursèd with insomnia— When ‘twas late enough that all those conditions be met, then did a chaloupe set out from yer Valparaiso.
The tholes were well-greased with tallow and the oars wrapped in rag that the rowing might be accomplished in silence. And those who pulled those oars pulled them with tact and care, blade meeting sea at the most acute of angles, that the plash of wood ‘gainst water be kept to its minimum. The crew had been provided with coffee beans wh
ich they chewed and sucked, it being Ahab’s belief that coffee doth enhance the awareness, and aid in the ability to pass a long night with less fatigue.
The chaloupe passed the marking buoy, the surface indication of just where the cable lay beneath, and the grapnel wire, cool now, its work paused for the night. The chaloupe it were dark, were silent as it glided forth, and tis a tribute to the men under Ahab’s command that the chaloupe did reach the G____ E______, it did, without a soul aboard the latter aware of its arrival.
To clamp the chaloupe to pulley lines, thence to raise it deckward, would have caused commotion unsuitable to the tasks at hand. And so the crew of the Valparaiso shimmied up the grapnel line—can ye understand now, me mates, why Ahab had took the time to study that line before sun had set? Why he had secured the drum with staves? ‘Twas in preparation for this moment. Ahab acts in the instant, to be sure. But Ahab, he will also plan ahead. Thus did our chaloupians shimmy strong and noiseless, working with deft hand and crossed ankle, as if nocturnal Cercopithecidae, up the grapnel line, onto the darkness-within-darkness that were the Great Eastern.
And so Ahab, clad in black (like all the Valparaisans this unanimous night), and bare of foot (one wants not clomp of shoe on deck, not even the smallest squeak of leather, on a night like this)—and with his Aaron’s rod encased in muffling cloth, padded at the tip, so that his gait be silent if asymmetric—shinn’d up the rope, then vaulted o’er the iron rail onto the wooden deck. Without the customary shoe on his left leg, and with the added height of padding on the carved prosthesis on t’other side (carved from the jawbone of a sperm whale, don’t ye know!), yer Ahab he listed to port.
Which now, as he made his way back, was the boat’s starboard. He were bent low, yer Ahab were, that he not be seen neither by yer fore-watchman nor yer aft-watchman, ‘til he found the staircase amidships that debouched out to the grand corridor. And while his crew waited patient, silent, Ahab did round the entrance to the Grand Ballroom, ‘til he reached the cabin he knew belonged to the captain.
The door be locked from the inside, and yer Ahab, he did not knock, no. He did something different he did, he slipped from his pocket a well-greased master key and inserted it into the lock. Turned it left to right, as a clock would turn, until the bolt retreated back into its pocket. He slathered more tallow upon the hinges so that when he did what he was about to do—id est, open inward the door to the Captain’s apartments—there would be a minimum of noise to herald his arrival.
Through the scant light that filtered through the porthole Ahab made out the recumbent body of the captain of this large and awful boat, lying on his side, yet snoring. (Yer Ahab, he believed, from long experience in close quarters with his fellow seamen, that a man will snore whilst on his back, yet will silence once turned to his side. Hola: here was the exception.) Yer Ahab did then silently approach, or as silently as muffled peg would allow. And when he was bedside, listing over the surprisingly wide mattress (wide for a stateroom! e’en for the stateroom of a captain! but then yer Anderson he were no ordinary captain!)— Thus listing, Ahab did with his left hand cover the mouth of the Snoring Captain, and with his right did thrust a blade—a curved iron blade, forged and tempered, obtained in Stamboul, whose contours mimicked the crescent of tonight’s near-new moon—did thrust that blade ‘tween Anderson’s back ribs. Thrust and turn. It is a fact, not familiar to the general yet well-known by yer Ahab, that if ye stick a man between his ribs that the lung be pierced, and if ye give said knife a quarter-turn clockwise, then the passage from lung to back be well and fully pioneered— Such that, when said man goes to scream, the air will emerge from rent and not from throat. For air, like water, like so much else, it prefer the path of resistance least. And so did Anderson give up his last, endeavoring to make known his alarm, but in doing so he did make as much noise as in the eating of a piece of cheese. E’en as air hissed from the fast-deflating lung, and blood guttered from the wound (the scimitar having severed the aorta or something akin), the loudest noise in the Captain’s stateroom were the tick-tock of the ship’s chronometer. Keeping the Greenwich Mean Time, no matter where boat may roam.
Anderson he were still heaving and guttering like a spiked fish on the deck of a trawler but Ahab did not linger, no. In one version of this tale yer Ahab would have communed with the dying man, and taken note of the flight of his consciousness, and espied the very moment that his soul ascended heavenward as his mortal remains heaved their last. In another there be a piece of eternal wisdom uttered by the dying man heard only by his killer. In yet a third, Ahab did take his Aaron’s rod and establish dominion o’er the dying man.
But those be yer sea-stories, handed down from mate to mate. Those be yer sentimentalist’s way-of-seeing, and to that faith yer Ahab did not subscribe. To commune, to receive wisdom, to bugger: there were no need. Ahab had killed him, quick and sans fuss, and having done so, quit the stateroom and turned to the task next at hand.
And so Ahab he walked on down the hall seeking his Mr. Field.
His purpose with Mr. Field it were different, of course, as yer Mr. Field were different in vital respects from yer Captain Anderson. With the Captain, ‘twere necessary to remove from the minds of all aboard the G____ E______ any doubt as to who was now in command. (Ye sever the head and the body it may squirm, and shudder, but in the fullness of time ‘twill cease its rictus.) With Mr. Field, on yer other hand, ‘twere sufficient to contain him, lest he spew his ideology and infect the crew (who, Ahab knew, would rather take their orders from seaman than from landlub).
If Mr. Field’s door were opened with equal silence, the subsequent motions they differed. Here, in this stateroom, with the even-wider mattress, among the filigree and the wainscoting and the emblems of empire, did Ahab say, “Awake, and with yer hands in front.” And yer Mr. Field, without fully shaking off the dream, did comply. It may have been that he understood the voice of command, or, more prosaically, that the sight of Ahab’s scimitar, stained with blood not yet dry, were the Compelling Thing. Ahab did then by means of hand signals prearranged summon his chips and his swabber, who bound Mr. Field to one of his stately chairs, using three-strand hawser-laid on the wrists and chest, and sturdier four-strand shroud-laid on the ankles. It were not necessary to insert a gag as Mr. Field, quickly discerning the calculus of the situation, knew that his only ally on board, Bumboy Anderson, was no more, else Ahab would not be roaming the boat with such impunity. So Mr. Field he accepted his bonds if not his fate. Knowing that if Ahab had spared his life, ‘twas no act of beneficence, no, ‘twas but the cunning of a mutineer who might later have need of certain knowledge inside his head. And that Mr. Field’s lease on life, nowhere writ down, could be revoked at any instant for reason good, reason bad, reason none at all.
Meanwhile (and ain’t that the grandest of words!) even as Ahab and his trusted men secured the financier’s quarters, other of the Valparaiso crew were dispersing, each to his own specific task as per prearrangement. (Thou thinkest that yer Ahab would take this iron tub without a Plan? Then thou art even more a cretin than Ahab thinks thou art!) The navigator would be, at this moment, in the fire hold, telling the stokers that, as of this moment, they no longer needed to feed the maw. (The G____ E______ may be a huge and ungainly thing, and made of metal where wood would be the better fit—but from this day on, the G____ E______ by wind will go, and not by vapor! There were, in all this mass, somewhere a Ship. And yer Ahab determined that Ship to find, or, failing, to create…)
And even while the agent of capital was suitably restrained, and the fire-men relieved of their ungodly task (and know ye well, that in being told to put down their shovels, and to let the fires damp, they offered up no resistance, only the exhalations of relief and, in one or two cases, voiced and audible huzzahs)— While all that were coming to pass, the watch crew on deck were being informed of Captain Exsanguinated’s new status; the navigator of the G____ E______ was informed by the navigator of yer V_________ that there would be a
new course set with the morning fix; and the cook he were told to make a mess for all hands, as there would be a summonsing of the crew entire, at first light, and it would be only prudent to feed ‘em. (That be yer Ahab’s strategy, now can be told: to use force to assert command unambiguous; to bring relief to those engaged in hellish work; to reach out from the small ship to the large, navigator-to-navigator, cook-to-cook, that each member of the crew be full of Sailor’s Fellowship; and finally, that all be fed, so that a night of terror be followed by a full-bellied morn. Ahab deploys the fear of death, the deep and bowel-clenching fear— But then, he doth feed, he doth nurture, he doth reassure. There may be other ways to take o’er a ship but when the small force must conquer the large, and when the crew to be subdued have the advantage of Home Territory, well it pays, don’t it lads, to be smart. So the scimitar and the mess pot too.)
With the first light all hands they were on deck. The men of the Great Eastern entire, save Anderson (deceased), Field (belowdecks)—And absent three souls, valiant and foolish in equal measure, who sought the night before to repel what to them was perceived as an attack. It were tribute to Ahab’s men that in each of those encounters they were victors rather than vanquished, and sustained injuries only minor. (One swabber he were stabbed in the calf, yet when the cloths were applied and tightened the bleeding it were stanched.)
Yer Ahab waited in the wheelhouse for all to assemble— Better, ye know, to make an Entrance, than to stand there like a fool waiting for the hall to fill. (In his own mind this were still I Am Ahab, and the curtain it had just rose on the triumphant Act the Third.) And there were the aromas of new-steamed beans, and the biscuits too, so that the sailors they knew, that after church there be the meal— First ethics, then grub, as the wise man he once said.
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